Paragon Rescue Kit for Mac OS X Lite Public Beta Testing

[sendai]

Sendai Response

Hi Anatoly,

I do have an Intel based Mac Book Pro.

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.

 

[gheys]

Well, the packaging of beta 1 is better - the addition of a manual and distributed as a disk image.

The GUI looks a little less Windows-like.

I would still prefer to boot from a USB memory stick (rather than a CD).

Also, it appears only wired networking can be configured but I would like to configure wireless networking. Can that be done?

 

[Peter Holbrook]

Early impressions

I've just burned a CD-RW with beta 1. I have a Mac Pro with two superdrives. Something odd happened when I first tried to boot up the computer from the CD-RW. I fist inserted it in the top superdrive (Sony). When I restarted the computer and pressed Option (in order to choose the CD-RW as the boot device), the CD-RW was automatically ejected and was presented with the two usual choices (Macintosh HD and Windows). So, I booted into OS X, inserted the CD-RW in the lower superdrive (Pioneer) and rebooted. This time, pressing Option displayed three choices: a Macintosh HD, a Windows HD and a Windows CD).
The splash screen is not very Mac-like and it took a long time to load, but no complaints. The program itself is cosmetically Mac-like, but it was unclear to me whether I could back up to my external FireWire drive. I switched on this drive while the Paragon ToolKit was loading, so perhaps I did something wrong. Maybe I should have switch it on before booting? Be that as it may, the Paragon ToolKit displayed the drive in a black DOS-like listing of drives, but I was unable to identify it in the graphical trees of devices and folders, so I couldn't make a backup. I did notice that the DOS-like listing of drives didn't show the name of this drive (it's not GPT-partitioned; it just uses the old Apple partitioning scheme). Perhaps that makes a difference?
Just one more thought. The ability to back up all the disks on a Mac (HFS/NTFS/FAT32) from one single backup application is a wonderful idea, but the fact that this is a stand-alone application requiring a special boot process for it to run effectively keeps the computer from doing anything else while the backup and restore are progressing. You might say this is irrelevant, as nobody in their right mind would want to do any computing while a backup operation is progressing. This is not so. There are already two Mac applications capable of letting you work on Mac OS X while a backup is in progress and even when certain restore operations are under way. If you want to backup your Boot Camp partition from OS X, simply use Winclone. True, it unmounts the Windows partition, but you can still use your Mac while the backup or restore process is under way. Similarly, for backing up OS X itself, you can use SuperDuper! from within OS X, so you can still do anything you want on your Mac. Further, you can open the backup in the Finder and selectively restore files or folders anyway you like. True, a full SuperDuper! restore will leave your computer inoperative while it is under way.
Both these programs (SuperDuper! and Winclone 2.0) create backup archives that can be opened in the Finder, and the one generated by Winclone (a regular DMG) can even be opened from the Windows end in Windows Explorer if you have MacDrive.
I think that if Paragon ToolKit is to accepted as a backup solution by the Mac community, it must address these two areas:
1. It must be a true OS X application. Having it as a Linux application that can boot the computer in cases of emergency is fine too, but only for cases of emergency. Acronis True Image for Windows does the same thing, but their Linux boot disk doesn't work on Macs. Yours does.
2. The backup archives for HFS, NTFS and FAT32 disks should be Finder-friendly. In addition, it should be possible to open the archives for Windows partitions in Windows Explorer.
Although probably beyond the scope of the initial release of the program, I think Paragon should also consider a solution that will allow for the creation of differential and incremental backups, as these solutions are less than ideally implemented by the competition.

 

[spacklewoof]

Iso?

Just an idea,
Can you make this into an ISO or some PC burnable format? If my mac is down, I rely on my PC. And if my mac is down (Which is why I would need this product) I cant burn a DMG file.

Thanks,
-woof

 

[Dada1111]

I could not get any of my Macs to boot at all with Rescue Kit

I tried the CD on a IMac G5 and a 1.25GHZ G4 desktop and a 800MHZ G4 Imac and could not get any of them to boot at all. It just went past the CD and booted from the installed systems. The CD is only like 44 MB is that large enough to boot one of these Macs? Thanks

 

[cwa107]

I tried the CD on a IMac G5 and a 1.25GHZ G4 desktop and a 800MHZ G4 Imac and could not get any of them to boot at all. It just went past the CD and booted from the installed systems. The CD is only like 44 MB is that large enough to boot one of these Macs? Thanks

Note that Paragon Rescue Kit is for Intel machines only.