Paragon Rescue Kit for Mac OS X Lite Public Beta Testing

Dear Forum Visitors,

During last months Paragon has been working on backup/restore software for Mac OS X – Paragon Rescue Kit for Mac OS X Lite. This version will be free and allow Mac users to prevent data loss in case of system crash by recovering vital data to another destination such as a removable drive or network share. It's also intended to backup and restore user's data. Please note, that all popular file systems are supported, even NTFS.

Now the product is in state of Beta 0 and we want to offer you its Public Beta version. It's the second time when we do public beta testing on this forum. There is one big reason for that: we do want to make Paragon Rescue Kit for Mac OS X Lite a useful tool for every Mac user. That's why we need your opinion about it.

What we expect from you:
1. Bug reports (though we hope that there won’t be many). If you find a bug, describe in details the way it can be reproduced. We need every detail, every step. Write your OS version and CPU architecture.

2. Usability issues. We want to make the product as easy to use as possible. Write us what is to be improved or changed. Make your suggestions detailed and reasonable. This will help us to understand them and implement in a right way.

3. New feature suggestions. In fact we don't have much time before the release date to implement new features. Though if a suggested feature is easy to implement or requested by many people, then we will do it.

To download the public beta version, please fill out our web form – http://www.paragon-software.com/home/rk-mac/beta-test.html

Meantime you can look at our Short Product Description. There is not much text
http://ftp.paragon.eu.com/RK_for_Mac/Short_Product_Description_RK_for_Mac.pdf

Also, please read carefully "Known issues" – http://ftp.paragon.eu.com/RK_for_Mac/Known_Issues_Paragon_RK_for_Mac.pdf
We will do our best to fix them as soon as possible.

We will read your feedback in this thread very carefully. We also excuse in advance about lack of replies. We won’t be able to reply all your posts, but we will do "summary" replies once or twice a day in this thread.

P.S. The most active beta testers will receive all upgrades of this product for free and opportunity to get our latest software solutions with discounts.

Thank you in advance and best regards,
Paragon Mac OS X team.

Anatoly,

I am excited to start testing another Paragon product. Can't wait to provide you with some updates. Thanks for coming back to M-F.com!

In my work, I spend quite a bit of time trying to recover data from failed or failing hard disks. I understand this product is geared toward Macs, but it sounds as though it's a Linux boot disc - so my guess would be that it can run on just about anything. If that's the case, and it can recover data from NTFS volumes, this product will be extremely useful to me.

Anatoly,

As I mentioned in my previous post, I happen to work in a position where I encounter a lot of corrupted or physically damaged hard disks.

As a test, I attached an NTFS-formatted 2.5" hard drive that was removed from a Dell laptop (Hitachi) that had known mechanical issues. I attached the drive via a SATA/PATA/2.5 to USB adapter to my Mac and booted from the Paragon Rescue disc.

Despite the fact that my drive clunked and made a racket, Paragon Rescue was able to recover nearly 400MB of data from the disk (using backup mode), before it seemingly locked up. I allowed it to sit for approximately 20 minutes with no noticeable activity. I tried to cancel the operation with CTRL-C or ESC and it did not recover from the "locked" state. Finally, I disconnected the USB interface and the program returned to responsiveness, although it did report an I/O error.

I don't believe this to be a problem with the software, I think much of it has to do with the severe nature of the problems with this drive. With that said, I was absolutely AMAZED at what the product was able to recover, considering the state of the disk.

I will continue to test with this product and report back my results. Again, cheers for a much needed product. In the past, I've used Steve Gibson's SpinRite 6.0 - although it is able to repair some disks (at least enough that I can image them using Ghost), it's not nearly as slick as this product.

Anatoly, how different would this software be to SuperDuper!

hagios1972 said:

Anatoly, how different would this software be to SuperDuper!

Click to expand...

SuperDuper is a backup program specifically for Mac OS X that can backup an HFS+ formatted drive. This package is designed for recovery after a filesystem failure. It's not meant to do preventative maintenance as SuperDuper is (although it could be used for that purpose, there are so many alternatives that can do it without needing to boot from the disc). In addition, Rescue can recover data from many different types of filesystems in addition to HFS.

Hello cwa107,

Rescue Kit for Mac allows you to backup your partitions and data (separate files/folders) to NTFS, HFS+, Ext2/3FS and FAT.

I happen to work in a position where I encounter a lot of corrupted or physically damaged hard disks.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, this product is not intended to recover data from physically damaged hard disks. This product is mainly intended to backup partitions/data. As we use our own file system drivers you can mount a corruption files systems even if corresponding OS can not do it. As we use a Linux bootable image you can boot your Mac even if your OSes are not bootable anymore.

It's not meant to do preventative maintenance as SuperDuper is

Click to expand...

cwa107, it means. So, you should use this software to backup/restore your data. Also you can use this recovery tool "after the fact" to get your system up and running in as little time as possible (for example, by recovering some important files).

Rescue can recover data from many different types of filesystems in addition to HFS.

Click to expand...

You are right.

Thank you.
Best regards,
Anatoly.

Dear hagios1972,

Anatoly, how different would this software be to SuperDuper!

Click to expand...

The main difference between SuperDuper, CCC and Rescue Kit for Mac is that native Mac products do file-level backup, while Paragon’s product does sector-level backup.

It brings following benefits:
- Speed up of backup process. File size doesn't matter in this case. You backup only used sectors (copying a lot of small files in file-level mode is a headache);
- Ability to backup not only OS X, but Windows in Boot Camp;
- Ability to restore OS X and Windows in a couple of minutes.

Despite of difficulties with daily maintenance Rescue Kit for Mac provides other quite useful features:
- Access to any supported file system for read and write (including NTFS);
- File manager. (OS X installation DVD that is used for restore SuperDuper backup image doesn't provide such functionality);
- Rescue data from unbootable OS or in case file system is corrupted;
- Access backup archives via network (OS X installation DVD doesn't);
- Backup to network share (OS X installation DVD doesn't);
- Browse archives and file-level restore (OS X installation DVD doesn't).

Best regards,
Anatoly.

Can't Boot from Paragon CD

My system doesn't recognize the CD (called Paragon) as a start-up disk, and won't let me boot from it. I tried restarting while holding down "C", and tried setting Startup Disk in System Preferences - it doesn't show up there.

I am running Mac OS 10.4.11 on an 800MHz G3 ibook with 640MB SDRAM.

PowerPC Support?

I can't boot my Mac Mini (PowerPC) with the CD. Is this an Intel only software package?

Great Tool for Hackintosh Users, too !

Hello

I must say, this is a wonderful product -- especially for the adventurous who experiment with running OS-X on a non-Apple pc.

The rescue disk equally well boots on an AMD laptop as, for example, a tower with an Asus P5e-k motherboard.

If you could add some tools for repairing and / or installing boot loaders and setting active partitions, that would be great addition.

So far, so good ...

I've been able to burn a CD and boot from it (but I'd rather boot from a USB key).

I haven't actually tried any functions yet, but the GUI is WAY too Windows-like for my taste.

If this product is going to take off in the Mac market, not only does it need to work but it also needs to look good doing so. That's what we're used to.

Boot up problem

I copied the ISO to a Verbatim CD-RW. Following the instructions per the Paragon Rescue Kit for Mac OS X User Manual, I rebooted while holding down the Alt key. The machine rebooted only to the symbol of the Mac hard drive. It did not recognize the ISO image on the CD-RW.

I'm using a Mac Book Pro with 2.16 Mhz CPU and 2 GB RAM. Time Machine is turned off.

sendai said:

I copied the ISO to a Verbatim CD-RW. Following the instructions per the Paragon Rescue Kit for Mac OS X User Manual, I rebooted while holding down the Alt key. The machine rebooted only to the symbol of the Mac hard drive. It did not recognize the ISO image on the CD-RW.

I'm using a Mac Book Pro with 2.16 Mhz CPU and 2 GB RAM. Time Machine is turned off.

Click to expand...

Perhaps you should try a plain CD-R. CD-RWs can be made bootable, but since they need to be formatted before write, that may cause some problems.

Just a guess...

Mac Pro 1,1 doesn't boot from CD

My first-generation Mac Pro doesn't succeed to boot from the CD. It start displaying four dots and then remains stuck with a black screen, even if one waits 10 minutes...

As mentioned previously, it does work very well on an PC with an Asus P5K-E motherboard!

For improving the "file transfer wizard": it would be much more intuitive and user-friendly if there were a browser with two independant panes that can navigate to different partitions and directories, and buttons for copying files in one direction or the other, or deleting or renaming them. (Rather than the "clipboard" method now used.)

It would also be very useful if it displayed the sizes and modification dates of the files.

cwa107 said:

Perhaps you should try a plain CD-R. CD-RWs can be made bootable, but since they need to be formatted before write, that may cause some problems.

Just a guess...

Click to expand...

I burned the ISO image to a CD-R. Still no icon in start up. Only the Mac HD icon. I then inserted an Acronis True Image Recovery CD executable. Rebooted and the CD icon labeled Windows was displayed along with the Mac HD icon. I then inserted an Ubuntu Linux ISO and rebooted. Only the Mac HD icon came up. Lastly, I inserted the Mac OS Leopard Install disk and rebooted. Both the Mac HD and the Install DVD incon were shown upon reboot.

Is this of any use when a hard drive has been labeled dead by the genius bar? I'm planning to give it a try tomorrow when I have access to another MCP to connect to via firewire.

jcv said:

Is this of any use when a hard drive has been labeled dead by the genius bar? I'm planning to give it a try tomorrow when I have access to another MCP to connect to via firewire.

Click to expand...

If the drive still spins up, there's a chance you might be able to retrieve data from it with this product. Paragon Rescue Kit is a latch ditch effort to retrieve lost data. If it doesn't work, you'll need to look into data recovery services (very pricey, usually $2000+).

Either way, while it's still in beta and available for free, you have nothing to lose in trying it.

Dear Forum Visitors,

Thank you very much for your useful feedback.

You can download "Known issues" for Beta1 here.

Manual is here.

The Web Form to download Beta 1 is here.

Dear MacAllen and tcsdoc,
Unfortunately, Rescue Kit for Mac OS X does not support Power PC processors (G3, G4 and G5).

Dear sendai,

Do you have Intel-based Mac?

Dear jcv,
Yes, Rescue Kit can be helpful. Please let me know your results.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Thank you all in advance.
Anatoly.

Worked well enough for me but I have a couple of comments:

1) Estimated backup image was off by about 7 Gbs. It reported 13gbs but was more like 20. Took only about 20 minutes to complete though, so pretty darn fast.

2) The resulting image files are 1.95 gb each. Seems like an odd size. Why not 4.7 gb so each can be burned to a DVD? There should be a setting where we can choose the size (or maybe there is and I didn't see it).

Thanks!

Dear Anatoly,

I signed into the beta with my account Jeroen van de Ven after I got the email. I look forward to beta testing another one of your products, I'm installing it now and will post feedback as soon as possible. Thanks for the opportunity!