As far as ease of use goes, this program is top notch. Everything is laid out beautifully, with easy-to-follow wizards. It is a snap to schedule automatic backups. TI7 has the ability to do `incremental' backups (this is probably available in all current imaging software). Incremental images save you time because they take less disk space. First you take a primary image. Then when you want to update the image, TI7 will make a new image file that contains only the changes. I usually let about 7 incrementals accumulate in my backups folder before I delete the lot and start with a new primary image.

While my wife was writing her thesis I accidentally took out some of her files. This lead to a sweaty recovery process, and my resolution to find a good backup method. This is what I settled on:

0) buy a good imaging program.
1) separate the System files from the Documents files by creating partitions on the main hard drive.
2) install a second hard drive to store the backups on.
3) use TI7 to schedule daily incremental images of the Documents partition. Back up the System partition after major changes only.

Some notes:
- For the partitioning I used Bootit NG, an excellent shareware product.
- For a good disucssion on how to move Documents to the new partition see http://www.pulborough.freeuk.com/movedata.htm - it works for XP as well despite what the header says.
- You can also store the backups on CD or DVD, but installing a second HD is quicker and give you more flexibility.
- I moved the system page file to the second hard drive. There is no reason to include the page file in your System partition backups. Ditto for the Internet Explorer temp files.
- I have several large media files I keep on the hard drive (home movies). I created a separate partition for these. Keeping them in the main Documents partition would make backup of that partition take longer.

"True Image 7 rocks on my machine"
Installed True Image 7.0 on machine with Windows XP - all updates as of 4/27/04.

This software performs flawlessly and saves the active partion to USB Drive, Firewire drive and to both DVD +RW and DVD -RW without any problems. I have it setup to save to USB and Firewire each night via the schedule task feature.

I have brought the image back from all sources without any problem and the ability to "mount" the image as a drive and bring back an individual file is powerfull.

I cannot recommend this software enough.

"It just plain didn't work"
I purchased TrueImage 7 in January. Tried to do a backup and got the error "General operation error on partition C: code 33 'Unable to create volume snapshot'" each and every time I tried.

After two months of communications with Acronis tech support, during which I sent them a complete System.nfo dump of my system details and they escalated the problem to the development team, I finally asked for a refund since they could not come up with a solution to the problem.

They wanted to Netmeeting or Carbon Copy me next in order to take control of my machine to determine the problem, but I figured that if it takes the developers two months of research and they still can't figure out my problem, then I've pretty much lost confidence in the product anyway, even IF they were to finally get it to function. I don't want to have any surprises happen when I'm using something drastic like a disk utility program, and the initial errors I experienced and the tech support team's inability to fix those errors after a long period of time, just completely destroyed my confidence in the product.

Too bad, because Ghost is absolute crap (the expensive corporate edition is fine, but the personal edition is nearly worthless), and I've heard that even the latest version of DriveImage has some problems with XP Service Pack 1 too. So TrueImage sounded like just the ticket.

Maybe I'll revisit this product when 8.0 comes out...

"Asked for my money back"
I had a previous version. Didn't use it. Liked another product more. But now I have external harddrives for backup and wanted a product that would support external drives on a USB port.
Reviews said Acronis 7.0 was the only program that supported USB drives when one boots from CD or diskette, though others support them when running in Windows. So I decided to upgrade my existing software to the new version. Also, the website promised a free copy of another product in the package.

The bonus software didn't come. The product couldn't complete the initial install. It kept encountering errors trying to write the bootable CD. Bypassing creating the bootable, I did complete the install and tried to run it. It could not, in two attempts, go successfully to completion. No restart ability on a 2 hour job, just a curt message and quit.

Figured there might be a fix. Went to the site, and there was. Dated July, 2002. Seems strange for software downloaded today.

Got the fix. When I installed it, it reverted me back to the former version. Tried several times. Did a new download to be sure I had the right one. Same result. I did a CRC on the 7.0 update and found it was identical to the 6.0 update. Explains why it kept reverting, and also how poor the tech support is.

Left a message. I'm asking for my money back.