Life after Vista?

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by presrc, Feb 5, 2007.

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  1. presrc

    presrc Registered Member

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    The Ultimate and Business versions of Windows Vista include a function called "Complete PC Backup and Complete PC Restore". The technical discussion of this feature sounds like OS contained code that might replace TrueImage.

    Would Acronis or anyone care to comment on whether TrueImage has a life after Vista?
     
  2. WSFuser

    WSFuser Registered Member

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    ive not used it (and i cant), but ive read the compression isnt that good.
     
  3. silver0066

    silver0066 Registered Member

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    I have tried it. The backup is extremely slow. I stopped and went back to Workstation 9.1 which works fine as long as you run in Administrator Mode.
     
  4. mfabien

    mfabien Registered Member

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    The Backup in Vista goes to a separate partition in the computers HDD. It is an image backup. To Restore, one simply presses F8 at startup. That implies that the computer's HDD can be started...

    What I find more interesting is Vista's "Easy Transfer" from one computer to another (source computer can have XP or Vista, destination computer must have Vista installed) although one requires a special USB cable and the Easy Transfer software (comes with the cable or can be downloaded).
     
  5. mavraam

    mavraam Registered Member

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    I used Vista's Full PC backup but had some issues with it that convinced me the $20 upgrade to Acronis was worth it:

    1) Very poor compression comapred to Acronis.
    2) Much slower.
    3) No gui to access files within an image. Acronis allows you to either use Acronis Explorer or better yet, mount an image as a virtual drive allowing you to access files on it from any application.
    4) [This was the clincher]. Vista supposedly allows you to access files directly in an image with the command line tool WBADMIN. This according to some online documentation. However, when I tried to access individual files, I got a message saying that command was not supported in this version of Vista! And I'm runing Ultimate.
    5) Vista only allows you to image the drive that Windows is installed on and only to a seperate drive. Acronis allows me to image any partition to any drive.
    6) This one is subtle but turns out to be extemely important: Acronis allows you to restore files in such a way that they inherit ownership from the folder they are restored to instead of their original ownership settings. This can be huge if you are moving large chunks of data from one machine (or an old hd) to your new one. Vista will always restore the old permissions and ownership forcing you to drop to an Administrative CMD prompt and use a couple of command line functions to convert ownership to the new account. A real PITA.

    So the bottom line is Vista's Full PC backup is only good enough if:
    1) You only want it for complete disaster recovery. (Don't need to occassionally recover files that may not have been included in a data backup).
    2) You only want to back up your Windows drive to a seperate physical drive.
    3) You don't care about compression or speed.
     
  6. Long View

    Long View Registered Member

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    Very useful critique.

    sounds like its hasta la vista baby ?

    :D:shifty:
     
  7. Ralphie

    Ralphie Registered Member

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    Ha ha ... nice one.:D :D
     
  8. Fuzzy John

    Fuzzy John Registered Member

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    You can boot with the Vista DVD and there you have access to the Complete PC Recovery. No need to be able to boot with your hard drive.
     
  9. jelenko

    jelenko Registered Member

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    For me the backup/restore utility in Vista is 'perfect'.
    All I use it for is to create an image of my system right after it's built. So, anytime the system runs into trouble, I can restore to it's original, pristine condition.

    For file backup/recovery I use another app [which is far better at file management than Acronis]

    There, that should get this post deleted.
     
  10. mfabien

    mfabien Registered Member

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    ... if the HDD is not damaged.
     
  11. Fuzzy John

    Fuzzy John Registered Member

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    If the HDD is damaged you replace it. Then you can use Complete PC Recovery to restore the image from the DVDs you put it on or from a different HDD (internal or USB). You wouldn't put the image of the partition you are backing up on a different partition on the same drive, right? If you do and the HDD gets damaged then of course you are out of luck. But then the same stands for using Acronis True Image or any other drive imaging program.
     
  12. mfabien

    mfabien Registered Member

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    I read the features of Vista at the Microsoft (Windows) site, and my understanding is that the Vista backup can only be done as a partition on the same drive where Vista is located.
     
  13. SloPoke

    SloPoke Registered Member

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    VISTA's PC imaging does not do compression, which is probably why it looks poor.
     
  14. Fuzzy John

    Fuzzy John Registered Member

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    The Complete PC Backup and the File Backup can be sent to any drive in your system except the drive that you are backing up. Due to their size CD/R and CD/RW discs are not accepted. However you can backup to another partition on the same drive, to another drive, to a DVD and even to an external USB drive. I am currently sending my backups to an external USB 2.0 320 GB drive.
     
  15. presrc

    presrc Registered Member

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    Thanks to all that commented. Fuzzy John: Your comments are very interesting. Should I assume from your last post that you have changed from TI to Vista backup?
     
  16. Fuzzy John

    Fuzzy John Registered Member

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    Well... not really. Actually my personal choice is still <GASP> Drive Image 7 and/or Ghost 9 </GASP>. At work I use TI Server for Windows 8. I guess that at this time the Vista Complete PC Backup compares to other imaging software about as well as Wordpad compares to Word. Yes, it does do the job for most people, but it is lacking plenty of features that make other software still to be desired. Besides, it doesn't seem to make a real image. For example, before running Vista Complete PC Backup, your Windows Update History is all there. After restoring a Complete PC Backup the Windows Update History is empty. The argument was that the Update History is not important. Makes one wonder what else was deemed not important by the designers of Complete PC Backup. Also, considering this, why is it called Complete PC Backup?
     
  17. presrc

    presrc Registered Member

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    Thanks again.
     
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