Free Stuff
Western Digita l - Acronis - limited free version
Seagate - Acronis - limited free version
Paragon - Google paragon free (just have to register it)
WindowsXP
Every year I have a look at Symantec, Acronis and Paragon and see what they are offering
in the way of partition imaging software. I download the trial/free software and see what
improvements have been made if any.
With Symantec you download the software and the SRD.
With Acronis you download the software and create a SRD after the software is installed.
With Paragon you download the software and create a SRD after the software is installed.
I installed all three packages onto my windows XP SP3 machine and burned the SRD for
Paragon and Acronis. I didn't see much of an improvement from Symantec, Paragon or
Acronis. So I will continue us Ghost 12.0 on my XP SP3 Machine.
Windows 8.0/8.1
My Windows 8.1 install is non uefi with 350MB for the System Reserved partition and 100GB
for the OS
This year I also had a look at Comparison of disk cloning software
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_disk_cloning_software
Redo looked promising and was simple to use. I downloaded the software and burned the
image to a CD. It is a whole disk imaging tool. I used it to image my windows 8.0 drive
(image completed successfully). When I went to restore the image it left the windows 8.0
partition in an unusable state. I Had to run clean all and reinstall windows 8.0.
Since then I installed Windows 8.1
I decided to try to image my windows 8.1 partitions with Paragon and Acronis first since
they were free. Using the SRD disk from Paragon and Acronis I imaged the partitions by
cluster and sector by sector (created two images per SRD). I extracted the OS hard drive
and put in a new one. I recovered the first image (the cluster copy) with Paragon and
Windows 8.1 would not boot. I tried the second Paragon image a sector by sector copy of
the partition and Windows 8.1 would not boot. I recovered the third image (the cluster
copy) with Acronis and Windows 8.1 booted. I also tried the fourth Acronis image a sector
by sector copy of the partition and Windows 8.1 booted (takes a lot longer to recover).
So if you updated from windows 8.0 to 8.1 and are using SSR2013 this workaround using the Acronis SRD to image the OS may not be ideal but it works.
Hope SSR2013 is updated to image windows 8.1 from the software and the SRD soon.
NotaCanada