Ghost or Acronis?

I have been reading a lot on the Forum about Image Backup, and I still
hesitate on which one I should acquire.

May be someone that already tried both and could tell me which one is the
safest to use.

I am a little bit afraid now because I did tred RestoreIT 7.0 and it screw up my
hardrive when partitioning. (durind installation) I had to format, could not even boot in safe mode anymore...

Thanks for your help.

 

I would go for True Image 8. Simple and Quick to use, the Support is also very good compared to Norton.

I used to use Drive Image and Ghost. But changes to TI at version 7. Have not tried version 9 don't need the features offered

The last two versions of Norton have gotten big and slow. I prefer a package that can also image outside of windows - I believe that Norton can now only restore outside of windows but not make an Image.

I use TI for bare metal and data imaging and Raxco First defence for day to day windows environment backup - kinda imaging crossed with a boot manager.


You could take a look at http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/ This has a good rep.

 

Thank you starfish_001.
Can we still get Acronis V8.0? I look on the site, and it is True Image 9.0. From what I could see, lots of people ars saying to avoid version 9.0.

 

Not sure - probably available from a reseller - or you could buy 9 and ask support for a version 8 download they are very helpful. Drop them a mail - of course v9 might work fine for you.

Some people have had no probs with 9 others seem to have had a bad time with it.

 

Before you go Acronis, take a look at: http://terabyteunlimited.com/index.html

After using Acronis for two years, this is my newest pet

Why? Simple, straight forward and it can handle back-up to DVD!

 

SSK, thank you, I took a look at theier site, look interesting.

Have you tried to restore you PC yet? Is there a way to verify the image
after you saved it to a DVD or CD?

Thanks

 

If you are interested in TI, hurry up, you can get it at 40% lower price till january 2nd

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=111394


that's what I did, and TI 9 seems to be working for me so far

Cheers,
nicM

 

Hi Antarctica,

I use Terabyte's BootIt NG as well as Image for Windows and DOS. When I am heavily beta testing, I average about 15 restores per week. Overall, I have done about 500 restores with Terabyte products, with no failures.

Nick

Edit: that includes restoring from DVD, external USB HD, but primarily from a second internal HD.

 

Hi nick s, thanks.

Sounds good, I will give it a try over the week-end.

 

I do a little less restoring (but once or twice week is no exception ), but I can confirm what nick s posted. No problems restoring from DVD, internal HD. Verifying can be don through the program or from Restore / Boot disk.

Please read their site and documentation, and you should be good to go!

 

I recall PCWorld's comparison couple months back:
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,123202,00.asp

 

Antarctica - I have restored my system probably only about 5-6 times from CD/HD using Terabyte's Image for Windows/DOS and each time it has worked great. Its a very simple program to use. They are also constantly updating it too to make it better. Sometimes a couple of times a month. There are also a bunch of free add-on tools as well that they provide. http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/utilities.html

 

Thank you all for your good advice.

I have downloaded Image for Windows from TeraByte and so far I like what I
see. Very simple program, easy to use, that's exactly what I like.

I just perform my first backup and it went flawlessy.

 

TI 8 is still sold by lots of online vendors, rather it is hard to find TI 9.

Note that TI 9, even with build 2323, has had a lot of reported problems, so I;m holding off until I see the next build.

Note that I purchased Ghost 10 last month.
Don't like it at all, not to mention, it adds a noticeable load to the system.
Ghost 10 added an incremental update capability, but, as far as I am concerned, it was misdesigned and doesn't solve the needs of most users. I'd point you to thread that I started om this topic, but the Ghost forums have been unreachable (by me) tonight.

I uninstalled Ghost 10 a couple of days ago, fortunately, the cost was 0$ after rebates.

So, I will continue to use Retrospect until I am satisfied that something better is available. At this time, Ghost 10 does not provide proper incremental updating capability, and TI 9 is not stable.

 

I just took a look at the Terabyte Image web site.
How does it compare with Ghost 10 and TI 9 in terms of functionality?

Seems as tho, in addition to Terabyte Image product (shareware), it is
necessary to also install add-ons for restoring individual files and
requires using an add-on for BartPE to build a restore CD.

I don't like the idea of having those critical features not being
integrated.
When there's a problem, it may be more difficult to get a fix.

 

everyone here seems to have their preferences and i am no different, I have had very good luck with Ghost 9 2005 . I had a pretty bad experience with TI.

 

Ghost 10 is a different critter due to its addition of recovery point sets and its implementation, tho inadequate, of incremental updates.

 

Image for Windows is a fine product, extremely stable and simple to use like a backup program should be. Unfortunately, it doesn't do incremental backups which I find real nice for doing daily backups to an external hard drive. Using the Dos Mode boot disc kind of sucked as I had issues with my external drive. Barts PE worked ok, but was a pain to setup. Right now I'm using Acronis which seems pretty stable on my computer - but no DVD writing abilities (which is pretty weak for a backup utility imo). I still use Image 4 Windows to do my occasional backups to DVD, like I said it's a good product - very good support, cheap, and liberal upgrade policy. If the trial does everything you need, it's an excellent choice. Just thought I would point out some of the limitations I ran across.

 

I prefer Ghost. I'm using it a couple of years, it never ever let me down. A friend of mine uses Acronis, he has had some trouble with it regarding restoring an image a couple of times. He switched to Ghost. BTW : I'm using an older version (2002) , I can't speak about the newer versions : I don't have used those.

 

Howard Kaikow,

I don't know yet if it would be a issue to restore a image, but I don't think so. The only plugin I had to install was PHYLock and it went very smooth.

Over the weekend I will install the demo on my old PC and try to restore
a image.

But so far I think it's a nice program and so easy to use. Sure there is no incremental function in it like Frigoo mention in is post.

This is not a issue for me because I don't make changes or add new programs so often. Also it took me only one hour 15 minutes to backup my all hardrive on 5 CD's.

 

I too have heard good things about Image 4 windoze, but:

1. It requires BartPE to create a recovery disk, and BartPE disk can only be created in Win XP. Many folkes, including moi, use Win 2000.

2. Although there are needs to make so called "images", most folkes really do need incremental backup. I run incremental backup at least once per day, usually 2 or 3 times, to save work. RElying on a 3rd party add-on is not satisfactory as one cannot easily co-ordinate updates/supporrt issues for that feature.

Regarding Ghost and TI:

Ghost 10 is an entirely different critter than earlier versions, so experiences with earlier versions are not really relevant. Ghost 10 added an incremental backup, but they did it all wrong, at least for the masses.

Most folkes likely want to use a backup strategy such as the following:

1. Create multiple backup sets, each on separate media, so if one goes bad, one can recover from next most recent backup set.

2. Use incremental backups to save space and time.

For expository reasons, let's ASSuME that we use two USB external drives as backup media, never having more than one drive connected at a time (to protect from power disasters).

We then create a full backup on each drive and then alternate drives, at convenient intervals, adding incremental backups to each backup set.

In the case of Ghost 10, incremental backups can be done only with Recovery Point Sets ("RPS"), but the implementation in Ghost seems counter to the above backup strategy.

It seems that Ghost uses a structure based on the vsnap.idx file on each drive to keep track of changes on the drive.

So, if we create a base RPS, subsequent incremental backups can be accomplished because Ghost "knows" what sectors have changed.

This mechanism likely works if you use only one backup set, but if you swap media, and create another RPS on the alternate USB drive, it seems that the mechanism breaks down as the vsnap.idx would then be outdated for one, or the other, backup sets.

The apparent inability to use more than one RPS seems to render useless incremental backups in Ghost, as one one would have to create a new base RPS each time one swapped a USB drive and wished to do an incremental backup because Ghost would not know what sectors have really changed since the most recenent backup to the CURRENTLY mounted RPS.

TI 9, if the ever get out the bugs, IMNSHO, would be a better product than Ghost 10. Acronis does have an active support dforum at Wilders, which is a plus.

 

Hi Howard,

Image for Windows does not "require" BartPE to build a restore CD/DVD. Rather, I believe Terabyte provides an optional plugin for users of BartPE for imaging and restore purposes. With IFW, imaging to a CD/DVD in itself creates a self-booting restore disk. That is all you need.

The free PHYLock add-on is not strictly required, but, among other things, it gives you the added ability to write an image to the same partition you are imaging from within Windows.

The free TBIView add-on is a simple context-menu tool that lets you explore and extract files from Terabyte images on any other computer without having to purchase another license. Its a nice, non-bloated tool that adds portability to Terabyte images, especially for owners of multiple computers.

Nick

 

Hi Nick,

May I ask if you purchased the 'bundled' package and if so was it through RegNow?
Thank's.


GF

 

I have True Image 8.0. Although I was initially impressed with it, when I restored from an image, three programs no longer worked and had to be reinstalled or restored from a separate backup that I had made. The image file verified as being fine, but it obviously was not. Or maybe the image file was fine, but the TI software that does the actual restoring is flawed.

I haven't tried restoring a different image, so I don't really know if this is typical or not. But it does not inspire much confidence in the product. To be safe, I will probably buy Ghost 9, and use Ghost and TI together. While it's a bit of a nuisance, when it comes to backups, redundancy is a good thing.

Phil