Several counters to several points... :) 1. Of course speed is variable, but a sector by sector copy must necessarily be slower in almost all cases. By examining the $MFT (or the equivalent in other filesystems), you only have to copy sectors that actually have data you care about, vs. each and every sector on the drive. The only way that a sector-by-sector copy could be faster (or, rather, not slower) is if the drive was completely full. For the record, most of the systems I work with are Core 2 Quad/8GB/10k SATA or Core i7/12GB/15k SAS--certainly not slow. I also never have need to image directly to optical media--again, it's too slow.
2. Acronis isn't perfect either, and anyone that has half a clue will readily admit that no software is perfect. However, Acronis at a basic level works the way people expect it to work. While I will fully admit that you have a firm understanding of Ghost, if the way that most people try to use it doesn't function properly, that's a product problem, not a documentation or end-user knowledge problem. 4. That's interesting, since your original point was that anything less than an exact duplicate isn't properly cloning. I was actually trying to point out that the ability to exclude some files makes a lot of sense and can be valuable, which you now seem to agree with. I wouldn't want any files to be excluded by default, however. I never used Acronis prior to version 9, since I was happy with Ghost, so I can't speak to any data corruption issues with older versions. I do know that we haven't had any data integrity issues with it as an imaging solution at work. It works exceptionally well for us, which I ultimately believe is the only important thing about any solution. The extra things that Acronis does, like Universal Restore, are truly superb features that have gotten me out of trouble and/or saved me a tremendous amount of time many times. I also use that technology to convert VMs from one solution to another, and have had terrific success with it. At least one user of Ghost 9 and 10 has had data corruption issues, and Symantec Executive Support gave up and basically gave him the finger, writing "Do not bother responding to this email as there is nothing else I can help you with and it will not be responded to." http://www.techsupportalert.com/drive-imaging-reviews.htm Just one user, but it illustrates that problems like this are not global and generic, but depend on a variety of factors and that it's likely that neither application can handle all of them perfectly. Greg > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:hardware- > [email protected]] On Behalf Of Soren > Sent: Saturday, September 05, 2009 5:02 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [H] cloning drive > > Several answers to several points: > > 1. This depends on a variety of factors, e.g. CPU speed, HDD speed, CD > burner speed, etc. The systems you work with must be really slow. In > Ghost there is no noticeable > difference, whatever method one uses (besides the compression rate, of > course). > Ghost can multicast an image within the same timeframe you mention, not > much difference there. > But, as I said, imaging to HDD suck big time since v6.0. Until v5.0 > everything worked fine. Then something went wrong with their NTFS > implementation during imaging to > HDD. NTFS Imaging to CD/DVD works as a charm, though. > > 2. I'm not in any way defending Ghost, I'm only trying to be fair. As > you mention yourself, I'm beating the program for not supporting its > features correctly. Also I'm > beating some Ghost users a bit, because to my experience people that > can't make the program work are usually those who haven't read the > manual. Also, I'm pretty sure even > Acronis has some bugs/features built in ;) > > 3. What optional feature are you talking about? > My only comment about BartPE was a warning not to involve it (or > supported/similar progs) into serious, corporate business as a > secondary remark. Today > convenience/lazyness is taking more and more space at the cost of data > security. Some of those boot-CD proggies leave a pretty nasty > footprint, hence a sound corporate > policy would be to avoid them in general. That's all. > > 4. The reason for excluding e.g pagefile.sys in Ghost is that a win32 > system won't boot if it's present - I don't know, but could be the same > thing with Acronis. Besides > that it's a space hog, as you mention. I don't know why Acronis include > those files by default, since the rational approach would be leaving > them out by default. These > files are rarely needed, anyway. > > Yes, I use Ghost on a regular basis, because I know how it works (and > especially doesn't work! ;) I also use other programs. > My only claim is that before claiming that Ghost doesn't work, it might > be a good idea to read the manual. What it does, it actually does > pretty good. And this is burning > an image to CD/DVD flawlessly, time after time. Also, files can be > extracted individually from an image, if needed. > > Acronis have a history of data corruption in some of their earlier > versions, which could indicate that the program is not yet fully > developed. Ghost is far past that > point, meaning that the features that work, they work flawlessly. Don't > get me wrong here, I'm actually very tempted to give Acronis a run for > the money on my personal > network. But as a quick and dirty on-the-spot back up solution, I > believe Ghost will still be my no. one for some time to come. Until > someone can show me a fast working > DOS util that does an even better job. > > //soren > >
