Best Imaging Backup Program I've Ever Used
Written: Mar 28 '05 (Updated Mar 31 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Cheap, powerful, useful, self-bootable or from within windows.
Cons: Really, none that aren't inherent in image backup software.
The Bottom Line: If you want an easy way to backup, and don't want to worry about which individual files you need, this is the best choice.
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| grimjack2's Full Review: Acronis True Image 8.0 ( Windows ) |
I'm currently doing QA work for a company where I constantly destroy my windows partition, modify partitions, and need to quickly change my machine between different service pack variations of Windows 2000 and XP.
Up until I found Acronis, I was using PowerQuest's Drive Image off of a USB floppy.
No longer.
Acronis True Image is an incredibly handy tool that should save you time and make your life easier.
How an Image backup program differs from a File backup program is simple. A File backup program copies the files and folders that you want it to. An Image backup program copies over entire hard drives, sector by sector. The way Windows has primary files that cannot be modified or accessed while within Windows makes it almost impossible to do a true complete file backup for the average person. Acronis lets you copy the entire partition into an easy to store and access file.
This was rated in both PC Magazine and PC World as being better than Symantec Ghost and Power Quest. Having used all three, I agree. It is definitely faster and has more features than either of those.
One thing I liked is how it will create a bootable CD that works great. I believe it boots into a linux environment, which allows you to work your mouse and keyboard just fine to select options and browse your hard drive partitions. This is a much slower 'environment' than my XP one, but it is often necessary to do a restore without loading up windows.
The program actually runs just fine from within windows, and I use it whenever I'm writing an image or restoring any partition other than the one my OS is installed on.
These are some of the powerful features it has:
Images are virtual drives
Reads / writes images across the network
Partition sizes can be modified
Incremental image backups
Compression
In more detail:
When restoring an image, you have the option of decreasing or increasing the partition size.
When making images from within windows, it automatically knows to exclude the swap file and hibernation file. You can also have it ignore other files if you want. This saves a lot of time, and allows you to image from within windows without worrying about having a huge image due to the partition file being included.
When you boot from the CD, you have the option to restore partitions across the network. (I tried this, and it saw the workgroup network with no problem!) If you are in a large company and you have several identical machines, you could make one perfect, image it, and then copy the image across networks to the other machines.
Another neat feature is being able to browse stored images as if they were virtual drives. (Very handy if you just need to examine a file to see if something has been modified, or grab a single file that you lost.) It is a nice 'environment' to try and delete files or examine for viruses, etc..
There are plenty of integrity checks and log recording options for those of you who are paranoid.
A really cool feature is to create incremental images, which is a second image that only contains the sectors changed since a previous image. This is something I could see using as I make smaller and slight temporary changes with drivers, virus scans, programs installed, etc.. The best scenario to explain this is where I image the machine when it is new, then do another backup after I've added a service pack or two. And then maybe another one after I've installed a bunch of new applications. These smaller backups are much faster than re-doing the whole partition from scratch each time, although even that really only takes minutes.
I could even do quick incremental backups every night, the way some people do their file backups.
Overall, it is a wonderfully helpful tool for those who need or want to backup frequently.
Recommended:
Yes
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grimjack2
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Location: San Rafael, CA, Marin County
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Film is my favorite art form. I live a life of constant amelioration.
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