[preema]

I'm looking for a good drive imaging application. I've ruled out Symantec Ghost and Acronis True Image (read too many negative things about both). At this point I've narrowed it down to Macrium Reflect, Paragon Drive Backup, or ShadowProtect Desktop Edition. They all seem pretty comparable, and seem to have good reputations, so it's hard to know which one to go with, short of trying them all.

I'm asking if anyone has experience with these apps and can offer any compelling pros or cons of any of them relative to the others. The paramount concern for me is reliability. If a product satisfies that requirement, then I'm interested in additional details like feature richness, speed, ease of use, etc.

I know there are other apps that I haven't mentioned, but I'm less interested in hearing about those, and I'm not looking to just hear people's votes for one product or another. What would really help me is insight into why any of the 3 products I'm focusing on would be more or less appealing than the others, so that I can narrow 3 down to 1.

[sanjula]

Paragon would be my recommendation.
After getting fed up with True Image I found Paragon and tried their freeware version and I was impressed that it did exactly what I wanted, which was make images and restore them with no fuss. The interface is not the prettiest to look at but Paragon just works and thats what I wanted. Its been a very solid program for me with no issues over the last year. It takes about 20 minutes on my quad core to backup and verify 40 gig. And it works fine with the rescue cd if you have a total crash.

I tried a demo of Shadow Protect and I almost bought it but the demo would not let me restore my backup but it was incredibly fast very easy to use. I don't know much about Macrium until recently but if I have to switch in the future I will look into that.

Give the freeware version of Paragon a try and see what you think.