Acronis vs. Ghost

Help.

I have been having a dilema. I have used Ghost for a long time. But now my ext USB HDD isn't working in the Ghost mode, although Ghost sees it fine in Windows.

In the course of trying to resolve this, I learned a bit about Acronis. I d/l and installed 15 day trial of ATI 10. One thing I really like about Acronis is the creating a System Recovery Bootable CD. Did it quick and easy, that has always been a big frustration with Ghost. Also, the Recovery Partition sees my Ext USB HDD just fine. I did a backup and the image was created much quicker and also was much smaller than Ghost images.

So I'm almost sold. Except, I am worried about reliability of the image. If push comes to shove, will the image REALLY restore properly. Some comments on the Ghost forum I was working on, (Radified), indicated that ATI may not be reliable. And people there felt they could trust Ghost more, and bottom line, that is what is most important.

I'd welcome any comments to help me decide which one to trust my systems to.

 

If you look on this forum you may find some people who trust TI more but if it doesnt' work for you then you are up the creek regardless of what anybody else thinks.

My personal feeling is that TI is very reliable once you install it and use it and actually do a full restore and confirm the whole create/recover process works. If you change your HDs or USB HD etc you should confirm the process again.

IMO, nothing is perfect but a lot of people install TI and have problems. Some are the fault of TI, typically poor Linux drivers for their device when running the Recovery CD, and perhaps a bug. Others are marginal hardware and TI does put a load on disk and RAM sub-systems and these problems become evident. Under regular PC use nothing is noticed.

You pay your money and you take your chance.

 

Hope I didn't get you mad. I am running the trial on a Gateway laptop and TI worked pretty good, as far as I could tell. But to actually wipe the drive and let it load the restore, well, that worries me too. I ran the Verify both when the Image was created and separately afterwards, they said the Image was OK.

I might make an image of my tower and I think I have an unused HDD drive I could then connect and run the restore onto, then see if that boots.

Any other ideas how to safely test TI?

I just don't want to run off using TI and thinking I'm fine, then someday when I need it, finding out the Image won't restore and actually allow the computer to boot.

 

Basically if the rescue CD sees all your disks ok then you should be fine with ATI. The only problem with ATI is if it doesn't recognise your disks either from the recovery CD or the boot loader.

Phasechange

 

Nothing against ATI paid for the software awhile back used it unfortunately when trying to restore the back up image file it created, It was unable to recognize any of my partitions in other words I would have to cancel the restore process cause in the next step where it asks where to restore the image, it read nothing, NADA no partitions to restore the image to. Funny that I was able to browse to my restore image, select it and go to the next step of the restore procedure, however nothing to restore it to. Even updated to the latest build thinking it was a driver issue and I still think it is. I dont really doubt the quality of the IMAGE from ATI however its useless to me if I cant use it because ATI wont recognize my partitions in the next step of the restore procedure. Also I didnt like how long it took to get into the linux preboot recovery enviornment way too long of a wait, with ghost its instant right into pc-dos. A few clicks later Boom restore in progress time to restore C: partition under 60 sec.

 

very interesting thread, i brought Acronis true image 9 and use it for backups and the last image verified fine. I have never needed to restore them and hope if i ever do they restore fine. but when my sisters laptop it came with norton ghost 2003 for free and she isn't using it.
I like the interface of ati and find it easy to use and gets its job done.
am i right in thinking that in norton ghost 2003 you have to make images in dos and not in windows?
where as ati 9 you can make them in windows.
i know the lastest versions of ghost can make images in windows.
lodore

 

I started with ATI 6 as a competitive "upgrade" to Ghost and have had no significant problems with 6,7,8,9,9.1 or 10 - so no reason to think about going back to Ghost.

"i have never needed to restore" - I think it is interesting how we all seem to use ATI so differently. I only use full imaging of (1) my operating/program partitions
and (2) data partitions. Have no use for incremental, differential security zones and all the fancy complicated stuff. I tend to restore my operating system, at least, several times a week - sometimes several times a day. I would not dream of trying out new software or hardware without first making a system image. I can then play with the new program and restore my old clean system when I want to get back to work. Recently "upgraded" to Firefox2 and only discovered a problem 2 or 3 days later. No problem just restored to 1.5 and am now waiting for a Firefox 2 extension fix

 

I've used True Image for 3 versions now (8, 9, and now 10), used it on several different computers, and never had any problems. It's been very reliable for me and I've found it very easy to use.

 

Have you had to restore? Did the restore work?

 

though i have no experience with Ghost, ATI has worked well for me. ive used the v8, v9, and v10 boot disks. backups and restores have gone flawlessly.

 

If I do purchase TI10 from Acronis, on the web, I only see the option for "Instant Download". I would prefer to buy the boxed version with book and CD. How can I order that?

 

Pete,

I am with you on Shadow Protect. It is a fantastic program. I have used Ghost, ATI and IFD/IFW and of them all I prefer Shadow Protect. It is extremely fast and reliable Have not had any problems with it to this point. And, the developers seem to be interested in what their customers have to say and how they can solve their problems and make th eproduct more usable and effective.

Gary

 

I did many restores with ATI for
- testing, to see if it worked
- saving my computer when I was in trouble
- fun

I tried everything :
- backup/restore from Windows, Rescue CD and mixed
- restores right after backup over the same Windows
- restores after wiping out my harddisks
- backup/restores of encrypted partitions (they look very weird LOL)
- restore of individual files from mounted images
without any problems since 9 months, but somebody at Wilders said that I would have problems after one year.
He was one of these Terabyte-fans of course.

 

Hello,
I used True Image to restore both the active Windows partition and Linux partitions, even without booting from Rescue Media, worked well. The only thing is that one of the machines, mouse would stop working if booted from Rescue Media, and I would have to unplug it and plug it back to get it going. Otherwise, everything worked fine.
Mrk

 

I like TOI 9 better than Ghost 10, I have both.

TI allows me to mount volumes as read-only or in read/write mode, Ghost does not.

TI does proper incremental/differential backups, GHost does not. See http://forums.hardwareguys.com/ikonboard.cgi?s=4492619c5fa1ffff;act=ST;f=13;t=4573.

TI, at least on my system, is much slower than Ghost. A full backup (and compare) takes about 2 hours with GHost, more than three hours with TI.

TI has a less robust design, i.e., it uses a single file for the entire backup, whilst Ghost uses a single file for each logical volume. So, if the TI file gets corrupt, ...!

GHost is from Symantec, ferget about support.
TI has a support forum, but many are displeased recently.

If I had to choose between TI 9 and Ghost 10, I'd choose TI 9, but TI 10 is a newer version, so you could take your chance with TI 10.

 

In my opinion, Acronis is better. Why? Real world proof for me. It saved me twice about three months ago. I own a Finance company, and the DATA is much more important than the computers (I make backups of the backup and keep them in two different geographical locations in case of fire/theft). We had an electrical storm take out two computers. One computer needed to be replaced. I used the "mount image" feature in Acronis to pull off all data from the image of the old computer. Worked beautiful. The other computer needed a new hard drive, Acronis came through again with the "image restore".

I started using Acronis around v6 (2004), and performed my benchtest to make sure it would work. But as always, the true test is in the Field. Will it save you when a "REAL" disaster strikes? Like me, with hardware failures? or, when you DO get the new virus that eats all the bits off your hard drive?

I fully trust Acronis, and if you use it some, benchtest it yourself (to make sure it will work with your setup/hardware), I think you will trust it also.

 

I've only had version 10 and have used it once to restore. I was nervous about going though the process, but everything worked fine. I recommend it and I can also sleep better at night.

Tom

 

I spent most of my last weekend trying to get Ghost 2003 with a working boot disk to image to my ext USB HDD, to no avail.

So I am really ready to go with TI 10.0. How can I purchase the full set, with the box, manual, and CD?

 

I am not trying to restart the "imaging debate" but:
Cant just let this fly by without:

BING/IFW/IFL/IFD: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/index.html
Rock Solid. SAFE. Reliable. Cheap. Small.

Seems some experienced users have moved to
drivesnapshot
OR
Shadow Protect which seems to be gaining ground fast.

Keep in mind as noted the BartPE functionality of various apps, might be important when you need it: ATI, Drivesnapshot, IFW (dont know about Shadow protect)
Being able to 'mount' the image for individual file restore is another important feature.

This thread highlighted some a LOT of experience re various imaging and restore tools.
(heh: long read but worth it)
"Acronis V the rest"

Not me but still 3 months to go

Good Luck QuiGonJohn
Regards

 

I'm so confused, unsure of which program I want to go with. A few weeks ago I only knew about Ghost, and was having many issues with it, especially getting it to see my Ext HDD when it rebooted into Ghost mode or from a Ghost Boot Floppy.

Then I had a customer tell me about Acronis and swear by it. Posted some questions and tried ATI10 on my daughter's Compaq Laptop. Was very happy with it, ease of use, speed of imaging, size of image file, all smaller than Ghost. The big plus was it's ability to create a Boot CD and that did see my Ext USB HDD. Only thing I did not do was a restore, afraid to risk that.

So at this point, I was nearly sold. Then I find this web site, post some questions, and now my head is swimming with possibilities. I'm really not sure which way I want to go or what would be best for my situation.

 

The acid test is to check whether an Imaging program can both Image and restore. The only foolproof way to check the restore is to actually restore to a spare drive or to install a new replacement HD and then restore the images to it (just like if your hard drive had failed). The replacement would need to be as large or larger than the one it's replacing.

If you like Acronis True Image, and the Rescue CD seems to work as it can detect your external Drive, then this looks very promising as your choice of Imaging program.

One good feature about ATI is that you can simulate doing a backup restore through the various windows of the Rescue CD until you reach the end point where the next option reads "Proceed". If you can reach this final step without any errors then it would appear likely that you should be able to restore the Image successfully. But remember the true acid test.

There are a number of imaging software programs on the market and the preferred choice will come down to ease of use and whether it can successfully image and restore your Drive/files. The advantage of ATI is that it has a very active forum with some very knowledgeable users to help you out. Personally I would continue with the trial, ask questions on this forum and then decide whether to buy or not. IMHO, ATI would be a very good choice.

 

Thanks to all who have helped me on this site. I am going to order my Acronis TI 9 off Amazon's web site today.

Here is what I did:

I have 4 computers. I installed the Trial Version of ATI9 on one. Made a Full Image Backup. Also made a Rescue Recovery CD. Then I booted each of the 4 computers with the Rescue CD and made sure the program would load and that I could see and access my Ext USB HDD in both Backup & Restore. That worked on all 4 computers.

Then my newest computer, is a X-Mas gift, laptop. So on that one, I also installed the Trial Version of ATI9, then did a Full Image Backup. This was made after I had spent several hours tweaking the laptop from it's original shipping configuration. Took off a lot of superflous programs, added the programs my wife uses, Office, Street Atlas, Family Tree Maker, Quicken, etc.

Next I used the built-in recovery on that laptop to restore it to the originally shipped configuration. That worked. I then made a set of recovery CD's using the built-in program, something I hadn't done the first time around.

Then I booted to the ATI9 Rescue CD and restored the Full Image I created earlier. That only took about 20 min's and everything works fine. The laptop is back to where it was before I put it to factory settings. This makes me feel very good about ATI9. I probably will not do a test reload on my other systems. I mean, the ATI loads, sees the Ext USB HDD. If I need to restore, it should work fine.