Drive Image 7.0 vs True Image 9.0 Personal

Hello,

Currently, I am using PowerQuest Drive Image 7.03 for my backups and it's working fine. Now I saw that my web hoster offers me a copy of True Image 9.0 Personal for free.

Has True Image 9.0 any advantages compared to Drive Image 7.0? I only need to make Images of my partitions and I don't need special features like File Backup, Incremental/differential Backup, CD/DVD burning or Snap Restore.
Maybe someone of you also made the switch from Drive Image 7.0 or Norton Ghost 9.0 (both programs are similar) to True Image 9.0. Please post your experiences.

Thanks in advance,

Colin Finck

 

I have no idea what features are included in True Image 9.0 Personal. It is highly unlikely that it can do all the things that a paid for version can or if it does it probably expires after a limited time.

Why not install it and try it out? After all you know what you want out of a backup progam so you must be the best person to make the comparison.

My favourite feature of True Image is the way backup images can be created automatically in the background without even having to re-boot. You don't have to use it that way and some users prefer to do it off-line.

Xpilot

 

Hello Colin,
compare to Drive Image Acronis is the better solution. I can write this because i have both both possibilities.
Anyway Drive Image is no more supported by Symantec because they use the technology of Drive Image in their own products. But their solution is bad.......
So my solution for you: Use Acronis Home Version 9 and you have the best product on the market.

 

Hallo,
I changed from Drive Imgae to Acronis and I miss an importent feature für me. I would like to do an automatic full backup every week and I would specifiy the number of copies (generation) of the backup. I could not find the feature in Acronis. Can anybody help me?
Thx Wolfram

 

This is a feature that is currently missing from Acronis. There have been many posts and wish list requests on this subject. I would be surprised if it is not eventually included in the Program.

In the interim various workarounds have been developed by some individuals and Acronis themselves have come up with a way ao using Pre/Post commands.

I use the simple method of storing my backup images in the secure zone. This gives me automatic image creation per a schedule and it is self managed on the FIFO basis. It is important to avoid the pitfalls that a secure zone can introduce.

 

Hi, thank you very much for your extreme wuick answer. So I will hope for the next build.

 

Thanks for all your answers.

Did someone of you make a speed comparison between True Image and Drive Image?

At the moment Drive Image 7.0 takes 1h 45min on my system to make a backup of a NTFS partition with 22.7 GB used space onto an external Maxtor 5000LE 80GB USB 2.0 hard drive. I set the Compression to "High" and enabled the "Verify" option.

BTW, is the File Backup of True Image faster than the Image backup?

Best regards,

Colin Finck

 

Hello Colin,

It's been a couple of years since I uninstalled PQ DriveImage 2000 from my system. However, from what I can recall, It was a lot slower than the version of TI I had at the time.

Provided TI recognizes the file system on the HD being imaged, it only backs up the "in-use" (plus MBR and Track 0) sectors rather than every sector on the HD. In addition, it doesn't backup the pagefile or hiberfile data but saves a few bytes of placeholder info for them instead.

Using TI 9.0 Home Build 3677 set to "Normal" compression and "Normal" priority, I can backup and validate 11.2GB of used space on my C: drive to a 7,200rpm IBM Deskstar in an external USB 2 Hi-Speed enclosure for a total elapsed time of 16 minutes. You should be able to extrapolate this result to suite your own configuration.

Provided the, Linux based, Acronis bootable rescue CD contains the correct device drivers for your particular hardware, the restore time should be roughly the same as the backup time.

Files and Folders backups are much slower than Disk and Partition backups.

Regards

 

No.
ANY file backup is much slower than any image backup.
The main reason I stopped using Retrospect, perhaps the best file based backup, but way too slow compared with an image backup.

 

See http://forums.hardwareguys.com/ikonboard.cgi?s=4492619c5fa1ffff;act=ST;f=13;t=4573 for a camparison of certain aspects of TI 9 and Ghost 10.

 

Colin,
I am currently using DI-7 (7.03) and also using the latest version of Acronis True Image Home. Both are very similar in most respects in function and in time.

The feature I like best of TrueImage Home is that you can perform backups and restores when booting from the User Created Recovery CD. Whereas DI7 cannot perform backups from the CD.

Another feature (which I never use) of Acronis True Image Home is that version 9 also permits backups of single files/folders. It seems that many users are having difficulty performing backups direct to DVD's. Likewise, some users are having difficulty restoring single files or folders. These problems will probably be solved in a future release.

I use and will keep using both. I alternate backups between the two programs. Just in case one of them fails me, I have another alternative. I backup to other internal & external drives and store backup copies also on DVD. I do not use the Secure zone nor the Recovery Console.

As others have mentioned, DI-7 is now un-supported. You might want to try the new program just to gain experience with it should DI-7 cease to serve your needs. This forum can be invaluable in helping you so solve any potential problems.

 

Thanks for all your answers.

I'm going to try True Image 9.0 and then compare it with Drive Image 7.0 myself.

Okay, this is not possible with the Recovery CD bundled with Drive Image 7.0, but you can create your own BartPE CD with the Drive Image 7.0 Plugin and the .NET Framework 1.1 Plug-In.
Both plugins are available on my PE Builder Plugins website.

Best regards,

Colin Finck

 

@Colin
this may be of some help: a long read but some useful info
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=139716

 

I am still using Retrospect but have just started trying the image function on TrueImage version 8 Build 967. My first experience in terms of speed was very good. Can I use this program instead of Retrospect for whole disc backups? (I will still use Retrospect for a daily DVD backup of work files)

Any reason to upgrade?
I am using WinXpPro SP2 with 2 SATA discs, and have external hard discs for backup as well as DVD for small daily data files.
Thanks for your help
S Adler