True Image 2009 vs. R-Drive 4.6
Lately I've been seeking an imaging product that works better than TI. The things I'm looking at are the basics: Installing, creating a boot CD, making Manual full backup images, verifying images, and restoring these full images. I'm not interested in schedules, incremental backups, or any other extras.
Last night I installed the free trial R-Drive 4.6 and played with it.
I installed it on my spare pc which is a W2000 sp4 machine having IDE hard drives.
R-Drive installed fast and started great. The operating screen panel is simple and easy to use. There are no difficult decisions to make when starting a backup. I started a full image of my C system partition to the second partition on the same hard drive. This was done from Windows.
At that time I saw problems. The 8.3 GB took 28 minutes to complete, that is 0.296 GB per minute. TI and Easeus Todo run about 4x that.
I did a verify and it errored with "file corrupt 3400". I started the verify again and got the same error. This same data and destination have been used to test other imaging programs without errors.
Now I ran chkdsk /r on both partitions and no errors were found.
Next I booted the R-Drive boot CD and did the same backup and verify. Same verify error, however the backup went faster, 0.48 GB min.
Next I booted the R-Drive cd and backed up to a sata hard drive in an external usb adapter. Backup finished and verify gave me more of the same verify errors. I doubt that both of my destination hard drives have errors.
I never was able to get a backup of partition C (8.3 GB) without verify errors.
My personal conclusion:
TI-2009 is the winner.
R-Drive 4.6 isn't.
TI does everything right that RD does right. TI also does things right that I couldn't get RD to correctly.
I'm sure that RD does work for some people but I have no confidence in images with reported verify errors.
Major issues with RD:
Slow backup
Verify errors
Weak support forum
R-Drive has a user forum but the offered help is slim.
http://forum.r-tt.com/viewforum.php?f=14
Fungus
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Mark:
Thanks for the info on W7 and W home server. The home server sounds like a good idea if one is using a home server. I'm not in the mood to go that far at this time.
I do think that it is only a matter of time until Microsoft does offer a decent image type of backup that will become the default for most users.
For now I'll continue playing with software, mostly "good" freeware. I have many that work better than paid for products. So far TI (even though it has issues) is best.
My wish would be for a TI that was "minimal" with as many optional features as people wanted to install, but only if they want them.
By the way, I have a TI version 10 in a box here, maybe I'll get it back out and have another look at it.
Peace,
Fungus
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