Just an observation:

Compared to a number of forums for backup and cloning software, StorageCraft seems to have done a good job, especially with the effort put in by Nate. It really does make a big difference knowing that a company representative, rather than just helpful users, are actively trying to aid customers and fix problems. Just take a look at people's responses when Nate wasn't online for a couple of days.

I've worked in technology companies for many years and, at least in my experience, support staff range from the "Extremely bright, but with no communication or inter-personal skills", to those who have "Great communication skills, but have no technical ability". Nate seems to have both good technical and communication skills. Keep up the good work - you're work really does have a big impact on whether people buy the StorageCraft products.

P.S. And, no, I'm not Nate's mum.

And something else:

One other observation about StorageCraft. I'm impressed that the company seems to be focused on fixing problems. Technical responses aren't cluttured up with standard text like: "Thank you for buying our product.....Isn't life great....Sorry to hear your backup image is currupt and the restore didn't work....Couldn't find an answer on google.....Anyway, thanks for contacting us and have a nice day".

Also the StorageCraft documents include useful "use" cases rather than the normal, marketing-centric instructions, like: "press Next button" followed by "press Finish buttton". People know how to press buttons - what they need is information on when, and why, they need to select an option. I would be good to see StorageCraft take this a little further and create a white paper with best practices and a wider range of "use" cases.

Where is Nate, anyway. I bet you two pesos he is deeply buried under a pile of tasks or on vacation in scandinavia.

What's visible from the outside is the smallish company that StorageCraft still is which is indeed a nice thing, lets hope the product improves over time and they aren't bought out like Thinstall et.al. Should I ever pay Utah a visit I'm gonna sure as heck drop by in Draper. Somewhere around there they even have a road named "Wayne's World Drive" how cool is that? Excellent!!! ;-)

@bsdice: 

Hey, seriously, if you are in UT, please do come by for a visit.  There's a fantastic Mexican restaurant just down the road from here.

Nate, your presence on this forum has been missed.  What’s up?  Why are you not here with the same frequency as six months ago?

P.S.:  Hey, I too vote for the “Give Nate a Pay Increase” ballot proposition!

Well if you look closely we now have not 1 but I think 3 STCers posting. Besides, Nate is a programmer, not the resident forum guy. Time better spent on developing new stuff... no? ;-) But nothing lost because I think the CTO himself (Scott Barnes) is posting anonymously as admin. :o)

Yup, I'm sorry, sometimes I just don't make it over to the forums.  I've been heads down adding shrink (done) to the product.  We'll release it soon in 3.3 (in two weeks).  It'll definitely be in the Desktop/Server recovery environment (where it'll be of most use, IMHO), and also in IT Edition, and if I have time I'll try to also get it into the installed portion of the product.  Or, if you want, I can kick up my forum activity at the expense of new features like this...   ;)  My guess (with that in mind) is that you'll forgive me for my periodic absence (at least I hope so).
 

Nate:

Yup, I'm sorry, sometimes I just don't make it over to the forums.  I've been heads down adding shrink (done) to the product.  We'll release it soon in 3.3 (in two weeks).  It'll definitely be in the Desktop/Server recovery environment (where it'll be of most use, IMHO), and also in IT Edition, and if I have time I'll try to also get it into the installed portion of the product.  Or, if you want, I can kick up my forum activity at the expense of new features like this...   ;)  My guess (with that in mind) is that you'll forgive me for my periodic absence (at least I hope so).
 

Ken T

I think you are seeking answers that can not be answered with a simple "yes" or "no" but maybe with a "depends". The product has is roots in non consumer grade software and you can tell by the looks it is made by IT professionals for IT professionals. So I can tell you yes it does work very very nicely even in high load scenarios where other products fall over. Where does the consumer fit in then? For one backup is never 1-click shrink wrap fire and forget but requires constant supervision to make sure everything still works. SP makes it easy to approach the F&F though by certain means (send mail on error etc.). What do you mean you don't have a mail server at home, I hear you say ;-). So fallout #1 from your post may be a suggestion to STC to create a nice and simple "three use cases for home users". Obviously you don't have the luxury of our customers here in Germany that get planning and integration support from me and my collegues and who really know SP inside out for a good while now. Well you can always use search button here in forum (most likely your question is already answered) or contact STC by phone fax or support ticket. Did you use free trial? I can only recommend that. The manual is good too. Ultimately the trust you seek is earned not granted, you have to use the product for a while and play with its possibilities to start trusting it. I presume for myself that I can tell the good stuff from the hundefutter so I can award the software more trust upfront than you could.

Sorry Ken, but I have to reply to this one. I too shared your frustration with backup software. You can see some of my past experiences below. But this is where we differ. There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever, that ShadowProtect is the way to go. Shrink feature or not. Not a doubt. The product is so much better than the alternatives, that I will work around any issues until the shrink feature comes out.

Put simply, ShadowProtect is better than sliced bread. It is better than sliced bread, lighlty toasted with marmalade and a nice cup ot tea. It's the bee's kaboodles. Anyone still unsure about which backup software to buy, take a look at my experience with competing products below and come to your own conclusion.

So here's a few examples of why StorageCraft and ShadowProtect are better than Acronis and Ghost:

(1) Acronis boot CDs routinely don't include drivers. In one case, Acronis support had to build 4 - yes count them, 4 - "custom" CDs with the 'missing' driver - just for me. Eventually, I had to suggest a Linux driver to them AND provide the URL. And guess what? The support guy asked ME to download, zip the driver and send it to him!! Why don't I just build the darn CD for him?! Did the 4th CD work? Did it heck. Sure, now with the new driver, I could see the target hard drive. Only problem is, I couldn't mount any external device (USB, flash etc.). I could now see where are wanted to restore the backup.....but could no longer see that actual backup file! Great one Einstein.

(2) Acronis installs all sorts of crud, including a hidden partition. For the most part, it does this without checking with you first, or even telling you exactly what it's done. Then try and unintall it! It leaves stuff left, right and center, from registry to system services that remain running. I had to spend hours manually cleaning my system.

(3) The Acronis support forum is run, for the most part, by Acronis users, rather than anyone at Acronis. They even tell you how to download software to create yourself a BartPE CD. How wonderful! Why don't I just buy some Bakelite and valves and make myself one of those new fangled radios. Getting a good technical answer from anyone at Acronis is extremely rare. They just cut and paste standard messages saying "Thanks for buying Acronis.....See these URLs....floss your teeth at night......and don't call us, we'll call you". At least StorageCraft give a solid technical answer. 

(4) So you think Ghost is better, then think again. With the older version you had to hunt around for non-existinent "16-bit only" DOS drivers and then boot a bootable floppy. A floppy that 9 times out of 10 fails (especially if the machine doesn't have a floppy drive - I've seen that one happen). Then the newer product that I used for 3 years, making regular backups. It worked seemlessly. What a dream.......until I needed to perform a restore, that is. During the backups I made sure that Ghost checked to macke sure the backups were ok. They were. Then when it tried to restore the two main images I had....it cheerfully told me that it would "have to stop because the backup file is corrupt".

(5) Removing Ghost was just as bad as Acronis. The support solution was to download an executable that would "clean up your system". Did it work? Well it's difficult to say - considering the PC failed to boot up after running the "tool". My only guess is that the "tool" was written by a "tool".

Oh, and here's why ShadowProtect is so much better. After becoming paranoid about backup software I used the trial of ShadowProtect to test both backup and restore on multiple machines. The full backups took less than 20 minutes, where as Ghost had been taking over 3 hours. I also restored from Intel machines to AMD based machines, where NONE of the hardware, or associated drivers, were the same. It worked each time. Try doing that with Acronis and Ghost. Sure an Acronis fanboy might say that there is an Acronis product that can do this....but get this, it's $30 more than ShadowProtect! Why go through the pain?

I even have ShadowProtect running 15 minute incremental back ups of two large partitions. They take 17 seconds each. Painless.

So, to sum up: For those would-be backup software buyers, stop twiddling your thumbs and just buy the darn thing. 

As for Nate, I personally don't care whether he took 2 weeks off to comb his hair. After spending weeks of hair pulling with Aconis and Symantec, I'll willing take an infrequent, but accurate and technical response from Nate (or anyone else at StorageCraft) than have my teeth pulled out slowly by the Acronis or Symantec Tech-Support-Lite folks.

Vent over. Time for a large Gin.

bsdice:

I think you are seeking answers that can not be answered with a simple "yes" or "no" but maybe with a "depends". The product has is roots in non consumer grade software and you can tell by the looks it is made by IT professionals for IT professionals. So I can tell you yes it does work very very nicely even in high load scenarios where other products fall over. Where does the consumer fit in then? For one backup is never 1-click shrink wrap fire and forget but requires constant supervision to make sure everything still works. SP makes it easy to approach the F&F though by certain means (send mail on error etc.). What do you mean you don't have a mail server at home, I hear you say ;-). So fallout #1 from your post may be a suggestion to STC to create a nice and simple "three use cases for home users". Obviously you don't have the luxury of our customers here in Germany that get planning and integration support from me and my collegues and who really know SP inside out for a good while now. Well you can always use search button here in forum (most likely your question is already answered) or contact STC by phone fax or support ticket. Did you use free trial? I can only recommend that. The manual is good too. Ultimately the trust you seek is earned not granted, you have to use the product for a while and play with its possibilities to start trusting it. I presume for myself that I can tell the good stuff from the hundefutter so I can award the software more trust upfront than you could.

Hi bsdice,

I appreciate your reply and I know very little about ShadowProtect, but

it did get a glowing review from PC Magazine. I was trying to find out

as much as I could about it before I used it, but now my computer is

starting to act flakey and I think it is time to make a decision and

also make a speedy backup before something catastophic happens. I have

a nice manual for SP, printed out for me by Kinko's. Nate has a nice

response to a post by "newstore" under the topic "Is ShadowProtect

Desktop 3.1 the right product for me?". Nate's post suggests that "you

first backup your system within the recovery environment". I won't go

into details. Nate already did. But that suggestion also makes the most

sense for me. I think I have to ask for the Full Eval copy. I will

re-read Nate's post and try to get that "Full Eval copy" and get my

first backup made ASAP.

Sincerely,

Ken Taggart

P.S. Sorry the above formatting is messed up. Long story. :-(

FTTester:

Sorry Ken, but I have to reply to this one. I too shared your frustration with backup software. You can see some of my past experiences below. But this is where we differ. There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever, that ShadowProtect is the way to go. Shrink feature or not. Not a doubt. The product is so much better than the alternatives, that I will work around any issues until the shrink feature comes out.

Put simply, ShadowProtect is better than sliced bread. It is better than sliced bread, lighlty toasted with marmalade and a nice cup ot tea. It's the bee's kaboodles. Anyone still unsure about which backup software to buy, take a look at my experience with competing products below and come to your own conclusion.

So here's a few examples of why StorageCraft and ShadowProtect are better than Acronis and Ghost:

(1) Acronis boot CDs routinely don't include drivers. In one case, Acronis support had to build 4 - yes count them, 4 - "custom" CDs with the 'missing' driver - just for me. Eventually, I had to suggest a Linux driver to them AND provide the URL. And guess what? The support guy asked ME to download, zip the driver and send it to him!! Why don't I just build the darn CD for him?! Did the 4th CD work? Did it heck. Sure, now with the new driver, I could see the target hard drive. Only problem is, I couldn't mount any external device (USB, flash etc.). I could now see where are wanted to restore the backup.....but could no longer see that actual backup file! Great one Einstein.

(2) Acronis installs all sorts of crud, including a hidden partition. For the most part, it does this without checking with you first, or even telling you exactly what it's done. Then try and unintall it! It leaves stuff left, right and center, from registry to system services that remain running. I had to spend hours manually cleaning my system.

(3) The Acronis support forum is run, for the most part, by Acronis users, rather than anyone at Acronis. They even tell you how to download software to create yourself a BartPE CD. How wonderful! Why don't I just buy some Bakelite and valves and make myself one of those new fangled radios. Getting a good technical answer from anyone at Acronis is extremely rare. They just cut and paste standard messages saying "Thanks for buying Acronis.....See these URLs....floss your teeth at night......and don't call us, we'll call you". At least StorageCraft give a solid technical answer. 

(4) So you think Ghost is better, then think again. With the older version you had to hunt around for non-existinent "16-bit only" DOS drivers and then boot a bootable floppy. A floppy that 9 times out of 10 fails (especially if the machine doesn't have a floppy drive - I've seen that one happen). Then the newer product that I used for 3 years, making regular backups. It worked seemlessly. What a dream.......until I needed to perform a restore, that is. During the backups I made sure that Ghost checked to macke sure the backups were ok. They were. Then when it tried to restore the two main images I had....it cheerfully told me that it would "have to stop because the backup file is corrupt".

(5) Removing Ghost was just as bad as Acronis. The support solution was to download an executable that would "clean up your system". Did it work? Well it's difficult to say - considering the PC failed to boot up after running the "tool". My only guess is that the "tool" was written by a "tool".

Oh, and here's why ShadowProtect is so much better. After becoming paranoid about backup software I used the trial of ShadowProtect to test both backup and restore on multiple machines. The full backups took less than 20 minutes, where as Ghost had been taking over 3 hours. I also restored from Intel machines to AMD based machines, where NONE of the hardware, or associated drivers, were the same. It worked each time. Try doing that with Acronis and Ghost. Sure an Acronis fanboy might say that there is an Acronis product that can do this....but get this, it's $30 more than ShadowProtect! Why go through the pain?

I even have ShadowProtect running 15 minute incremental back ups of two large partitions. They take 17 seconds each. Painless.

So, to sum up: For those would-be backup software buyers, stop twiddling your thumbs and just buy the darn thing. 

As for Nate, I personally don't care whether he took 2 weeks off to comb his hair. After spending weeks of hair pulling with Aconis and Symantec, I'll willing take an infrequent, but accurate and technical response from Nate (or anyone else at StorageCraft) than have my teeth pulled out slowly by the Acronis or Symantec Tech-Support-Lite folks.

Vent over. Time for a large Gin.

Hi FTTester,

I'm sorry that I have taken so long to reply. I may have waited too long. My PC decided to shut down on it's own without any good reason, several times. The next problem that showed up was the Anti-Virus software quit monitoring in real time. Support for the Anti-Virus software suggested re-installing the software and doing a "Deep Scan". This fixed the lack of real time monitoring, and so far the shut down problem has not recurred (fingers crossed).

I appreciate your listing all the misfortunes you have had with Acronis and Ghost. I have read similar complaints on newsgroups and as customer warnings in places like amazon.com and newegg.com. I have also read them on the Acronis support forums. And in spite of that, these products got Editor's Choice on PC Mag and PC World (Payola maybe). I think it's too late for me to shop around. I think I will take Nate's choice and try a backup using the "booted cd recovery environment". I will have to take some time using the product manual and the web site to get familiar with ShadowProtect. Then I will try for my first backup since Retrospect. Thanks for all your experience and your recommendation. 

Sincerely,

Ken Taggart

 P.S. What is the little "couple" icon doing up there beside my user name, over my "Mr. Natural" image?