Is Acronis a good Product

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by twl845, Mar 6, 2007.

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  1. twl845

    twl845 Registered Member

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    I am interested in the idea of taking an image of your whole system as opposed to backing up your windows and program files, which is what I do now. I see a long list of posts devoted to Acronis here in Wilders and am wondering if this is because most people are using it, or alot of users have problems using it. Is Acronis user friendly and is it light or heavy on resources? I'm not familiar with how the app does its job and how easy it would be to use. Thanks for any info.:D
     
  2. dantz

    dantz Registered Member

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    Re: Is Acrnis a good Product

    Over the years I have noticed that a great many people seem to have problems with almost all of the imaging programs, but from what I've seen on this board Acronis True Image users are experiencing more than their share of difficulties.

    However, that's not to say that ATI won't work well for you. Imaging software is particularly sensitive to hardware issues. If your system is generally stable and doesn't contain any unsupported hardware then ATI has a very good chance of running perfectly fine on it. However, if your system is overclocked or unstable or there's anything else flaky going on then you will probably be disappointed.

    I generally suggest that people try out several different imaging programs in order to find out which one runs best on their system. The personal recommendations of individual users can be very misleading, since each user's experience is based on their own system's hardware and overall stability, and thus one person's 5-star program is often another person's dog.

    So, in answer to your initial question, Acronis "may" be a good product, and it's wonderful when it works. It's a great feeling to know that you can restore your entire system in roughly 10 to 15 minutes, should that become necessary.
     
  3. seekforever

    seekforever Registered Member

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    Re: Is Acrnis a good Product

    I generally agree with dantz's comments.

    Remember that people rarely post to a forum because everything is working well. For some other products you will have trouble finding a support forum like this one.

    I stay away from the clever features like TI10's mail and app backup. Why bother when I have a full partition image. I also don't bother with direct-burn to DVD, my images are first made to an internal HD which is the least problematic restore medium.

    I have 2 external USB drives and they are both recognized by the TI recovery disk.

    Dantz's comment about stable hardware is right on the mark. Everything used in the create/restore process has to be 100% perfect and stable with no exceptions.

    So far my experience is that if TI works and your hardware doesn't break it will continue to work with high reliability.
     
  4. Johnan

    Johnan Registered Member

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    Re: Is Acrnis a good Product

    My "new user" experience follows.

    For many years I used Travan tape and "Tapeware" for backups and thought it was great. Then I was faced with replacing hardware. Buying a new tape unit was expensive but replacing tapes on a yearly basis is more expensive. Total cost of ownership on a 5 year cycle is huge. So looked for an alternative.

    Installed a 250MB USB HDD on a "pc server" and have TI10 running on four networked machines. Hardware costs were $150 and if the HDD lasts 5 years, $150 will be my total cost of ownership. Tape ownership costs would be $1800 for 5 years.

    Backup sizes for the four machines run from 2GB to 7GB. Backup and verify times for "whole computer" backups range from 10-20 minutes. I have run several "bare metal" (system HDD overwritten by zeros) test restores on all four machines without any problems.

    Acronis True Image 10 Home appears to be a very fast and reliable backup/restore routine, compared to my previous experiences. The ability to restore a complete operating system and data in a few minutes, compared to hours with other solutions, is worth money. I think it's a great product.

    Now to the psychology of your question. Folks tend not to comment when products work to specification. That's why you see few positive comments in user forums/fora such as this. Ergo, the more users for a particular product, the more negative comments appear......look at some of the other forums/fora. Lots and lots of negative stuff, some of it bordering the offensive. The noticeable difference with the Acronis forum is there are some very experienced posters and responses come quickly.
     
  5. BillyPig

    BillyPig Registered Member

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    Re: Is Acrnis a good Product

    I asked the same question (of myself) some time ago, and decided to try TI v 9. I found so many bugs that I gave up and purchased Norton Ghost. I'm telling you, it had to be bad for me to go the GHOST route. GHOST worked, but is a real pain, so after just over a year I tried again, this time with TI v10.

    If you check out the thread I initited recently, you will see that I still have problems with TI, but I am persevering for now as it does have a lot of potential.

    My advice would be to try it out. Also, decide precisely what you want to achieve with the software an ask whether Acronis can do what you want to do. I presume that you are referring to the True Image product (since you have posted to this forum), but I would also recommend Disk Director, which for me is the better product. By that, I mean the DD functionality meets my requirements better than TI, but that may not be the case for you.

    If you want to clone a HD, TI will do it. If you want to backup/restore data (DATA!), TI will do it, but if you want to backup and restore at the partition level (rather than the whole disk), well, try it out first.

    Oh, I should probably mention that I bought both bits of software, rather than using trial versions. Trials are a great idea if they are fully functional.

    Pete K
     
  6. Acronis Support

    Acronis Support Acronis Support Staff

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    Hello twl845,

    Thank you for your interest in Acronis Disk Backup Software.

    We are sorry for the delayed response.

    We recommend you to download and install the free trial version of Acronis True Image 9.1 Server for Windows to see how the software works on your computer. With the trial version of the product you will be able to fully use the windows version for a period of 15 days. The standalone version (bootable media) will have only restore function available.

    You can find the detailed instructions on how to use Acronis True Image 10.0 Home from the respective User's Guide.

    Please visit Acronis online store to purchase the full version of the product.

    Thank you.
    --
    Marat Setdikov
     
  7. coppertrail

    coppertrail Registered Member

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    I've had no problems with TI since I began using it 2 years ago. I only use the rescue CD to create/restore images and backups. I install the app, create the rescue CD, and then uninstall it. It's saved me countless hours of installation/configuration on numerous occasions. :)
     
  8. Ralphie

    Ralphie Registered Member

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    Therein lies the crux of the matter. :cool: But those who want to do scheduled backups have to use TI from within Windows and that's where some run into problems. For myself I also use only the Rescue CD.
     
  9. foghorne

    foghorne Registered Member

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    Hi Ralphie,

    I may have been lucky, or may happen to use a mix of software which is convenient for TI, but I haven't seen a single (software) problem scheduling multiple daily backups from Windows across 5 versions and nearly 5 years of use on a variety of hardware platforms and OS variants.

    What specific problems have you come across, and did you manage to track down any of the issues.

    F.
     
  10. Ralphie

    Ralphie Registered Member

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    I haven't run into problems with my method of using only the bootable Rescue CD. I don't do scheduled backups nor differentials, nor incrementals. I'm happy as a clam with the way it works for me. :D :D But maybe I will see some problems if and when I update my trusty 6 year old Athlon 1Ghz 256mb ram, XPPro system for one of the fancy schmancy Core Duo Sata systems and make the mistake of running Vista.
     
  11. GroverH

    GroverH Registered Member

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    twl845,
    I fit into the group of satisfied customers. I have used True Image Home version 8 and 9. Version 9 does all I want so I have not upgraded.

    Since I started using TI, I no longer have to worry about doing a fresh install of XP Pro from the install CD. I have used TI on numerous occasions to restore my entire system drive (3 partitions); also, I have restored each partition individually several times. Also, I have replaced my hard drive using my images. I don't do all the extras--just plain backup and restores.

    Check out my Beginners Guides in my signature. This will get you started.
     
  12. bobmitch

    bobmitch Registered Member

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    Put me on the satisfied list as well. I am new to True Image. Just purchased v10 a month or so ago...and it has already saved my bacon with Windows Vista. ATI (video card) drivers corrupted my Vista installation...which was only about a month old. Vista ran slow, features didn't work. So I uninstalled Catalyst 7.2 and reverted back to 7.1. Vista was a mess.

    Before installing the new Video drivers, I had just run a backup and verification. Mind you...I tested v10 four times before I purchased it. I backed up using the Trial version. Created a bootable recovery disk...formatted/partitioned...and restored the backup...Perfect...three times.

    Now, back to my Vista problem. The video drivers were totally a mess. At one point...I couldn't even boot into Vista. So I took out my trusty Restore CD that I created...and plugged in my firewire HDD. 25 minutes later, I'm back in Vista just the way it was before I installed the Video drivers. All is well...and I will never compute without Acronis True Image again

    Bob
     
  13. twl845

    twl845 Registered Member

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    GroverH, Thanks for the beginners guide. I'll study it.:)
     
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