Norton vs. Paragon for Backing Data

[JerometheGiraff]

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 )

 

[ignatzatsonic]

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

 

[kado897]

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.

 

[seekermeister]

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.

 

[gregrocker]

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

Why would anyone pay to bloat their system when Win7 works much better with free lightweight MSE or Avast5 and the Win7 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 Win7 is natively the first feather-light, instantaneous OS.

 

[sordid]

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.

 

[JerometheGiraff]

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

 

[sordid]

Clonezilla - About
PING (Partimage Is Not Ghost)
DuBaron DiskImage
Partimage

 

[whs]

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.

 

[Frenchy]

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.

 

[kado897]

The latest Norton AVs are very light on resources. They do any heavy processing in idle time.

 

[JerometheGiraff]

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.

 

[sordid]

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.

 

[theog]

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.

 

[JerometheGiraff]

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 ?

 

[gregrocker]

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.

 

[seth500]

I would use Norton when I used anything of Paragons I had a lot of BSOD's, at any rate at the moment though I use acronis and has worked perfectly everytime with no issues..

 

[sordid]

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!!!

 

[JerometheGiraff]

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.

 

[sordid]

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