True Image versus Disk Director

Hi,

I would like to create an image of my hard disk in case I have a complete drive failure. I used True Image to upgrade the hard drive and Disk Director to manipulate the partitions after the upgrade. It appears that both products can create the image - is there a benefit to using one over the other?

Thanks,

Ken

 

Hi Ken,

Disk Director does NOT create an image. Acronis True Image 10 or 11 Home does create images, but create seperate images of the partitions.

Creating an entire image of the Hard Drive takes a very long time, especially on Hard Drives larger than 40 GBs in size.

 

My mistake! I made an assumption when I saw "Acronis Recovery Expert". Oh well, you know what they say about assumptions!

Ken

 

I respectfully would like to offer another opinion.

1. Creating disk/partition images should not be an "either/or" situation. Having a disk (all partitions) backup actually can save you grief and if you have need to replace your hard drive for whatever reason, it is the disk backup (all partitions) which is needed most.

2. Certainly, backups of the individual partitions can be done and restored but it is the full disk backup that makes disk replacement routine. Also, single partition restores can easily be done from a full disk backup.

3. As for time consumed, if both partitions needs a backup, no time is saved by doing individuals.

4. Many of us create both disk (all) and partition (single) image and always make sure that a disk archive is retained--just in case a disk replacement is needed. Even when you create a single partition backup, TI is very aware that the disk contains multiple partitions and is expecting both partitions to be created when a disk replacement is made. If you have only single partition backups on a multiple partition drive, disk replacement can become much more difficult for the average user. If your system is on partition #2 and you only restore the system partition onto a partition 1 of a new disk, you have problems!
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Be prepared. Always have a full disk archive available for use. Partition Restore with resizing makes a disk replacement much easier. If necessary, you can always perform a follow-up restore from a single partition backup--should the disk backup not be fully current.

I would certainly agree that there is a time and place for single partition backups--but their creation should supplement the disk backup--not be instead of.....IMHO. Cloning is another option but that is separate from this comparison.

 

Creating an image of an entire Hard Drive can be speeded up to better than 1 GB per minute by following these tips.

1. Always backup from within the Windows environment.
2. Have them run when the computer would otherwise be idle. No need to change the default backup priority.
3. If possible use a seperate internal Hard Drive as the image destination. This is usually faster than an external drive.
4. Size the backup drive to suit your requirements. To keep things simple I only make full drive images.
5. Is image compression really necessary? I was storing a depth of eleven full images using normal compression. When I changed to no compression I could still have nine full images and the image creation time was halved!
6. Consider the value of image verifications. There are ways to not use it at all and still be secure.
7. Consider scheduling full backup images to be run "out of hours". Then provided they are completed when you return it does not really matter how long they took .

As usual GroverH is right on the money with his sage advice.

Xpilot