Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Pretty Good, but incomplete, September 30, 2005
I purchased this just a few days ago (September, 2005) to use on my 20-month old HP Pavilion zd7000-series laptop running XP SP2 with a 60 GB internal HD, an external WD 120 GB HD and a recently purchased Liteon SOHW-1673SX external DL DVD+/-R, DVD+/-RW drive in addition to the HP's internal CD/DVD drive. The 60 GB internal drive is partioned into C: 17GB for the operating system; D: 11.3 GB for Application Programs; and E: 27.3 GB for Application Data.
The installation of the software went without a hitch. I was able to burn an Acronis boot disk on a CD-RW disc without a problem. I was able to make an image (3.2GB from 7GB of files)of my C: drive (partition) onto my 120GB external HD without a problem. Using the Acronis software I was able to "explore" the C: image on my external HD without a problem and "mount" it as a virtual new logical drive.
I then began to explore making removable backups. I wasn't too interested in CD-R or CD-RW discs as backups as any partition image I might make would just occupy too many discs (compresion seems to run in the 50% neighborhood). When I went to create an image on a blank DVD+RW disc I kept getting the message from Acronis "Disc not available" (or some such). It was then I printed out the Acronis 81 page manual and found on page 20: "You should have DVD UDF recording software installed for burning images on DVD disks, for example: Roxio DirectCD, Ahead InCD and other the same."(sic)
I looked at the external packaging and it states that it "allows you to store disk/partition images on: ... DVD-R/DVD-RW, DVD+R/DVD+RW..." but nowhere does it mention the need for this additional software! I had recently purchase the Nero (aka Ahead software) 6.6 Ultra Edition ("The Ultimate All-In-One Digital Media Solution") but even it did not have the Ahead InCD utility on it.
As luck would have it, my recently purchased extrnal DVD drive came with a basic Nero utility disk and it had InCD on it (!). Reading the manual for it, it stated that it could be used only with rewritable media (CD-RW, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW) but not non-rewritable media. Thus, if I wanted to write an image directly to the less expensive DVD-R or DVD+R discs, I was still out of luck. Perhaps the Roxio software utility (DirectCD) would overcome that (more on that later). However, I suspect most people will want to use the rewritable DVDs for backups anyway as they would want to periodically update their backup. (Note: I suspect I could use Acronis to make an Acronis image on my hard drive and then use some other utility to copy that to a DVD-R or DVD+R disc if I really wanted to go that route and I expect Acronis would be able to read it but that's too klugey).
Once I installed the Nero (Ahead) InCD software I was able to use it to format (Universal Drive Format, UDF) my DVD+RW disc which, as I found out, makes it look like a 4.3 GB, or so, hard drive (cool feature, very useful in it's own right). Then when I ran the Acronis software I could write a partition image directly to the DVD+RW disc. I did this and was able to subsequently use Acronis to read and "mount" (i.e., new drive letter on "My Computer") this partition image to do whatever I wanted with it.
As it turn out this was a good thing for as I was rooting about in some of the shovelware that came with my original HP computer I came across an (unopened) Roxio Easy CD Creator 6.1.1.8 Basic Disc. It didn't have the DirectCD software on it that Acronis recommended but it did have a utility called "Drag-to-Disc" which the literature stated was fully (up/down) compatible with DirectCD (i.e., media created with one could be used by the other) so I thought I'd give that a try. Now, I must say that the Nero InCD software warned that it was incompatible with any other UDF-originating software and while it was installing it (Nero) would warn if it found any it would give the user the opportunity to delete the other software or quit the installation. However, I was going the other way. I already had the Nero InCD installed and I was installing the Roxio on top of it. Apparently Roxio doesn't make a similar check as the software seemed to install OK but when I went to do the usual reboot after installation the system came up with the dreaded white-on-black warning screen that things were amiss and did I want to start in safe mode, etc. Apparently the two software utilitie duke it out over which one is going to control access to the CD/DVD drives and the user (you and I) comes out the loser. I tried to start in normal mode but the system just crashed each time I did.
Well, I figured this was now a good time to put the Acronis software to a test so I loaded the Acronis boot disc I had made earlier on a CD-RW and it worked just fine, asking me if I wanted to review/install any image files. I then inserted my recently made DVD+RW disc with the image of the C: drive (where I suspected Roxio had just tried to put the "Drag-to-Disc" software), I used the Acronis software to reinstall the Drive C: image back to the originating partition on my internal HD, I rebooted and it worked perfectly, right back to where I was before. Acronis had redeemed itself!
One final note, I played around a little more with uninstalling the Nero InCD software so I could try the Roxio "Drag-to-Disc" utility some more but I didn't have much luck (maybe my heart wasn't in it at this point). The "Drag-to-Disc" software works on both non-rewritable and rewritable CD's and DVD's but it doesn't usually pre-format the disc(s), it just seems to format them as it goes along. Thus, I couldn't make a UDF-formated disc for Acronis to write to. Also, the way "Drag-to-Disc" works with non-rewritable discs is when a file is "erased" a new file system file will be written which will no longer reference the "erased" file although the file is still on the disc. Thus, if you "update" large files on a CD-R, DVD-R, or DVD+R they will be written to whatever remaining blank disc space is left and you will quickly run out of space and have to pitch the disc anyway. Roxio DirectCD, the Roxio software that was actually recommended by Acrnois appears to come bundeled with packages such as "Roxio Easy CD & DVD Burning" (don't take my word for it, check before buying) which costs another $25. I don't have this so I don't know how well this works by itself or with Acronis.
Bottom line, the Acronis is less expensive than it's other major competitor (Norton's Ghost), out-of-the-box it's not as complete as I would have expected (Norton might have the same or other limitation), but as I already had a key missing utility (Ahead/Nero's InCD)I am able to make it meet my needs (write/recover images to my hard drive and DVD+RW's) and it seems to be functioning properly. Based on these pros/cons I gave it overall a 3-star rating.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sleeping With The Enemy, September 30, 2005
I bought Acronis True Image 8.0 because I have a new laptop from Dell who no longer ship the disks necessary for a complete rebuild of the operating system (instead, there is a Ghost image of the factory build on another partition ON THE SAME DISK). I needed a way of securing my operating system state against a variety of risks - worms, finger trouble, head crashes, regretted purchases of software, etc.
I suspect a lot of you are now in the same boat, especially if your investigations have led you here!
Acronis True Image is slap bang in the middle of the market niche resulting from Dell's new approach. For that reason it gets 5 stars. I used it to create a standalone bootable version of itself on CD (making 2 copies), after which I uninstalled it from my laptop (which I like to keep clean of unused software).
The standalone disk successfully backed up my hard drive to 7 CDs using the self same CD drive that I had booted Acronis standalone from. Subsequently I used it in the same way to rehearse my restore, with 100% success. I did all the partitions on the hard drive in the same operation. This is important if Dell PC Restore (Ctrl-F11) is to survive.
Q: WHY DOES IT GET SUCH A BAD PRESS ???
A: Because the design and implementation are absolutely appalling. This is not sloppiness, it is ignorance and naivety. I can go as far as to say that this product COULD HAVE COST ME UNTOLD CONSEQUENTIAL LOSS AND DAMAGE if I hadn't spent hours on the Internet searching for clues from other users' experiences. All because you don't know whether to believe this bloody message or not!!!
"Error opening file, a possible reason may be poor media quality."
I got to the bottom of this - it is benign. It just means Acronis can't distinguish between hitting a bad patch on the CD and reaching the end. The error message author just wanted to err on the side of pessimism!
Note that on restore, I was asked to feed the disks in in a very strange order, suggesting the product runs through all the disks in the set, after which it returns for one last go at any that were dodgy. In fact, that was NOT what it was doing. The disks were all perfect. In my case, there were 3 partitions in the disk set. In order to restore a partition, Acronis seems to need to vist the first and then the last CD containing any part of the partition in question, before it will deign to restore the body of it.
Overall, this is the right product at the right time. Yes - you could have written it so much better yourself, but it does work, and introduces no clutter. Recall, I uninstalled it after creating my standalone CDs. Indeed it even enables you to dispense with other suppliers' clutter (I have also got rid of those space-hungry nannies Norton virus checker and Windows System Restore now that I have my preferred form of disaster recovery nailed down).
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Acronis True Image 8.0 IS worth the investment!, December 1, 2005
About a month ago, I started getting warnings that my PC was having problems with the hard drive. I do periodic backups using software that came with my PC. But, that wouldn't do. I wanted to clone my current drive in order to preserve everything. I looked at a couple of products here on Amazon.com and did some comparisons of the reviews. While my initial plan was to order a product I was already familiar with (Ghost), after reading reviewer comments I chose True Image 8.0.
I found a few of the negative comments for True Image to be somewhat helpful. Yes, there are some areas for improvement with True Image 8.0 -- i.e., being able to copy to DVD without additional expensive software. However, it was the other comments that really got my attention -- i.e., about it being easy to use and fast. These really caught my attention.
I received True Image 8.0 at just the right time -- my drive was really acting like it was ready to go at any time. It took only a couple of minutes to install. I connected my new hard drive and started True Image 8.0 clone process. WOW!! It completed copying the entire drive in less than 30 minutes. Then, I removed the bad drive and reconnected the new drive as Master and restarted my PC. It was wonderful to see that everything was totally preserved.
The True Image 8.0 software functionality is well documented. However, particularly for the cloning process, an enhancement would be a step-by-step review of ALL the steps to be taken in cloning a new Master drive -- i.e., including general steps in dealing with the hardware (both old and new). When I completed my cloning process, I received a message from True Image 8.0 that it had completed successfully. But, that is where is pretty much ended. My instincts told me I had to remove the old drive and reconnect the new one as Master, but my instincts have gotten me into trouble in the past.
All-in-all, True Image 8.0 saved the day and I am TOTALLY HAPPY with what this product can do.
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