HDM 17. Windows 10 (20H2, fully updated as of 12/7/20).
I set up a backup with scheduling as follows:
Every day at 12:00PM
Chain of 1 Full followed by 6 incrementals
Retain 2 full chains
When I relaunch the app, I see:
Every day at 12:00PM
Chain of 1 full followed by 2 incrementals
Retain all chains forever
Just tried it again (after a few days of trying repeatedly to set the desired config). This time it shows:
Every day at 12:00PM
Chain of 1 full followed by 3 incrementals
Retain all chains forever.
I don't know if this would be significant but, when I launch the app, Windows security pops up a dialog asking me to confirm that I want to let the app make changes. I've tried launching the app "as an administrator" but this makes no difference.
I have four critical backup jobs spanning multiple drives.
Since a recent upgrade, retention doesn't "stick" at all.
The program wants to keep chains/backups forever on all jobs.
You can modify it the way you want/need, and run a single backup, but as soon as it's done you can look at the job and all your settings have been reverted; "no stick".
Type of backup also doesn't stick at all.
I need a mix of incremental and differential backups and everything reverts to full backups, kept forever.
Been using Paragon for years. Used to be the industry best.
This current hot mess is useless to me.
I contacted Cleverbridge (who did the transaction processing) and requested a refund. Took one extra eMail (when I confirmed that no help was forthcoming from Paragon) and they refunded my purchase. I deleted the app from my system. Went back to using Casper from fssdev.com. Clones perfectly; am also using "full+diff" (multiple diff's). There's a slight glitch in the UI for the latter which I'll explain offline if anyone is interested.
Have any of the other thread responders put in a support ticket with Paragon? If so the response is very poor and i am disappointed, time to look for another backup solution i think.
Howdy,
Apologies for the delayed response... Holidays got in the way!
My software still doesn't work.
I'm not certain, but I think the last working version was 17.13.1.
I'm a long-time user, and I really liked it several versions back, like 15 or maybe even 16... Back then, you could save back-up jobs in XML format, and they were very easy to read and modify in English. The XML files could automatically generate the scheduled tasks for windows. All the paragon jobs still run as scheduled tasks (just bring up windows task manager to see them) but I don't know how to edit the windows scheduled tasks, other than using the windows task manager. Windows task manager does let you set some properties applicable to all windows tasks (like what user or users must be signed on, whether the system should wake up, what to do when on battery power, etc.) but you cannot modify the task specific items tied to whatever program generated the scheduled task, in this case Paragon HDM.
Somewhere along the way (anything after version 15) Paragon HDM became much less granular and much more sleek and modular. Which is wonderful. Until it isn't.
If Paragon can't get this fixed, I'll be forced to find an alternative. I dread having to go back to an unreliable solution like Acronis. Macrium still makes a decent product. Long ago I tried them all. Everything worked, but Paragon was most reliable when the money was on the table; As in a catastrophic drive failure, and you NEED to recover quickly. I need that reliability. I manage a small, but vital network.
I've been running on manual backups for over a month now. It's the new year, time for Paragon to get back to work!
Over the years, I've needed customer support for things like licensing errors, or corruption, on the front-end, marketing side. I've only ever had one other occasion (aside from this current mess) where critical program functionality was at stake. My experience was quite positive. I contacted support, opened a ticket, and the solution came in the form of a link to a customized download of the program executable. I thought that was pretty impressive. So, I've stuck with them all these years.
This is NOT about emotion though. They may be a great team of folks. I need my customized reliable backups! MY job is on the line!
Joseph M. Spinosa
Update:
I have four backup jobs.
One is a full backup, where I only want to keep one copy, so it should delete the existing one when it runs.
The second is an incremental, to be run daily, creating a chain of 6 increments after the initial backup. I only want to keep one chain. (This translates to a nice record of the volume for the whole week if you start it on Sunday, and pretty much renews every Sunday).
The other two are differential backups which run 4 times a month (once a week) and save a chain of 3. Again, I only want one chain (one month).
The two volumes being backed up by the two differential backups are a repository and an archive volume. Very little gets changed on these two volumes, hence the chain of three differentials is normally very small, if at all for any given month.
I choose to have all the back-ups stored on a 2TB Barracuda mounted in a "hot swap" bay with it's own power supply and cooling. When/if the SHTF I can pop this drive which will fit a shirt pocket.
The source volumes are all SSD - spread over several devices on a small network.
With the Paragon screen up, I've been manually running these for over a month now. The settings don't stick AT ALL. You can watch them revert to defaults in real time. I can set all four the way I want, run one, and they will all convert full backups, kept forever!
There is a brief pop-up screen, generated by HDM, which has a spinning wheel titled "Please Wait... Checking data validity... This could take several minutes"
It never takes several minutes on my system, but I have noticed that whenever that little window pops up, that's when all the jobs loose their settings... That and when you actually run something manually. I kept the HDM screen up for several hours today, and watched all four jobs get reset over and over again under the same session. Since everything is automated (or it's supposed to be) I rarely have the need to actually launch the program.
Good thing this is not my first impression of the program, or it would be uninstalled and returned to sender pronto!
I sure hope Paragon takes a look at this sooner rather than later.
Mr. Joey
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