USB External drive for recovery ?

I'm thinking of purchasing Acronis TI and have been reading this forum over the last few days to see if the software is going to do what I need it to do. Whilst reading the forum I've notice that there seems to be many users posting about significant problems with the software, for a version 9 it doesn't seem very stable. Can I rely on TI to perform when needed?

My system has 1 IDE and 2 SCSI HD's and I have just purchased an external USB 250GB HD for backup. I'm running XP SP2 and no special boot configurations.
The system also has a writable CD Drive which I can boot from if necessary.

My goal is to image all 3 HD's onto the new external USB drive and use that for disaster recovery should all or any one of the drives fail.

Can I achieve this using the USB external drive and Acronis TI and what are the basic steps required using Acronis software. i.e do I set the external drive as a safe zone or ?

Many thanks,
William

 

I have used V6 and now V7 with good results. V8 also seems useable. It seems that V9 may not really be ready yet.

You don't need to use the "Safe Zone", at least not with V6 or V7. As I understand it this is just a way of hiding the backup image files to make it hard for someone to accidentaly delete them.

 

I'm glad you posted this. I'm looking to purchase this product and this is how i intended to use it. How did Acronis think people were planning to use this product? Back up using floppies? It is quite disgusting that they actually put out a product with these kinds of flaws.

Anyhow, Acronis must answer your question with a definite Yes or NO.

 

Some people seem to have success with ver. 9 but they must be in the minority. The most stable recent version seems to be ver 8, build 937. Unfortunately that version is no longer on Acronis' site for download to try.

Maybe ver 9 will work for you. You won't know till you try it.

 

More people have version 7 or 8 than 9. 9 is fairly new...

 

Thank you for the responses but since I apparently cannot purchase version 7 or 8 of TI (non server version) my question relates to the latest version which is 9.0

I have since established that my system will boot using a CD created using the 'Create Bootable Rescue Media' option and it will allow me to access the disk image on the external USB hard drive, although I have not attempted to recover a disk yet simply because I dont have a spare hard disk to test it with. I really dont have the confidence to restore the image back over the live disk for a test because of all the scary reports I've read on this site, how do others test their images without having to purchase a whole new drive?

I'm a little confused about the 'Secure Zone' and the 'Activate Acronis Startup Recovery Manager' options. The documentation states that I need SZ to activate the startup and recovery manager but if my hard disk fails how can this secure zone be of any value? should I simply store all 3 images on the external drive and restore them using the 'Create Bootable Rescue Media' CD? wouldn't this option work on new drives if all my drives failed?

This brings me to another question. Lets say my main hard disk died and I purchased another drive which was different in size and manufacture from the one that crashed and then I restored the system image with WinXP operating system back onto the new drive, would XP still function with an entirely different drive?

Thanks again,
William

 

No one can, with certainty answer your questions, especially Acronis. What is implied, obviously by example of this forum, is often not the result.
Therefore to put your mind at ease, I suggest buying yourself a new hdrive (a great bargain these days) I recently got a 200 gig seagate ide for $59.00 w/5yr waranty, so you can have a new spare right there. Test actual restores by the various methods you inquired of.
In my experience with older versions, the answer to your qustions are yes.
Store on a different drive, and yes use the boot cd, and yes it will work on a different size, and yes forget about the secure zone.
Acronis will eventually make Ti9 workable.
The only way to be 100% certain is to image and completely restore.

 

Yes, the conservative thing to do is buy a box of 8.0: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16832200201 If the cd is not the last build, register and download it from Acronis.

I'm (now) happy with ATI9 build 2302, but I haven't tried external USB/firewire yet. The Startup Recovery Manager is not needed, and I've seen some comments about it interfering with dual boot setups (I think that was it).