Easeus Todo Backup Free 2.5

[MobileTechie]

I was just about to shell out for Acronis Backup & Recovery 11 Workstation but I notice Easeus have upped their game with Todo 2.5 which now includes features previously not available in free imaging/backup apps that are useful to techs - stuff like Universal Restore, Incremental Imaging, P2V, image mounting with granular restore and so on. I.e. it does almost everything Aconis and Paragon do but for free.

But of course all this is for nothing if there are problems with it or it is missing some basic features.

Anyone been using this in a tech environment? Is it all as good as it seems or any problems? For instance I know the old version didn't ignore bad sectors which was a show-stopper.

 

[Knightsman]

I have been playing with it recently. The last time I tried to do a universal restore it didn't apply the right hd drivers, and blue screen on me until I got some help form you guys (you probably remember the thead)

Other than that it seems to be ok.

 

[PaulRome]

I have their pro version from their last giveaway. And have really just used it to clone HDs. Have not run into any issues.

Best of luck

 

[iisjman07]

I've had this on my to do list for a while. It does look & sound very interesting, although I have heard a couple of instances where it has failed to do a universal restore (but nothing's perfect)

 

[16k_zx81]

Ive used it and haven't had any problems.

Paragon's free backup offering is exceptionally good in my experience. My only reason for playing with Easus is just to get some experience with it.

So far, very happy, but I tend to prefer paragon products as I perceive them as having a slightly more diverse feature set .

 

[MobileTechie]

Just been looking at it and it doesn't appear to have ignore bad sectors except when doing a disk to disk clone - i.e. not when making image files.

 

[stevenamills]

Their first efforts were incredibly lame, so I'm glad to hear it has substantially improved.

I had been recommending Macrium to my home users, but it appears the free version is no more - at least I couldn't find it yesterday.

 

[krtechsolutions]

I was using reflection as well but it looks like they had a pricing change, you can google reflection free and still download the old version

 

[silvano]

Their first efforts were incredibly lame, so I'm glad to hear it has substantially improved.

I had been recommending Macrium to my home users, but it appears the free version is no more - at least I couldn't find it yesterday.

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx still looks free to me?

 

[Larry Sabo]

Just been looking at it and it doesn't appear to have ignore bad sectors except when doing a disk to disk clone - i.e. not when making image files.

I did a drive image with EASEUS Todo Backup 2.5 Pro (give-away) today and it ran into a filesystem error, so it automatically switched to sector imaging and completed successfully. I then ran chkdsk /f on the drive and it fixed the filesystem errors. Re-did the image and it completed without reverting to sector imaging. Pleased with the automatic decision made.

I also have Acronis True Image 2010 and it failed to restore an image of my system partition last month after a firmware update went awry, no matter which image I tried. Installed the latest update to my ATI program and now it takes twice as long as EASEUS to create an image of the same partition. I'm done with ATI.

Edit: On reflection, now I remember that I have ATI password protect the image, and EASEUS wasn't, so you should discount the comment about the comparative speed.

 

[MobileTechie]

I did a drive image with EASEUS Todo Backup 2.5 Pro (give-away) today and it ran into a filesystem error, so it automatically switched to sector imaging and completed successfully. I then ran chkdsk /f on the drive and it fixed the filesystem errors. Re-did the image and it completed without reverting to sector imaging. Pleased with the automatic decision made.

That's a good feature but it's not the same as ingnoring h/w bad sectors which is a major requirement for imaging for me since customer drivers are quite often bad.

 

[Larry Sabo]

It also offers "Sector by sector backup" as an option at the beginning, on the page where you select the source drive to be imaged.

 

[MobileTechie]

And that then ignores bad sectors?

 

[Larry Sabo]

No idea. Will check that out.

 

[PaulRome]

And that then ignores bad sectors?

From the help file

Sector by sector clone

A sector by sector clone ensures that destination hard disk/partition is exactly the same as source hard disk/partition. It will clone all the sectors if the option is checked, even if the sector is blank or a logical bad sector. As a result, the target will be equal in size to the disk being cloned after the process. You can find the option in the step to choose destination hard disk/partition both in Disk clone or partition clone wizard.

Sector by sector recovery

Checking this option will recover the content in image file sector by sector, it can ensure the recovery process finished successfully if there are some logic errors on the original partition or hard disk. Or if you want every files are distributed on their original sectors after recovery, tick the option will meet the goal. But the target partition will be unable to resize with this option ticked.

Best of luck

 

[MobileTechie]

Yes I know the clone will ignore bad sectors but it's whether it does this when creating image files.

I don't often do a clone but use images a lot. To be honest, even if it does, if you have to do a sector level image then that isn't great since taking images like that takes a lot longer and takes up a lot of space.

 

[Larry Sabo]

Okay, I imaged a Maxtor with bad sectors yesterday (Seatool tests) using sector by sector imaging. Completed without problem. Of course bad sectors will be missing from the image, but restoring an image to a new drive and following with a repair install and re-installation of damaged programs, if required, has always worked for me (as far as getting the system back up and running as it was).

Data recovery from the restored drive would also make sector imaging worth doing, if that's an issue. You can't recover data from sectors that aren't in the image because they were bad, of course, but that's not EASEUS's fault or responsibility. Might have more luck with ddrescue on the original if that's the case. The point is, that Todo Backup seems to be a fine product worth checking out, especially if you have been through the grief I went through with Acronis True Image, where it failed to restore what appeared to be a valid image of my System partition. And I've been through a similar nightmare with one of my customers, where it failed to restore images.