Which imaging software? Acronise True Image or Storagecraft Shadow Protect Desktop?

I've done some research on imaging/backup software, and it seems as these two are some of the better ones. Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time deciding between the two.

The Storagecraft is about $30 more than the Acronise. Since I need to purchase two copies for two different notebooks (one with Vista and another with XP), I'm not sure how much better the Shadow Protect Desktop software is in order to justify the extra $60. I'm mainly interested in making an image and date copy of my operating system, software and data in case I need to restore everything.

Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Best regards.

 

Have you also looked into Paragon Hard Disk Manager? In the number of incidents I had in the past it was better than Acronis TrueImage. Paragon had better multi OS and Dynamic/Raid partition support.

Haven't used Shadow Protect Desktop before though, so no suggestion there.

 

Thanks for the suggestion about Paragon. I'll take a closer look at it.

 

I have used true image for 3 years now and it's the best product IMHO for imaging, backups, restoration etc. Also very intuitive while not being overly complex.

 

Been using Acronis True Image for 4 years! The best/fastest/easiest program to use ever!

Acronis True Image FTW

 

Thanks for the reply guys.

Do you know whether Acronis True Image works with Raid 0 dual hard drives?

Also, I thought I read that the emergency disc that Acronis comes with is for a Linux system. Is it difficult to make one for the Windows XP?

 

not sure about raid, but it allows you to:

setup a secure zone where you can access the recovery manager if you can't get to the OS. this partition is "hidden" and you can store your backups there.

you can create an acronis boot disc which pretty much does the same thing if you don't have a large hdd to store your backups directly.

 

I've had issues with Acronis in the past with Dynamic volumes (raid volumes) in Windows XP and Windows Server. It would fail to restore the volume so that it would be bootable. Paragon did it on the first try with no issues.