Windows 7: Norton vs. Paragon for Backing Data

Hi, I wanted to do a quick poll what do you think out of Norton 360 and Paragon is the best backup. Do they both do the job, the same ?



I added a poll for those who just want to vote and don't want to write (lazy )

I'd guess most people here have little to no experience with either product and use something else or nothing at all.

I don't know about Paragon but you have to be careful with Norton. It just builds up and up in size. The only way to control it is to go into the Norton Backup Drive fairly frequently and delete the backup. The first time I did this the backup size was 80GB and took 4 days to delete. This was on the previous version so it may have improved.

Personally, I wouldn't buy or install anything with the Norton brand on it. I did try Paragon once, and it appeared to create an image okay, but I never used it to recover the system, because I prefer Achronis True Image. Many others here like Macrium Reflect. I have it installed also, and it seems good, but since I never have a problem with TI (recently), I stick with it.

Norton is bloatware requiring a special tool to remove it just like the worst infection.

Why would anyone pay to bloat their system when Windows 7 works much better with free lightweight MSE or Avast5 and the Windows 7 firewall, which are perfectly adequate.

You see now why these factory bloatware sponsors put such pressure on the OEM's to enforce their preinstalled bloatware, to the point where clean-copy installation DVD's are no longer provided by any. This is how they hook Users who may never know that Windows 7 is natively the first feather-light, instantaneous OS.

Greg, the OP wasn't referring to anti virus but to backup / imaging.
Regarding AV you're absolutely right, there's hardly a program worse than NAV.

Are there any good free/open source alternative that are equal to Paragon or Macrium ?

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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.

WHS, never thought I'd be agreeing with someone giving a hat tip to a Norton AV product, but I agree with your take on NIS 2011. Until recently I always recommended against using Norton because of its well known resource hog tendencies.

A couple weeks ago a friend offered me one of his NIS installs of a 3 year license and I decided to take him up on it. I like it for the reasons you specify. Unless it starts acting funny I think I'll keep it until 2014. In this case it's pretty good "freeware."

Jeromethegiraff, I have Acronis True Image 2011 and Easeus Back Up Workstation 2.0 installed. Both are good but I prefer Easeus. Easus has a good free Back Up.