Unsure of Acronis True Image

In the very near future I intend on purchasing a backup/restore program. Among those I have considered, and downloaded for evaluation, is Acronis True Image. One review I looked at indicated that of those compared Acronis True Image 9, while rating higher in several areas, was the most user friendly. This particularly caught my eye because with my rather limited experience the simpler the better. This review included Paragon and Image For Windows among several programs that I did not recognize. I know that the latest version of Acronis True Image is 11 and I assume it will be as good as 9 or better. What concerns me however, is the number of negative post regarding Acronis True Image. I cannot help but feel, that just by judging by these post, it would be unfair to completely rule out Acronis True Image. I would like to hear from some users of Acronis True Image as to their experience and whether or not they would recommend the program. Of special interest is their experience with the restore function. Please remember in your replies that I am not that knowledgeable with computers. I will appreciate any and all replies and thank you in advance.

John

 

People who are happy with a program and use it successfully without issue don't bother coming here to post. People who have problems or who want to do something complicated post here. You can't judge the vast number of happy users from the posts here.

I have used ATI for many years and I still recommend it. I have done many full restores on Win98SE, XP and Vista. ATI has been totally reliable for me in its core functions.

ATI 11 has added some extra features, such as Try & Decide and application backup that have issues. But, ATI 11's core functions of backup, image mounting and browsing, and restoring, are solid. It's an excellent application. I use ATI for regular full disk imaging and restores, and I use SyncToy for quick file backups.

 

Acronis True Image is backup imaging software, as a result it stores your disk backup in a very large image file. The disadvantage is if that file is corrupted you are sunk. (that's why you verify it and create several backups) It's main advantage is it's ability to restore a computer which has crashed its drive, in a matter of minutes. It does, however, have the ability to mount the image file and restore individual files from the image.

Last weekend I was experimenting on my office computer with a Vista upgrade. I created an XP image, as I knew the Vista upgrade would be time consuming and might not be done by worktime monday. On monday morning from home I logged onto the system and told it to save Vista, and then restore XP. By the time I drove to work, XP was restored in 10 minutes, booted and ready to go. I'll work on Vista again later this weekend.

Acronis TI Echo has the extra ability, with universal restore, to completly restore your system to new hardware. If you have many programs on your system, are upgrading your computer, and do not want to do a complete reload, this feature is unbeatable.

If you just want to save files, image backup may not be important to you. If you want to restore quickly from a crash get Acronis, and get several spare disks!

 

true image isn't better or worst than other imaging programs. I like it's speed, but I use the program for one thing only, which is to backup my c: drive. I don't care about the secure zone or incrementals or try and decide etc, I don't even consider it a big deal if the scheduler doesn't work (I just do it manually).

I understand and know it's limitations and can work around them or fix them. I have yet to encountered a situation where true image has failed to restore a hard drive. But from experience I've learned that you need other boot cd's to fix minor issues that occasionally occur that will prevent the restored drive from booting. The following 2 items are the only things that insure that I have a 100 percent success rate on all my restorations.
1.) for xp you need a "boot corrector" to fix drive letters
2.) for vista you need a "vista installation dvd" to perform a repair
3.) and if you plan on restoring laptops you need to learn to use the "reverse clone" method.

With true image or any other imagining software, you need to actually test a restoration onto a new hard drive. And even then it's not an accurate indication that it will work when you need it. I can run 3 tests and they will restore perfectly everytime, but when my hard drive fails, the restored drive won't boot. But as long as I have my utilitys it never takes me more than 5 minutes to get the drive to boot.

The people who are unhappy with the program are the ones that don't understand how easy it is to fix a "drive letter" or MBR problem. As far as hardware problems, never encountered one that I couldn't find a quick workaround for it. I wouldn't recommend "true image" to anyone who expects a software that is 100 percent reliable everytime. For me it's 50 percent reliable and the other 50 percent I can fix very quickly.

 

I use TI 11 to make images of my C: and F: partitions, When I first used TI 11 I had image corrupt errors.

In options I set the compression level to none.
Write speed to about 60%
Set it to validate the image when it is written
and excluded the pagefile.

I've never had a problem since doing that.
I've tried a lot of image making programs resulting in TI 11 being the best by far.
I had a look at Paragon but it comes nowhere near TI 11, also O&O DiskImage, TI 11 also is better.

I also got Acronis disk director 10 to wipe the partitions prior to restoring an image, by doing that there is no possibility of any problems with files on the partition interfereing with the restoration. And it can set up partitions and generally work on your hard drives.

you must restore your images in DOS, you make a CD using the recovery media included with TI 11.

 

That's quite a generalization. There are some critical flaws in ATI11 as well as some noncritical and some even slightly humourous bugs in ATI11. And they aren't all problems with easy workarounds, unless you think using another version or another brand of program is an easy workaround. The bugs are well noted on the forum. ATI11 is not like versions 9 and 10. Those were well written, well designed programs. With ATI11, Acronis got caught abusing the poodle. It works fine for many folks despite the bugs but even the core features won't work at all for some folks. And 11 won't restore some hardware setups that prior versions worked on.

With ATI11, acronis not only pumped up the code with added, but perhaps misguided features but also changed the linux engine on the boot cd, requiring a whole new set of drivers.

imo, the best advice is for one to try the diff brands one is considering (you can try many of them for free) and see which works on your hardware and among those which best suits your needs.

 

There is one OS on the ATI11 bootCD and that is linux, not DOS. If one downloads the Safe Mode plug in and includes that when making the bootcD, that mode does indeed run under a version of DOS.

 

I've been used Drive Image of Power Quest, before it became " Ghost " when Symantec purchased it. Good software, but True Image for me is better. Most of the real problems with TIA are problem with hard disk, i.e. SATA HD., I also experimented one last spring with my new pc. But never I had, neither with TIA 8 nor with TIA 11, any problem with backuping or restoring disk images. And the last TIA version, 11. 8.101 runs well with my SATA.
My advise: try the trial version of TIA, to see if it runs on your pc, and read some post here.

 

There are also probs with data file backups not working correctly, email notificatins, application seetings backups, and the list goes on. Some of this inherited from prior version of ATI, some brand new with ATI11.

If you never drive backwards, it won't matter that your car's transmission won't go into reverse, not until you have to park on a hill, anyway

 

tuttle explained that perfectly.
The other 100.000... user have no problems

Why I use Acronis software:

My way is similar to Blacknight.
For a lot of years I used the PowerQuest products "PQ-DriveImage" and "PQ-Magic".
Symantec bought PQ and finished. I don't like Ghost.
After PQ-rescue-CDs didn't want to start the PC (because there are newer hardware like USB- and SATA-devices) I have to look for an alternative.

Important was that I get the combination of an image-program and a hdd-magic-program.
Evaluating the market, there is only Acronis who offers such combination.
"TrueImage" and "DiskDirector".
I test them and they did their work reliable.
(Symantec doesn't have a product like DiskDirector).

Most important for me is the ability to start with a rescue-CD and can treat a 'naked' PC

 

I have restored images to laptops many times, XP and Vista, with no problems. Reverse clone is not required.