ShadowProtect Desktop

After yesterday’s experience with Acronis True Image under Windows 8, I went looking for alternate disk cloning software. Years ago, PC Magazine recommended Acronis, and that’s when I switched from Drive Image and Ghost. I checked out what the magazine is currently touting. It’s a program called ShadowProtect Desktop, sold by a company called StorageCraft. The company also sells server cloners and a USB-stick based subscription approach that is very expensive: $3000 a year. ShadowProtect Desktop, at $90, is substantially more expensive than True Image, at $50 for three workstations. Windows 8 is not listed as a supported operating system, but Acronis 2010 ran under Win 8, so I decided to order a copy.

Buying the software was the hard part. After entering my address, CC number, etc, and registering, I clicked on the download button. The download announced it had failed at the very end. I switched to another browser, but couldn’t find a place to log in to my user account on the StorageCraft website (the login option seems to come and go). I copied the URL from the first browser and pasted it into the second. It gave me the opportunity to log on. I did. The second download wouldn’t start. I tried to download an ISO CD image. The web site wanted me to install a downloader first. I said OK. I saw a message I’d never seen before from Norton Internet Security warning me about the downloader. I ignored it. Big mistake. My workstation froze so badly that the second hand on the desktop clock stopped moving. I finally got into the task manager, and shut down the computer.

Upon reboot, I went looking for the original download, the one that had supposedly failed, and found it. I copied it to one of the Win 8 test machines, and ran it. Here’s what I saw:

I removed Acronis True Image, and the installation went fine. So did backups to NAS AD boxes. It’s fully AD-aware.

It’s fast:

I like ShadowProtect. It’s got a detailed log that’s easy to get to. It’s got a verification function. It says it can recover to different hardware. I hope I never have to find out If that works.