Paragon 2011 Free Now Takes Too Long to Backup

Hi Everyone,

I have Paragon's Free 2011 Backup program, and also Seagate's free DiscWizard program. Both have always worked reasonably well for me, requiring only about 5 or 6 minutes to do a disc image of my Patriot Inferno 60 GB SSD drive (only around 25 GBs of data) to a Samsung 1TB drive running in an external enclosure, fed by eSATA.

But ... since June 1, 2011 the backups have been excruciatingly SLOW to run. In fact, my usual 5 minute run is now around 2 hours and 20 minutes!!!

Has anyone else run into this strange behaviour lately? I thought it might have been a Windows 7 Update that messed something up, so I uninstalled the only updates that have arrived since June 1 (a few MS Visual C 2005 updates) but this has not made any difference.

Any help is much appreciated.

Try Windows 7 backup, my takes 90 sec aday.
System Image Recovery
Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup
Restore Backup User and System Files

Hi there
If you REALLY value your data -- not only your system -- for example consider how much it would cost to recover all your music / photos / critical documents etc -- I'd invest in a PROPER commercial backup program rather than use the freebies which are hobbled anyway.

Commercial Backups allow in particular most of the following features

1) Automatic scheduling
2) Incremental backups (only Backup CHANGED data)
3) Backup DATA / Directories / Folders
4) Backup to DIFFERENT devices
5) Backup to Network drives
6) SPAN MULTI VOLUMES ==> with large volumes of data to backup this IMO is a real feature worthwhile having -- the freeebies never allow this feature
7) Backup / restore to DIFFERENT volume sizes
8) IMAGING as well as data backups -- (although freebies usually have this feature)
9) Mount Backup image so its browsable via Windows Explorer etc.
10) Compression can be selected
11) Backup can be split into pre-determined sizes -- useful for example if you are backing up to 4.7GB DVD's etc.
12) Restore IMAGE to DIFFERENT HARDWARE - great for deploying Windows to other machines
13) Don't rely on the V.S.S service (Volume shadowing service)

Since home versions of these backups only cost around 45 USD at the most it seems to me totally ludicrous that people DON"T have one of these programs as a matter of course.

The cost of losing your data is usally MANY MANY times the cost of a decent backup program - assuming you could even recover it.

Forget all the freebies and get something more "Fit for purpose".

I favour Acronis but there are loads of others including Macrium (non Free version) or BRU BACKUP on Linux -- great if you are running a Linux server -- this will also backup Windows stuff too.

Incidentally another irritant with the freebies (including Windows backup) is that they all rely on using the VSS - Volume shadowing service. This is mega annoying also --and requires a certain amount of available storage to be available before it will work. Now if you've ALREADY got a storage problem and you want to backuyp stuff before increasing Partition size / deleting stuff you don't need online then you could have problems running the backup in the first place.

Commercial versions don't rely on the VSS for making backups.

Cheers
jimbo

theog said:

Try Windows 7 backup, my takes 90 sec aday.
System Image Recovery
Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup
Restore Backup User and System Files

Thanks theog. I do use the Win 7 backup but find it unreliable. Sometimes it just won't find the backup image and then won't even let me navigate to it manually! Talk about adding insult to injury!

Hi Jimbo,

I am seriously considering Acronis 2011. I have Seagate's DiscWizard and with that they offer a 40% discount on Acronis 2011. So for $30 I guess I can't go wrong. I'm just a tight wad because I don't have much money (I live on a disability pension).

Some of the free programs offer a lot of what you list in the paid programs favour.

Hiya Tood,

Yes you are right.

The free apps. may have all you need.

Strange that both Acronis (Seagate) and Paragon are mysteriously taking much longer than they used to.

Easeus is very slow in comparison to almost all the others.

I don't know what has changed on your system to cause that.

Todd Sauve said:

Hi Jimbo,

I am seriously considering Acronis 2011. I have Seagate's DiscWizard and with that they offer a 40% discount on Acronis 2011. So for $30 I guess I can't go wrong. I'm just a tight wad because I don't have much money (I live on a disability pension).

Some of the free programs offer a lot of what you list in the paid programs favour.

Hi there

At times 30 USD might seem to be a lot of money -- but in comparison to LOSING data you have to consider whether it's money well spent.

I agree some of the freebies offer SOME of the features in my list but generally not all.

See what you need and then decide but IMO that 30 USD would be a real worthwhile investment.

While not a financial Forum - what I would do for example every time you have a few cents as loose change just put it into a jar --eventually when it reaches 30 USD get the program -- you probably won't notice the 30 USD if you save it that way.

We all have to be VERY careful with money these days but sometimes the cost of NOT doing something costs far more in the end than initial pain of spending the original amount in the first place.

Cheers
jimbo

Not sure Jimbo.

I actually have the Paragon Virtual Server - which they gave me.

I think that is about $1000.

Recently, I haven't used it. I have been using the free B&R11 instead - at first just to see what it was like - but have I kept using it as an experiment - to see what it would be like just having the free version.

Of course, there is a vast number of extra options in the paid app. - an enthusisat or a business may want them - but many people will be just fine with free version.