Is Bot Any Good?

[Leanone]

Hi all

 

Probably a strange place to ask this qx, but why not?

 

I'm in the market for new BU software. I currently use Retrospect (V 6.5) for my data BU and Paragon for system images. Why 2? I like Retrospect's scheduling and the ease of recovering files when needed. I learned (from a DIMM failure that clobbered XP) that recovering the OS from the Retrospect BU is not possible (stupid me, should have known!). Anyway, after that incident (and rebuilding the whole OS via a reinstall of XP) I added Paragon to create true disc images of the OS. I'd like to get back to one BU program, don't like Paragon's interface or manual (German translated to English, and not very well. I could read the German manual, but that would be SLOW going for me), but I do trust it to recover the OS as I've tested it by doing so to bare metal. Individual file recovery is laborious.

 

Has anyone tested BOT by recovering to bare metal? How about a new drive of different size? Does the recovery boot CD/DVD work every time, even if you've mod'ed the system since creating it (new apps, drivers, etc)? Any particular problems to look out for?

 

I can't find any reputable reviews of BOT, so thought I'd ask the user community.

 

I run a Dell Dimension with XP SP3, 2 internal SATA drives, 2 USB drives (where I keep my BUs) and am semi-competent (technically anyway).

 

Regards.

[Brendon]

Has anyone tested BOT by recovering to bare metal? How about a new drive of different size? Does the recovery boot CD/DVD work every time, even if you've mod'ed the system since creating it (new apps, drivers, etc)? Any particular problems to look out for?

 

Hi Leanone,

 

Sorry for the delay, I had to go and try it out for you.

 

-Yes, the FULL version of BOT can recover to bare metal. We saw an issue a few days ago where a customer using the version of BOT that's supplied in Creator 2011 could not back up a drive or partition.

It turned out that the version in Creator 2011 Pro could do it, but the version in the standard Creator 2011 has been castrated and can only back up files - hardly worth the effort, I thought.

 

With BOT 13 in Creator 2011 Pro I backed up, formatted the partition, and later restored my system drive okay.

However it refused to restore to a slightly different sized partition, even though there were Gigs of spare space in the partition. It wouldn't restore to a slightly larger or slightly smaller partition. No explanations, the 'Next' button just stayed greyed out and that was it!

 

The recovery DVD that BOT makes is a light version of your Windows O.S. which runs only the BOT restore when you boot on it. The recovery disc never changes, so if you write it on a permanent disc you never need to make another. It boots reliably and scans your system for backups, then lets you pick one the exact size of your destination partition.

 

If you're restoring a disk or partition BOT insists you restart and boot on your recovery disc. Even when the disk/partition is not your system drive you can't do the restore while operating your usual Windows system.

 

As I said above it will restore to bare metal, so the BOT restore takes no notice of any changes to your partition [except drive size] that you may have made since the backup.

 

If you have any further questions I'll try to answer them, but otherwise I'm off back to my usual backup system.

 

Brendon

[Leanone]

Hi Leanone,

 

Sorry for the delay, I had to go and try it out for you.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< SNIP >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

-Yes, the FULL version of BOT can recover to bare metal. If you have any further questions I'll try to answer them, but otherwise I'm off back to my usual backup system.

 

Brendon

 

Brendon:

 

Thanks for the info and the rapid response.

 

From my research to date, few drive image programs will allow recovery to a different size partition (I think Acronis True Image will allow recovery to a larger partition). Sounds like BOT may be a viable one source backup program for me. At least it's 1 program to keep track of instead of 2 and the doc is in pseudo english (includes tech-speak).

 

Regards.

[Brendon]

Ghost used to allow restoring to any sized partition as long as it was big enough for the data. I don't know if it still does because the current version is 14 and I'm still happily using 8, run from a bootable DOS floppy.

[Leanone]

Ghost used to allow restoring to any sized partition as long as it was big enough for the data. I don't know if it still does because the current version is 14 and I'm still happily using 8, run from a bootable DOS floppy.

FRom what I've read of Ghost you're better off with V8 or 9 than the latest version. Bet you had to go out and buy a USB floppy drive to use that DOS 3.5 tho'. I know I had to do so when recovering using the XP install CD 'cause that was the only way to get the Dell RAID drivers into the Win XP install, no other option was provided, just a floppy!

 

I still have an IBM mainframe DOS boot card deck among memorabilia from 35 years in IT. I do not (sob) have a jump wire from when I set up old unit record print machines tho'. That WOULD date me.

 

Thanks again and best regards.

[Brendon]

You'd lose, each my computers has a floppy drive and one even has a 5.25" model for backward compatibility. My TRS-80 has only floppy drives.

 

All my PC system backups [incl.Win 7] are done with G8 under PCDOS.

 

Glad I could help,

Brendon