Is acronis reliable?

Guys we are trying to decide on a backup solution for workstations. We are currently trying acronis trueimage. We haven't had any backup failures or anything like that but you hear horror stories across the web about the reliability of acronis. The true test of a backup solution is when you actually have to recover and everything goes smoothly rather than the backups finishing successfully with no errors. Fortunately or Unfortunately, depending on your perspective we won't be able to test that part within the trial period. We require image based backups as well as file based backups so we can quickly get a machine up and going. We just don't want to chance it with acronis if they are having all kinds of reliability issues. We are also looking at Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010. If you can recommend any other products then let me know. Not look for an expensive solution.

Ok back to acronis like i said we haven't had any backup failures but the interface and definitely quirky and crashes sometimes. Its not that big of a deal. Not that hard to fire it back up.

I can say we do like some of the features of acronis but like i said just worried about the reliability issue.

Edit: Will mostly be backing up Windows x64 Machines.
Also it would be REALLY nice to have a deduplication option but i think thats only available in high end products (other than windows home server).

 

It depends on if it works or not (smiley)

seriously though...its one of the best along with paragon (which has a very good free version) and some others that are well reviewed and free.

 

I wish i could offer you some assistance, but I only use the home version which would not be an equal comparison by any means. All i can say is I liked Acronis True Image 11 more than I did ATI 2010. ATI 11 was more reliable for me when needing to restore my machine. ATI 11 never failed me. After I used ATI 2010 i had several times where I had errors, and failed restore jobs. I ended up having to reformat my machine with a Windows disk, and then reinstalling ATI 2010 before being able to use my backup images in order to restore my machine. I can only speak for their home product line, and my experiences may be of little value. I do hope someone that has acqually implemented Acronis on a descent sized network can share their experiences of Acronis with you. I also use Shadow Protect from Storage Craft, and I know their product line is really good. Shadow Protect is a little expensive compared to the rest when you look at their home line of products, but I do not know about their business line. If you decide not to use Acronis then you may want to look at SP. Good luck! http://www.storagecraft.com/ BTW.. what size of network do you have?

 

I've been using Acronis True Image since v10, but now use Acronis Backup & Recovery 10. It's a big program with lots of active background processes and services so I do not keep it installed on my Windows system. Instead I created a boot disk (or a BartPE/WinPE boot partition) that I run it from. I've had no reliability issues with Acronis' Backup & Recovery 10 products, which I consider superior to their True Image line.

I also use Drive Snapshot, which I have installed on my Windows system, but it's under 300 KB, adds no active background process or services, and does more or less everything that Acronis and other backup programs do. On my BartPE/WinPE partitions I have other backup programs (ShadowProtect, Macrium Reflect, Image for Windows, ...) and they work fine too.

I used Acronis True Image from v10 until v13 (aka ATI 2010). It worked fine ~95% of the time. Once I couldn't restore to a new (different) hard disk despite the universal restore feature (might have been fixable, but I restored with ShadowProtect instead), another time the linux-based recovery CD/USB/pre-boot system didn't work (refused to load) but my BartPE/WinPE recovery disk did, and finally I had some minor issues (error messages on reboot) when using the Try & Decide feature.

 

What kind of environment, home or office?
Do you need central management or not?

Panagiotis

 

I wouldn't purchase any backup suite without testing the restore functionality. Anybody can design a software that can create backups, but the tricky part comes in successfully restoring from the backup image. I would set aside one workstation and test the restore functionality at least 5-6 times before deciding to purchase any backup software.

 

Acronis products are reliable but have restore problems in some cases. I have switched to Active@ Boot Disk (5.1.2) and it has not failed even once during last one year. I use bootable flash drive for all my backup/restore/partitioning/data recovery needs.

 

I completely agree with Raza, there are undoubtedly software names that may have a good reputation compared to others, but it would be really nonsense to rely on any backup image without testing a restore. Most horror stories are from people who have been sitting there for months convinced that their image/s would work in an emergency only to find out that when needed it would eventually fail.

 

personally i would never install acronis again. and imo their cust service sucks. i had so many issues spanned over many systems with it as well as some business clients at times calling due to issues with it and not being able to do a restore of the backup they had that acronis said was okay after checking it. THOUGH acronis has some really nice features and i love the ability to copy a drive to another one thats def a nice thing.

i have since switched to either macrium or shadow protect (mostly for business users who need to extras in shadow protect) but i think i ever only had a problem with macrium one time and that imo was not macrium's fault i believe it was due to a faulty usb port on the persons laptop. because when we switched to a different port on that same system it restored the backup fine without errors. also macrium doesnt cost a fortune. i personally do not like paragon or ghost either.

but as others have said ALWAYS test a image program before buying it. what i do is make a backup with something you know works from the start and then remove that and install the one you are testing. try to avoid two installed at the same time due to issues with vss and some drivers i know for a fact that acronis can impact others and some will not even install even after acronis has been removed due to stuff it leaves all over the place.

 

I'd don't disagree with your sentiments, but in practice I think most users are better served by testing the backup and restore functionality once to make sure there's no conflict with their system and to get a sense of the backup and restore speeds. All the major products work fine in standard situations. It's only when something goes wrong with your MBR, or the partition structure changes, or your hard drive fails and you need to restore the old system onto a new hard drive, or something else anomalous happens that you may discover your backup software isn't as reliable as you thought it was. And it's not practical or even possible for most users to test for such scenarios during a 30-day trial period.

 

For testing conflicts with your system, restoring once would be enough, but if you are testing the reliablity of the backup software, you need to test multiple times under various situations over the 30 day trial period. For example, if you set your software to do a full backup once a week and then incremental/differential backups and then you restore to check, this will only certify this particular backup set (full+incrementals). This might not hold true for another full+incremental set. The horror stories about Acronis mentioned by the OP were not that Acronis could not restore at all, but that it occasionally failed to restore an image file and some even mentioned that the failure rate was over 50% (2 years old info). So, it is always best to test your backup software by restoring multiple times over the trial period before making an investment.

 

I use acronis home edition and never had any issues with it what so ever.

For corporate use, the small IT company I work for which sells industrial computers uses imaging to install everything onto the machines in batches, and the IT guys use norton ghost. It's easy to install images on several machines at once using the ethernet cables.

We've gone through thousands of computers and found this to be the most reliable method to backup and restore on a large scale.

 

I would recommend Macrium for your needs. It does both sector-by-sector backups and file/folder backups. The pricing is very low for what it does. For 1-9 licenses it costs $39 per license. I have found it to be extremely reliable. However, do test it extensively before purchasing.

I would have recommended Shadowprotect too but it is expensive and does not do file and folder backups. So, it does not meet your criteria.

 

Acronis v.11 works for me. Checkout the less bloated free versions of v.11 at Western Digital and Seagate.

SourMilk out

 

I find Acronis True Image Home 2011 build 6597 very useful with an exeptional range of backup methods. For me this app is a beauty despite all basher's. Using ATI for backups on an external as well as NonstopBackup on NTFS secure zone. No problems at all with the exception that I havn't restored my system from the NSB yet.

 

I too have used Macrium Reflect (paid) for a few years and done many, many restorers without any failure. I have used True Image as well but I find it isn't as user friendly as Macrium but has the advantage of `Try and Decide'
No matter which one you use I would recommend that you set up the imaging software to create the image but then verify it afterwards. I would think that if the program verifies the image okay it shouldn't balk at restoring it

 

I use Acronis True Image 11 on all my XP Pro 32 bit machines, and have never had a failed restore job. I have used ATI 11 many times to restore my machines, and have been completely satisfied. Acronis True Image 2010 was an entirely different story. I had many failed restore jobs, and many error messages with ATI 2010. I believe ATI 2010 was a Lemon! I believe it was a bad year for Acronis. The new pretty shiny GUI with all it's eye candy just did not cut it. I like to make full backups, and not differential. ATI 2010 did not allow the user to make full backups each time. I recently dowloaded ATI 2011, and it does give an option to make a full backups each time. I have not tested it's ability to restore yet, but I hope to soon. I'm going to stick with ATI 11 on all my XP machines because it has never let me down. I hope they got it right with ATI 2011. If it's not broken then don't fix it!!

 

2011 latest build is genius. But you have to restore to bee convinced.Have in mind that it's wise to have the rescue disk at hands if something goes wrong if you execute the restore in win with a reboot. Also the premade schedule's are great with very nice and visible show how they works. The schedule follow in princip 1 full with 5 diffs and then a new full and so on. The chain is thereafter automatically reduced as long it is kept in process, i.e the diffs are after a while taken away. The fulls are there, but you always have the latest full with 5 diffs. Very convenient to make a defrag after the 5th diff and before the next full.
I will test the restore from NSB next time I make some changes to the pc and return with result.

 

ATI 11 Home - Never let me down. I use only backup and restore, and save the image in the created secure zone. All perfect. I turn off all Acronis services when I don't use it.
For restoring image from secure zone i don't need to turn on acronis services.