Paragon Backup & Recovery 2014 Compact and Free versions are out. To most people currently using Paragon's backup apps, the big news is they're changing the way backup archives are stored. The GUI is also changed -- to me it looks rather stark. With either version you can choose either the old archive format or the new -- Paragon states in their docs that eventually everything will be switched over. Paragon claims several advantages to the new way of storing your backups, but what you'll likely notice is a slightly smaller archive size -- mounting, then backing up the vhd for my XP Mode VM, the backup folder measures 5,304,417,710 the old way, vs. 5,160,640,512 for the new.
Paragon's backup software lets you mount a backup as a virtual hard drive -- it looks like a normal drive/partition in Windows Explorer, and you can copy however many files/folders from it mounted that way. Older versions of Paragon's backup software added a single driver to manage mounting those archives -- the setup to mount the new version archives is more complicated, adding 3 more driver files, along with 20 files added to the system folder [as recorded in the XP Mode VM]. Running the setup program 1st adds a Microsoft C/C++ runtime to Windows -- 64 bit versions of Windows get both the 32 & 64 bit versions of those runtimes installed -- vcredist_x64.exe & vcredist_x86.exe. Both are v. 10 with files dated 2010 -- IOW likely already on your system, though these will still be installed. After the runtime installs are run, the actual .msi installation file is expanded to the Temp folder where it's run -- that seems the only time to get the actual msi file, as it's deleted afterwards. In win7 it didn't ask for a re-start, but I would suggest re-starting or re-booting Windows before trying to mount a new format backup archive.
The free version offered to install alongside Paragon Backup & Recovery 12 Compact -- Backup & Recovery 2014 Compact said it would upgrade that earlier version. I installed the Compact version in the XP Mode VM, then copied the program folder for the free version into place [in the Program Files\ Paragon\ folder], and both seemed to work fine side by side -- that sort of thing might be useful if you wanted to compare the two. While the version numbers were the same, the Compact version seemed to me to be more fully developed.
Changes under the hood include better compatibility with win8.1 & UEFI motherboard bios. Here's the feature list for the free version:
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/br-free/features.html
And here's the one for Backup & Recovery 14 Home:
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/brh/features.html
Features of the new, 14 Home version include P2P with the Linux boot or rescue disc -- that's where you adapt Windows to run on a new system with different hardware. AFAIK that was previously only available with their WinPE boot disc. The free version's included ISO file, that you can burn to disc, does not include that feature. One Plus I noticed is that you can now tell Paragon Backup & Recovery whether you want it to modify your boot menu etc. to include a new disk/partition -- previously this was an annoyance when you were doing something like cloning a disk/partition. One minus I noticed is that using the full GUI [rather than the Metro type interface], the quick menus up top for backing up a disk or partition are now missing -- in the Compact version those commands are listed in the upper right portion of the GUI.
You can pickup the compact version from their Facebook page for the next few days.
https://www.paragon-software.com/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Paragon-Software-Group/116815481437?ref=ts&v=wall
