Customer Reviews

Acronis True Image 10.0 Home [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(58)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(36)

 

 

I have been a TI user for about a year and a half now and I'm researching a replacement. True Image, simply put, does not produce reliable backup images consisently. Inconsistent and unreliable is exactly what one doesn't need in backup software. I recently backed up a box before doing an os upgrade and of course verified the backup up. The upgrade bombed and I needed to go back to my backup image - 3 hours into the restore TI bombs saying the image is corrupt. I move the Image to another box and indeed it can no longer be read. It seems the restore corrupted the image. I posted to the forums and sure enough others have had this problem, their recommendation to do a test restore to a seperate drive for an image. With 300+GB drives which take 6 hours (at 7200RPM) to back up, and 8 hours to restore - a test restore is not a reasonable solution.

The software is flakey and inconsistent when backing up to CDs/DVDS. Sometimes TI will back up to a CD/DVD sometimes not. It says you need the roxio decoder installed, but that doesn't resolve the problem. It's very particular about the specific media, I've found one brand it seems to like consistently. Since I have over a TB in external hard drive storage I've lived with this as a minor inconvenience, but cd/dvd media backups are a feature and one you can't count on.

I've had messages where it can't find ANY HARD DRIVES, again I've found this in the forums with no solution. A restore of an earlier version solved my problem but not of others in the forum.

I've had it read an image the first time and then not the 2nd time I've tried to access it. I've had to play with the file names to get it to read an image, sometimes that works, someones not.

I adminster 5 home boxes and run a small geek-business and I assure you I WOULD NOT PURCHASE THIS SOFTWARE AGAIN, will not recommend it to my customers and recommend you steer clear. In the area of Backups and Recovery reliable backup software is essential.

Don't buy True Image.

I'm not sure where these negative reports are coming from. I've used Acronis backup for 4 years now and version 10 works just as well as version 8 and 9 did. I've used Norton Ghost, Partition Magic (before it was purchased by Symantec) and many non-imaging solutions and Acronis beats the competition hands down. I've also used Acronis 10 on Vista without any problems.

It's easy for a novice to use but it also has enough depth that IT professionals (such as myself) have all of the options we need for complete disaster recovery. Most other backup solutions actually just copy files and compress them. Acronis actually takes an image of your hard drive (think of it like a picture). You can use that image to restore a single file, folder, etc or you can use it to restore an entire computer to be EXACTLY the same as it was when you created the image (registry too).

The only negative thing I've found on this product is the fact that the differential/incremental backup can get confused if you just keep creating incremental backups rather than regenerating the original image file. If this all sounds like gibberish, just stick with the "full backup" option and you'll be fine. It also works great backing up to a USB or network drive.

I've used this product (version 10) to restore hundreds of backups on dozens of computers with almost zero problems. If you prefer, Norton Ghost 9 is a good option as well (haven't tried version 10+). I typically make an image using both Norton Ghost 9 and Acronis True Image 10 for mission critical computers. Nothing better than backing up a backup ;)

I hope this helps you decision making process. (I'm not affiliated with either Symatec or Acronis.)

The promises of Acronis True Image are grandiose. Unfortunately, you can spend hours and days trying to get it to work and perhaps never succeed. For instance, after restoring my backup files, Acronis True Image incessantly says it "cannot find any hard disk drives on this computer." The user guide is thorough but inaccurate.

Search for "Acronis Support Forum" and you can see all the problems that other users are having with True Image. You will find on that forum suggested solutions including: edit the registry files after you back them up, buy another piece of Acronis software to fix the problem, and (this one I love) use BartPE software to "boot into a pucker Windows environment where you can run the Windows version of TI to carry out a recovery." (Note: Acronis deletes the really critical comments from the forum.)

This product is very well done! I have enjoyed using it much more than I did Ghost. It allows you to backup your hard drive or partition while Windows is running, which is very cool. It allows for incremental and differential backups. That means I can restore my Hard drive to a specific date that I backed things up. The images it creates can be chopped to manageable sizes so they can be burned to DVD's.

Even though it doesn't say it I have successfully backed up my Linux partitions and then restored them latter on when I corrupted them. I was very surprised and pleased when it allowed me to restore some files fro my Linux image even though it was using the Ext3 file system. Most people don't actually understand how to use this software to their advantages. May I suggest the following:

1- Do a clean install. After installing Window, Office, and all the other common applications activate them. (You will not need to activate them again when you restore your hard drive to this point.) Next make an image of the partition/hard drive as this point. (This is also known as your baseline)
2- Store all of your data in a common location (I use My Documents)
3- Backup up all of your data as often as desired

Then as time goes on and your system performance decreases you can return to this point. Make a final backup of your data. Restore the image you made after the fresh install. Restore all of your data.

That takes maybe 30 minutes and your system is working great like the day you bought it. I used to spend lots of time re-installing operating systems, getting drivers, fighting for my legitimate products to activate. Now I just make an nice image and restore it whenever I feel my system is getting too much clutter on it.

On a side note Acronis 9.0 will backup your Vista installation but it must be run from a Windows XP partition. Both Vista and XP use the NTFS file system so they both backup fine. The main advantage of Acronis 10 is it runs on Vista. Personally I would just stay with 9 and backup your Vista partition from XP.

Overall this product has saved me a great deal of time. I have not had any problems with it whatsoever and I have been using it for over a year on various system. Do yourself a favor and buy a copy. Anyway that is my two bits. Hope it helps...

I replaced my hard drive on my laptop. Acronis wrote the entire contents to a portable USB drive, and then moved it back to the new hard drive. I went from a failing 120GB drive with 60 GB used, to a USB 80GB drive, then back to a new 120GB drive. You need to have a CD drive to boot from. It was fairly intuitive to use... had to think about a couple of options, but got it right the first time I used it. It copied everything... programs, Windows, Desktop, E mails, favorites, even cookies.
Acronis even lets you download a trial version for free with two weeks time limit. Their on line download price was more than I got it on Amazon, and I got the box and disk from Amazon.

Gene

Honestly, I don't think Acronis 10 upgrade is worth the price if you are using 8 or 9. Image sizes are very huge with maximum compression and Outloook backup simply crashes the Outlook. I emailed Acronis support but I did not get a single call or email from Acronis about this Non working feature, for what I really bought Acronis 10.

I wish I had returned this product for fully money refund but I was hoping Acronis Support will contact me about the issues I had with this in less than 30 days,

In Short, No Support and Backing up Outlook , crashes it
and with maximum compression, Images sizes are very very large.

it seems that it Acronis 10 needs more testing ..

I removed Acronis 10 and reinstalled Acronis 9 and now My backup disk can hold lot more backups.

Simply, Avoid this product..

For easily more than 10 years I've been searching for backup software that implements a strategy I've long believed would be the ideal solution: A whole-drive (or whole-partition) image for the Full backup, that can be restored without first reinstalling the OS and the backup software, integrated with subsequent Incremental backups.

For as many years, I've been sending e-mails off and on to various publishers of backup software that requires re-installation of the OS, asking them if their software can be configured to do Incrementals without first requiring a Full backup. The answer has always been, "No. Why would you want to do that?" When I explain that I want to combine the use of their software with the likes of Symantec Norton Ghost, or PowerQuest Drive Image, they just make light of the hassles associated with having to reinstall the OS before you can re-install their software to start the Restore. Yuck!

Anyway, now I've discovered Acronis TrueImage 10.0 Home - it's the Holy Grail of backup software in my opinion. It has an Explorer-like interface that allows you to look at the combined archive (your Full + all your Incrementals) in slices - pick a date that an Incremental was done and the Explorer view will show you all the files the way they looked on that date - not just for that one Incremental, but for the Full and every Incremental that preceded the date you selected! You can restore individual files and folders or the entire drive to the way it looked on the date of any Incremental backup - without having to first reinstall the OS and the backup software to run the Restore. Saweeet!

It will write to just about anything (CD-R, DVD-R, external USB or Firewire drives, network drives, or even to an ftp server), but I recommend installing a second hard drive (they're cheap!) that's at least the same size as your primary drive. Run Windows Disk Cleanup (without compression) and Windows Disk Defragmenter, then restart your machine, booting from the TrueImage recovery CD, run a Full backup to a new folder on your secondary hard drive. With the Verification and Maximum Compression options selected, I backed up 107 GB of data in 8 hours, from one 7200 RPM SATA drive to another - a transfer rate of 223MB/min. (Remember, that's with the Verify option and Maximum compression - that's fast!)

What's your external USB drive good for? Every once in a while, you should copy the TrueImage archive (the Full and all the Incrementals you've performed to date) from the secondary internal hard drive to your external USB drive. This will take forever (two days?), but you can safely do this in the background while using your machine for other things and while sleeping, of course - but it's worth the effort for the redundancy it offers, and if you really want to be safe, for offsite storage. Go ahead, burn my house down. My digital photos are safe.

Full backups (as well as Incrementals) can be started from within the TrueImage Windows application, WHILE you are using other applications, but I think it's a lot smarter to start the Full backup having booted from the Recovery CD - so that the target drive is "offline" during the backup. I do run my daily Incremental backups while Windows is up and running.

And now for my soap box on the subject of Differential backups:
A Differential backup gets every file that has been added or modified since the Full backup was performed. (Incremental backups get only those files that have been added or modified since the last Full or the last Incremental.)

Why would ANYONE want to run a Full followed by multiple Differentials?

Pros: A complete Restore takes less time because it uses only the Full archive and the latest Differential. All the prior Differentials are ignored. Restoring from a Full and multiple Incrementals takes a lot longer.

Cons: Differential backups consume a LOT more storage and take a LOT longer to run, at whatever interval you chose to run your backups, than Incrementals do - and each Differential takes longer to run than the last one did because you are constantly adding and modifying files on your PC - so each Differential is larger than the last one. No thanks! I'd rather have Backups that run quickly than a Restore that runs quickly, especially when you consider the ratio of Backup jobs to Restore jobs is likely to be 100 to 1, or far better, hopefully. Differentials just don't make sense. Do a Full plus multiple Incrementals (daily, or at least weekly).

By the way, with TrueImage, you'll have to do a new Full backup every time you run Windows Disk Defragmenter, as documented in the well-written user manual. Any Incremental backup done after defragmenting the target drive will be VERY slow. Hint: Defragment your drive before doing a Full backup, and then leave it alone. The need to Defragment your drive again in the future should be about the only reason to start a new cycle of Full backup + Incrementals.

Mike

Tried version 10 and there are many flaws in functionality. File recovery on version 9 images will not work, not what the company claims. There is no real support, only a responding e-mail recognizing the sent e-mail. No wonder the company does not want multiple e-mails when there is no follow up coordination. The mail server would blow its lid with mail exponentiation. Words to the wise. When you use this product and you are mission essential with your needs, do a restore for your complete system and make sure it works. Back up critical databases, then do a file restore. This will allow you to check to see if there is risk and whether the restoration will work at all. I had all kinds of problems and this points to the effect that most people don't perform an acid test of backups. If you need vaulted data, I would go to a full raid system with backup power. It should be noted that the Acronis caused damage is only the price of the product (if you can get hold of any one to get a refund, they need a painstaking lawsuit to get real) versus the loss of expensive critical data. Spend hours testing and verifying if you intend to use Acronis at any version release level. Don't back up on the same drive as Acronis suggests. Don't expect data recovery off a damaged drive. Consider off-premise backup through a reputable company if data is extremely critical to business, etc. Big System Guru, s/w engineer

I downloaded the trial version of Acronis True Image 10.0 about 2 months ago on a number of computers and did a full back up on all.
After the trial period I decided to pay to continue True Image 10 only on one machine.

Several weeks ago I was working on trying to speed up one computer - whose Acronis trial period had expired - with some system optimizer software. I somewhat foolishly used the registry cleaning function which crashed the machine.
Every attempt to fix this problem failed.

The emergency boot disk I had made with Acronis didn't work. (Trial period was over.)
The data back up I had done just before the system crashed had gotten corrupted. (This was using a program other than Acronis.)
My last good data back up was 3 weeks old.

So I ordered a hard copy of True Image 10.0 through Amazon.

The install disk ran True Image without going into windows and it allowed me to back up my data completely.
I then restored the full backup copy I had made 2 months ago.

I then restored the data I had just recovered.

I had no problems.

My only small complaint is that the default setting is to reset the file created date to the restore date for restored files.
However it can be set to restore with the original date.

Aside from time I didn't lose anything.

This product has saved me many times. I have used older versions on other machines. When I had to do a restore (and it always happens) everything went fast and well.

But with this version on my XP machine, it won't work. I was faced with a restore a few days ago. When I hit F11 the Acronis logo came up and it looked like the GUI but then . . . nothing. The software didn't load. So I couldn't do a restore.

Customer service is terrible so I got no help. I am not happy with Ghost. So I'm not sure what solution I'll find. I'm currently using version 9 on another XP machine and it has successfully done a restore and I'm happy with it.

This problem may be unique to my machine. But in light of my experiences, I don't recommend this version of the software.

Update:
I learned how to get the GUI up and do the restore. It's a hassle but it works. Use a TI boot disk if possible. Either way, hit F11 and hold it a bit longer than usual. That brings up a Linix line that says "quiet".

Enter the following (without the quotes) quiet acpi=off noapic. That should bring up the GUI and the software so you can make your restore. In addition, be sure you have the update of version 10 as the original version is very buggy. The update is also buggy but less so.

Also make sure that under "services" you have Acronis ticked --- it won't work right otherwise.

If you can get by with a previous version, you may be better off until they get the bugs out of this version.

UPDATE: Sept. 10, 2007 - I had to do a restore last night. Had a rough time with the software. Tried several boot disks. They didn't work. Finally the GUI came up after about twenty or thirty minutes and I made the restore without incident. As I said before, the software is buggy. It will work but not as it should and perhaps not at all times.

UPDATE: Sept. 14, 2007 - I had to do another restore on another computer last night. I decided this time to just let the software take it's course. So I hit the F11 key and held it longer than usual so the Linux kernel came up. I gave it the command above. It took about ten minutes for the GUI to come up. Then it took quite awhile for the software to prepare for the restore. But once it started, the restore went well and it was a perfect restore.