Product Description: The complete disk imaging, system disk backup, and bare-metal restore for workstations and home PCs which can dramatically reduce downtime and your IT costs. Â Acronis True Image allows you to create an exact disk image for complete system backup and disk cloning providing the most comprehensive data protection.
Simple! While looking for a utility to help me do better backups, the name "Acronis" kept popping up. I ended up getting version 8.0 because it had won so many awards. Maybe I should have gotten the newest version, but I am very satisfied with version 8.0.
Excellent Backup Solution I've been using this product for almost 2 years. It creates and restores images of my OS and programs perfectly. Two months ago, I had a hard drive failure in a RAID 0 configuration (2 drives configured as one single drive). After replacing the faulty drive and rebuiding the array, I used the Acronis recovery CD and restored my backup image, (which I keep on an external Seagate hard drive), back to the RAID 0 array. Worked perfectly!! Saved me about 3 months of work rebuilding my system from the bottom up and restoring all my programs. If you read the manual and know what your doing, this software works! I highly recommend it!!
Freezes XP! This product simply did not work at all on my system. Could be because I had Roxio 7 loaded previously - I read during some resarch to resolve the problem that Roxio and Acronis have some issues if Roxio was installed. The Roxio uninstall leaves the registry loaded with keys, and I think these are the problem when Acronis tries to run. It seems to be something with the CD/DVD burning. On my system it spins up the CD burner, then hangs the whole system. You have to force terminate the program to regain control of the system. Needless to say, it was more software money down the drain for me. I would say that Roxio users should think twice before dropping cash on this mutt.
Don't shred it - and don't shred the CDs you think it's ruined! 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 Norton virus checker now that I have my preferred form of disaster recovery nailed down).
Far better than Norton Ghost 9 After removing Symantec's garbage from my computer I decided to give ATI a try. Installation went flawlessly. The software has worked without a problem so far. It recognizes my external firewire drive (Norton Ghost did not). It DOES support CD-R. Made a bootable CD and it works as advertised. So far I am very happy. This package has saved me once already from having to re-install Winblows XP. Recommended. I give this 4 instead of 5 stars as I cannot yet comment on their techsupport. Although that cant possibly be worse than Symantec's.
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