Please help!
Where i cant chek if the Paragon Hard Disk Manager 14 business made the back up?I can recive the email with evrey back up what paragon do it?
Txs

I also had trouble installing this software. But 5 minutes later I posted a fix to help others. Neither one of my comments ended up in the public area. Why should I bother with comments if they just get ignored/deleted?

Al

Thanks to Ashraf and Giovanni. You guys are fantastic! Thanks also to many others some with mini-seminars. I wish Paragon (and all) would simplify their naming to say for example "free" "lite" Pro" Following is about 1/3 (!!!) of the Paragons I have. Please tell me which do I want to for cloning?

Paragon Backup & Recovery 10 Compact - Covermount (English)
Paragon Backup & Recovery 2011 (Advanced) Free (English)
Paragon System Backup 10 Special Edition - GOTD (English)
Paragon System Backup 2010 - Free Edition (English)
Paragon Drive Backup 9.5 Professional Edition

It is so over whelming. PS - I replaced my Windows 7 mother board to different brand. Could not load windows. Screwed again. Took typical 400 hours to put together .. almost all GOAD gone. If I can truly migrate my drive that is the ONLY way I want to image. Lightning or whatever the cause and boom you are out of business!! Devastating! Microsoft I believe is protecting their software else people clone drives with... Agree?

#27 Jina

“Then I’ll back up that .vhd to an image I’ll later restore to the target disk/partition.”

Since I do not know if you work with virtual machines or not, my questions is. Do you like to backup/restore partitions on your harddrive, or do you like to backup a virtual drive and restore it to a real partition.

The first one I can assist you with, but the later one, I guess involves making a backup in virtual enviroment, and from there transfer it over to a real location. Part from that they should be basic the same, should that is.

Micke

#20, #33 Those of you that are getting "error 1316" is sounds like you downloaded the x32 software instead of the x64. The x64 download is 214 MB and is not downloaded by clicking on the usual GAOTD link. I made this mistake myself ;-(

I have the code - my mistake - the mail was picked up by a rule in Outlook - only time that has ever worked !

Despite trying 4 times - never received the registration code from Paragon - Could not install.

Also tried their other free software offers on the website - again, no registration code supplied.

Have both (a) Paragon Backup and Recovery 12 Compact and (b) Paragon Partition Manager 12 Home Special Edition, from GAOTD, but never used them.
1) HOW IS THIS ONE DIFFERENT?
2) Must I uninstall one of the old in order to install this one?
Thanks.

This would not install unless Paragon Drive Copy 12 was uninstalled first (it kept looking for the installation file from the September giveaway and stopped when it couldn't find it). I went ahead and got rid of the old (not "Compact") version anyway because I couldn't get the old one to work (apparently because the destination 3 TB HDD was not exactly the same size as the 3 TB HDD I was trying to copy). Hopefully I'll have better luck with this.

#4 Macrium Reflect Free will do what you need. I just used it for that purpose.

You do have to change your BIOS boot options to boot from the clone, of course.

Semper Fi.

Finaly got it, took about 45 min to get, installing now

Can not install on win8.1 x64. Getting error 1316. I noted others have had the same problem on x64 system.

Did registration twice, half-hour latter still no key and #........now off to work.

#7 - Harris: Instead of criticizing "Despite its claims here that the software will work on 32 or 64 bit systems, as soon as the software installer detected that I had a 64 bit system — the norm these days, I think you’d all agree — it informed me that it could not install as it only works on 32 bit systems.
(My OS is Windows 8.1, for the record).

This is obviously unacceptable unless corrected ASAP.", why don't you read what's on the web page. There are two different download links - one for 32-bit and one for 64-bit.

Now about the software, I will not install it, just because I am afraid it would mess up my computer.

I had used Paragon Drive Copy (download from this site) to move to SSD my SO that was in another machine. It worked flawless. Used to virtualize an O.S. to test this functionality. Worked fine. It was simple.
I would not recommend you to do that thought when if you don't know what you are doing. Changes in hardware reflect on the system.

I have a question: one of Key features is "Wide migration options (P2P, P2V, V2P and V2V);", but #1 say that Compact version is missing (...) the ability to virtualize OS. Is that true?

cannot "migrate data to a computer with different hardware"??

So it only functions between two identical computers? I would think a major use for such a program is to transfer data from an older system to a newer one - two systems which will definitely NOT be identical - so of what use is this software?

#4: “I have been looking for a long time for a program which will clone or duplicate my entire hard drive (and be bootable when/if I swap it to my C drive cable) to a secondary internal hard drive by simply double-clicking an icon. Will this program do that? Does anyone know of a program that can make a bootable backup to a 2nd hard drive internally installed? I’ll give this a shot, but I’ve tried a number of these types and I can’t seem to find one which doesn’t require you to perform some additional steps “after” cloning or copying to make it boot. Thanks GOTD”

I use Macrium Reflect free edition to clone the drive to another one installed internally. This can easily be done when installing an SSD drive. I also unplug the original drive and leave it installed as a bootable backup. There were no other steps for me, just to change bios to boot from the new drive.

#19 @mike

Thanks for your post. I have a question. When you say:

"Then I’ll back up that .vhd to an image I’ll later restore to the target disk/partition. "

How do you do that?

Hi,
Can I use the winPE rescue disk for version 12 for this compact ver14 ?
Thanks

If you have an older Pro version installed, does it make you uninstall it? There have been giveaways in the past that do this and are, in effect, downgrades, because some of the previous features are taken away.

Can't install it on Win7 64 bit:

Error 1316 A network error occurred while attempting to read from the file...

Not quite sure what the problem is?

:-(
PS. Clipped the error messages for submission if that helps?

I used to have an older version of this, and it WAS (key word: WAS) great, but a while back I spent literally days deleting a newer version of it, as it bloated my registry beyond belief, RADICALLY slowed down my system (Win7 64 bit, 4gb ram, 64bit), and overloaded my RAM with it's constant monitoring, which is about impossible to stop! Then uninstalling was a nightmare. I used Advanced Uninstaller Pro (GREAT free uninstaller which is usually very good at reg residue cleanup) to delete it, and had to use Registry First Aid to do a deep clean of the literally dozens of dozens reg left overs! It's just NOT worth the hassle. If you're advanced enough, try Clonezilla.
Synopsis: This is like Windows. Started out ok, but every "improvement" just makes it more bloated and just not worth it. CAVEAT EMPTOR!

@Giovanni and Micke,

Regarding Redo, I am a little concerned that the latest version (1.0.4) has not been updated for over a year. And expert help in their forum appears to be minimal.

I rely more on Clonezilla, which doesn't have as friendly of an interface as Redo, but has a very solid reputation, is updated regularly, and has an active forum. One can easily find Clonezilla tutorials via a google search and it doesn't take long to get the hang of using it.

Concerning both, Clonezilla and Redo, what I like most about both is that nothing gets installed on your system.

I guess in the description where it said "Fast migration to new HDDs, SSDs, new hardware and virtual machines;" it should have added "the hardware can be new, but must otherwise be IDENTICAL" This doesn't sound like truth in advertising to me. Perhaps it should be mentioned under "Limitations" that this does not support migration among anything dissimilar.

@Giovanni and other readers

Morning

Since we talk about “Restore to Dissimilar Hardware”, I whould like to make a reservation towards redobackup, it is a great software, but can not restore to diffrent sized harddrives. I recently noticed this myself.

1. Don't forget to burn on CD/USB the bootcd.iso located in /iso, otherwise you won't be able to restore.

2. The most interesting key features in the product description above apply only to the Pro version, not the Compact.

3. Nothing said about not backing up empty space (why backup 400 GB when only 70 GB used), or compression.

The PRO edition of this product is FABULOUS...this GAOTD version is just GOOD!

Why? Because a tool like this is usually required when you buy a new PC and want to migrate data + OS to it from an older PC with different hardware or when you want to deploy the same operating system on many computers with dissimilar hardware.

Unfortunately a key feature missing in this GAOTD.

So THUMBS UP with some reservations though...

Why? Because Aomei Backupper is FREE and does more or less the same things as this version of Paragon Drive Copy 14 (but it's rumored that the next new version of it will support "Restore to Dissimilar Hardware" Function as well...so let's stay tuned!!), so can't see any reason to download this GAOTD....how about you dudes?

http://www.aomeitech.com

To transfer almost any installed programs of yours from one Windows-based computer to another one with dissimilar hardware, keeping the original settings of them as well, just use this magic FREE portable app:

http://www.pickmeapp.com/pickmeapp

Or better yet use a virtualization product like "VirtualBox" + "GoPC Backup" as backup solution:

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Virtualization
https://github.com/GeorgeSchiro/GoPcBackup

But why not use a FREE BARE METAL solution instead?

http://redobackup.org

Enjoy!!

My 2 cents for today's giveaway!!

64bit users at 215mb, not very compact!

This download of Home version is 124 MB including Themida wrapper.
The nonfunctional demo of Pro Version on http://www.paragon-software.com/home/dc-professional/ is as big as 58.3 MB. I wonder what for. Is it producing bitcoins secretly?

Otherwise I'm using Paragon software since many years without any trouble and therefore I will download this soft and try it for "migrating" good old XP to a virtual machine. (My good old refillable printer got only partial and very restricted assistance on later systems and in april MS will "kill" XP.)

Despite of professional downvoters many thanks to Ashraf for his neutral tests. But I want to add that I suppose this restricted software is useful for me and others. And Paragon have to pay their personel, telephone fees (yes, phone numbers given on homepage!!!) etc.

I must give a complete thumbs up to paragon, I downloaded their Drive copy 11 professional special edition (English) from GAOTD. I was able to make a complete second copy of my "C" drive which now resides on my "H" drive. I can now boot up from either drive at will, not only that the software continues to copy any new programme to the other drive automatically.

#2
Paul, I have some good advice for you. Stop using the computer. Locate the application of the talents in some other area. Playing harmonica, cross stitching, painting watercolors ... But you never know everything around? The whole world in front of you, and it is huge.

I'm already covered for the functions, but I would love to try the Migrations to Different Hardware... which unfortunately is not included in Compact

If there are Paragon people on this thread, I'd like some comments about the Pro copy that does migrations to different hardware.... some real user testimonials for Pro would be nice... I can find reviewers but nothing from real users who purchased the Pro

I've use the Laplink disk image migration product 3 times to move to new hardware and it works but is time-consuming. If Pro saves me time, I'd sure consider the purchase

Despite its claims here that the software will work on 32 or 64 bit systems, as soon as the software installer detected that I had a 64 bit system -- the norm these days, I think you'd all agree -- it informed me that it could not install as it only works on 32 bit systems.
(My OS is Windows 8.1, for the record).

This is obviously unacceptable unless corrected ASAP.

In my experience Paragon software is not very good. Just about anything is better. I know a lot of self-proclaimed "IT experts" swear by Paragon but I've had terrible luck with all their products. In fact it seems very suspicious how so many "professional" reviewers give it high marks while the real-world results seem much more of a mixed bag.

Register this softweare here to save you going right through the installation process:
http://registration.paragon-software.com/dc14compact.html

I have been looking for a long time for a program which will clone or duplicate my entire hard drive (and be bootable when/if I swap it to my C drive cable) to a secondary internal hard drive by simply double-clicking an icon. Will this program do that? Does anyone know of a program that can make a bootable backup to a 2nd hard drive internally installed? I'll give this a shot, but I've tried a number of these types and I can't seem to find one which doesn't require you to perform some additional steps "after" cloning or copying to make it boot. Thanks GOTD

These are the features that are MISSING when compared to the professional version.

Migrate OS to dissimilar hardware
P2V Copy / P2V Adjust OS
V2V / V2P
Read-only mode for virtual disks
Resume operations on virtual volumes
Support for major virtual machines
WinPE recovery environment
P2P Adjust OS

I used to use Paragon's partition manager, that was given away here, often. I would use it to format a partition I created for backup before I would do a new backup. The last time I did this the program wiped my entire drive. It happened in a single instant. In 1 second my whole HD was erased. Everything was fine on my screen at first, but then when I tried to get out of paragon's program It didnt work. and then I realised there was no info on my hd anymore.
It cost me €35 to purchase a restore to factory settings kit from Toshiba for my laptop. I mentioned this on a previous giveaway and with the number of similar comments I saw that I am not the only one this has happend to.
I will never use their software ever again!

Pros
*Allows you to migrate the operating system and data of your current system over to a different computer or hard drive (aka make an existing Windows installation bootable on a different computer or hard drive). NOTE: Compact version will not allow you to migrate to a computer with different hardware
*Can choose to copy a full hard disk or just a portion of it
*Allows you to copy from a regular hard disk to a SSD (Solid State Drive)
*Able to fix most system boot problems that are a result of human error or a boot virus
*Comes with basic partition management features

Cons
*Only allows you to move Windows XP and above (sorry all of you who are still holding onto Windows 95)
*Compact version is missing two key features — the ability to migrate data to a computer with different hardware and the ability to virtualize OS

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Final Verdict
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