Re: Casper 5 - One for Anna

Ritchie, I don't mean to sound rude but I must ask, have you and Anna ever
been married to each other at some time?
You sound a little aggressive towards her. Anna's replies are a little
longwinded making it a little difficult for me keeping up
with her but she is trying to help. Anna, comes across as intelligent and
knowledgable about this Casper program and appears to want
to assist in my much needed help. You suggest she may work for that company
and she may be pushing Casper. All I can say about
that is..... "all the better for me". Acronis in my limited knowledge is
probably a much better featured program but more to the point I'm
looking for ease of use. I'm not interested in incremental backups, all I
want is to install a initial fresh system and my applications, then
make a backup copy using say, casper and at some later time when/if my
system gets somewhat corrupted just reinstall the backup.

Notice it's a "cloning" program, not a "backup" program.

And the point is...... considering my needs?


Again: "cloning", not backup. She uses "cloning" multiple times
throughout the post.

Again, the point is.... considering my needs?

As a person with a medical condition which inhibits my shortterm learning
capacity I need Anna and her aparent willingness to help me
of which I'm very grateful.
My friends jokingly refer to me as grumpy, but I'm not really, I just come
across that way at times. In fact I consider myself a very nice
guy willing to go that extra bit for a friend, infact even for a stranger.
I say this because your attitude to Anna is a little less than friendly
and I'm sure you are probably a nice guy too. So give that a little thought
my friend and remember that my correspondance with Anna IS
Casper specific.

Kindest Regards,
Mickey





"Richie Hardwick" <richiehardwick@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:qd8sm41pnvbbsh0moavfhuuepqsvrjl220@xxxxxxxxxx
On Wed, 14 Jan 2009 12:10:40 -0500, "Anna" <myname@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[only excerpts shown]

Notice it's a "cloning" program, not a "backup" program.



What better backup system can a PC user have than having at hand a HDD
that
is a precise copy of his or her day-to-day working HDD and, as such,
contains the complete contents of that latter HDD including the operating
system, all programs and applications, and all user-created data?

"precise copy": it takes the whole drive it uses.

The disk-to-disk cloning program we greatly prefer is the Casper 5
program -
see http://www.fssdev.com

Again: "cloning", not backup. She uses "cloning" multiple times
throughout the post.


But the truly significant advantage of the Casper 5.0 disk cloning program
compared with other disk cloning programs that we're familiar with, e.g.,
Acronis True Image, is its ability to create *incremental* disk clones

Notice she is only comparing "cloning" abilities between programs and
mentions nothing about the other abilities of the competing programs.

Bear in mind that the recipient of the clone - the "destination" HDD
(internal or external) - would contain the *complete* contents of one's
internal HDD (presumably the boot drive). Since that destination drive
would
be a precise copy of the source HDD, its contents would be immediately
accessible to the user and potentially bootable. Naturally its contents
could be cloned back to a internal HDD should a restoration of the system
be
necessary. Again, what better backup system can one have?

One that wouldn't consume the entire drive. One that allowed one to
browse and restore directories/files and restore at will to the
original location or to another. Just to name a couple.


The downside to the Casper 5 program as compared with the Acronis and
most
other disk-cloning programs is the cost of the program which comes to
$49.95
for the program + $9.95 for the "Casper Startup Disk" (the program to
create
the bootable CD containing the Casper program - needed to access the
program
in the event of a failed HDD when the user is unable to access the
installed
Casper program).

Quite true. ATI creates such a disk for free if you download the
program, and if you buy the boxed version, the install disc is already
bootable.

Notice again that she is only talking about Casper as a "cloning"
program. She says nothing about its lack of ability to make data-only
backups, or the ability to restore selected items at will.

Finally, she says:

Another possible downside to the Casper 5 program (depending upon one's
interests) is that it's really not designed to create "generational"
copies
of one's system although it is possible to use the program that way
depending upon the size of one's data and the disk size of the
"destination"
HDD (the recipient of the clones). Some users like to maintain complete
copies of their system as it existed at various points in time. In other
words, for example, a user might want to retain (for one reason or
another)
a complete copy of his or her system as it existed on Jan 1 and another
copy
as of Jan 3 and another copy as of Jan 5, etc., etc. To that end a
disk-imaging program (such as the Acronis one) is more practical, since to
accomplish that objective using a disk-cloning program such as Casper 5
the
user would obviously need either a fair number of HDDs to serve as the
recipients of the clones at those various points in time, or a very
large-capacity destination HDD to contain the individual clones (on a
partition-by-partition basis). But based on our experience I would say
that
the vast number of users are simply interested in maintaining only a
current
up-to-date copy of their system and have little or no interest in
maintaining "generational" copies of such. But that capability may be a
consideration for some users.

Once again, she overlooks ATI's ability to browse the backup(s) and to
restore selected items at will.

So I would recommend that you or any user who is interested in a
comprehensive backup program should try the Casper 5 program to determine
if
that program meets their needs.

"Comprehensive"???? Definition: covering completely or broadly. I'd
say it is rather restricted.

I think Anna works for the company. It's the only explanation I can
think of that would explain her lopsided discussion of Casper and ATI.

I am a daily user of both Casper AND Acronis True Image.

If I had to choose only ONE of them, I'd choose AT! and never look
back.

I fully realize that many PC users prefer the disk-imaging approach for
maintaining a comprehensive backup system in preference to a disk-to-disk
(or partition-to-partition) cloning program such as the Casper program.
Should that be the case I have no problem with that approach.

How sweet of her.

However, based upon my experience with working with a few thousand PC
users
over the years, it's my opinion that the vast majority of those users
would
be better served by using a disk/partition-cloning program rather than a
disk imaging program in order to establish & maintain a comprehensive
backup
system.

I think Anna's sample of PC users must've been unbelievably skewed.

In the hundreds of thousands of posts in these and the Vista groups
over the years, you will find very few references to Casper, and
thousands of references AND recommendations of Acronis True Image.

Apparently, Anna's PC user contacts don't participate in these groups.

Richie Hardwick


.

Relevant Pages

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