Automated Disk Imaging Tools Win8.1

So, Professionally, used to use Ghost. then Win7 spoiled me with the great built in full disk image for my home rig.

Win8 retained it, but Win8.1 broke the scheduling piece. I can force a manual, but need the automation lost with 8.1

single machine, etc

looking at Shadowprotect 5, Acronis TI Home, or Paragon HD Manger

googled reviews are inconclusive, corruption of marketing, etc. hard to sort the wheat from the chafe..

interested in people's actual experience and recommendations.. thanks..

Edit: thanks for the responses so far. to b clear; basic requirements are automation / scheduled images, ability to do bare metal restores on new / different disks if necessary. bonus would be ability to mount as a VM for browsing files needed, etc.

I could not resist, W8.1 really? It will need to get much colder for me to try anything starting with 8....
But to your question, I think that of the mentioned SW will do what you need.

AOMEI Backupper works great on Windows 8.x

I use Acronis. Works great.

Terabyte Unlimited's suite is top notch.

I use Storagecraft at work so I bought a 3 pack of ShadowProtect 5 for home.

The nice thing about ShadowProtect is you can have a virtual machine of the image running in minutes.
use ImageManager which they have for free now (for limited things) to be able to flatten your incremental backups.

Simple and easy to create the rescue disk based on Win PE or you their Linux based rescue disk.

acronis ti home works fine for me.

mngl1200 said:

I use Storagecraft at work so I bought a 3 pack of ShadowProtect 5 for home.

The nice thing about ShadowProtect is you can have a virtual machine of the image running in minutes.
use ImageManager which they have for free now (for limited things) to be able to flatten your incremental backups.

Simple and easy to create the rescue disk based on Win PE or you their Linux based rescue disk.

Click to expand...

have you ever tested it with a bare metal restore?

XBarbarian said:

have you ever tested it with a bare metal restore?

Click to expand...

I have spun it up as a virtual machine while waiting for replacement parts for a server and then restored that back to the server. It took 15 minutes to have the VM up and running.

I am also lucky at work that I am down to 3 physical servers and next year that will be down to 2.

thanks mngl1200...