Norton vs. Paragon for Backing Data

Sordid - Thanx, which of those three freeware / opensource alternatives does anyone find the best ? I'm currently tied between using Norton and Paragon. I haven't decided on using a freeware \ opensource alternative, I believe that Norton is probably not as awful as many are making it out to be and I'm cautious on whether buying another backup program will be beneficial.

Jerome, there's nothing wrong with Norton Ghost. Read the comments about Norton, for some reason they were all about their antivirus kit, not about Ghost.

I tried all the programs I listed at a point and I liked them all.
They are easy to install - most of them are Linux so you'd have to put them on a stick, boot from that stick and try them.
Are you already using Ghost? In that case - simply stick with it.

whs said:

Hmm, that Norton discussion reminds me a bit of the people who beat up on Vista without ever having seen it in real. I have NIS2011 and it is fantastic. Completely uninvasive, always on top of things and all the scans are done at idle time. Plus I have tons of settings options of which I use some extensively.

I had used MSE for a little while, but after I caught two viruses, I got rid of it. (and I do not frequent shady websites - the McAfee site advisor would have warned me anyhow). Fortunately I had my images to bail me out.

I agree with WHS.
I look after over 20 rig's all with Norton 360, no ploblems.

I'm using Norton 360. The same as theog. So it is reliable for backing up, full restoring if Windows went nuts and I wanted to restore everything in a few minutes and resume business, and even for partial back up/restore ?

Sordid, which of those freeware \ opensource did you find the best ?

There are enough experts I trust vouching for Norton 360 that I exempt it from my more historical view of Norton. I soured on it after some of the most horrible messes ever seen while trying to clean up bloatware installs.

And since the thread was referring to backup programs, I apologize for veering off-topic as it wasn't intended but reflexive when I see the N-word.

Have had several episodes recently where Paragon 10 and Acronis True Image failed to reimage with the System Reserved partition correctly, even failng to Repair with or without it.

On the other hand, I just converted a Win7 backup image to Acronis .tib and successfully reimaged to a second partition without it's SysReserved. It started up first time after merely adding it with EasyBCD from the extant partition. So there is good and bad sometimes within the same program and some of the extras in Acronis are handy.

I am assuming a default now of using Win7 backup imaging, since I can convert to Acronis image if needed to specify a partition for reimage - which is the greatest drawback with Win7 imaging. The experts who I trust here seem to lean to Macrium as the next best or better freeware application offering more flexibility than Win7's native imaging.

For file backup I've yet to find an easier, more compact method than dragging the active User folders to external, or dragging the active named User folder.

gregrocker said:

And since the thread was referring to backup programs, I apologize for veering off-topic as it wasn't intended but reflexive when I see the N-word.

LMAO!!!

This is a tough choice. I want to stick with Norton 360, I hope that it's backup and restore are solid and won't fail on me, and that I can restore a complete backup or partial backup with confidence. To fork over money for another backup program would be the choice if Norton didn't live up to what I had mentioned earlier, otherwise I'll stick with Norton.

Stick with it, mate.
There's never 100% security but Ghost usually is very, very reliable.