Others say...

"Acronis 10 Image Restore Failure"
I am usually the last person to sit down and take the time to write a review of anything. This product let me down in a big way, however, so I feel I should share this for what it is worth to anyone considering this product. I researched backup software a little over two years ago and it came down to Acronis or Norton Ghost. It was a tough choice, but I tilted slightly toward Acronis and hence started with Acronis TrueImage v9. Acronis was forever offering new builds so I kept up with them and upgraded as soon as a new version came out. Finally they quit supporting (via updates) version 9 so I bought version 10 and carried on.

My philosophy with backup software has always been that user friendly and pleasant touchy feely is very nice, but the main thing is that when you need it, the product should work. I did total images regularly along with incremental backups. Although it greatly lengthens the time for backups, I always selected "validate backup", although it is surprisingly not the default. I might add that I am a belt and suspenders type of person so I also use a custom written batch file periodically to capture critical data on my Vista Ultimate Dell computer. It is a good thing I did that, and it may be the only backup I ever use again.

Well just a few short days ago the hard drive in my 3 month old Dell, with Vista Ultimate installed, failed suddenly and totally. It actually disappeared from BIOS as if it literally did not exist. After spending some time to determine what had actually happened I contacted Dell and they said I would have a new hard drive delivered within a few working days. It was currently a Saturday evening and I really did not want to wait for Dell. I like the idea of a second internal hard drive to bring my total to 3 counting the external USB drive, so I went out Sunday morning and bought a new 500 gig hard drive and installed it as a replacement for my failed drive.

Now the fun began. I smugly placed my freshly burned Acronis Bootable Rescue Disk in my DVD drive and booted it. To my chagrin there were three somewhat cryptic choices with no help. One was obviously not applicable, and the one that looked like it was the ideal choice failed to run. Finally I tried it with the 3rd choice and got to a screen that looked like I was getting somewhere. The problem is that it produced choices that worried me since the only copy of my data could conceivably be wiped out if something were to go wrong. At that point I devoted a great deal of time to make another copy of my data using another computer and another hard drive. Now at least I knew that I would not loose my only copy of personal data. Next I spent a lot of time with Acronis "chat" since that is the only way I could get any help. I won't bore you with the details of all that wasted time but suffice it to say it was not a pleasant experience and I felt like there was a lot of passing the buck.

So, now it was me, Acronis, and the machine. I went through all the menu choices and they turned out to be pretty straight forward after I got the nerve to hit that first "Next" button. Now I felt encouraged as the program sat there thinking, but my world pretty well sunk when it quickly came back with "ARCHIVE CORRUPT". Well that was the end of the story. When I created that archive, it completed without errors and flawlessly went through the validation process correctly. The archive remained isolated on an external standalone USB disk drive, so I can think of no reason for this to be corrupt.

In summary you rarely need backup software, but you hate to be without it. You rarely get the chance to actually test it for obvious reasons so you need to choose wisely. Also I recommend you consider separate ways to back up data just in case you prime method fails. As far as Acronis goes, I am through with this product and will start to research others. Good luck with your backup solutions.


"Acronis True Image Excellent Live Chat Help"
I was skeptical that all the claims to this product would be true prior to installing the product and backing up my HD primary partition with the disk image. This version #10 product has EXCELLENT features at an honest price. I went so far as to create an image of my single partition older 40 GB HD. Then, I purchased a 120 GB for my Dell Inspiron and partitioned the drive into 4 partitions, with the primary boot partition set to 40 GB. I copied the saved Acronis Image of the old drive over to this 40 GB partition. I also use one of the partitions for iTunes, another for pictures, and the last for the Acronis Safe Zone, where I daily schedule an automatic disk image backup. The product creates the image with little system overhead demands. You cannot "see" the Safe Zone partition from My Computer, but you can see it from Disk Management.

The Acronis Tech Staff are quick to acknowledge that the best way to backup is with a complete backup, rather than use incremental backups that then must be spliced together. The backup images are compressed, so my 40 GB primary has about 22 GB of actual data that compresses to about 12 GB. The Acronis Safe Zone is in a 30 GB partition, plenty big enough for 2 complete backup images to be saved. The next time I create a backup image, the first image will be overwritten, leaving the latest image and the next oldest image for your backup restore efforts.

The Acronis tech people are an excellent resource and quick to assist via their live chat online sessions, 24x7. The software also allows one to boot from the Acronis Safe Zone by hitting F11 on booting the system. If your primary partition is corrupted and will not boot, just hit F11 and the boot cycle starts for the protected partition. While rebuilding your primary partition with the disk image, you can use the applications stored in the disk image. I may upgrade to version #11 simply to invest in their fine efforts at Acronis.

"Works as Described"
I like this product. I think it could be a little more clear on the file name designation but all in all it does the job quickly and easily.


"Ever Spent Hours Getting Your System Back To What It Was Yesterday"
Many times over the years I have spent hours late into the night trying to fix some little bug that I managed to put into my system. I never had confidence in restore software. Finally I got Norton Ghost - A dream come true. Saved me hours - Then I saw good reviews on Acronis10, but the idea of backup from Windows sounded shakey... But I went with it. Since then I have needed to restore at least ten times on two systems XP and Vista. I never had a failure - Very stable 15minutes to full restore. My only problem now is that sometimes I make some small adjustment or install and do not do a backup before starting; like two days ago when I deleted the Vista documents folder - What a pain, now I am careful to make a backup before doing any change. Make your life better and buy this...

"Time Saver"
I am a working programmer who tends to clutter up his machine in the course of a project with test programs and files. Once a project is finished, I prefer to clean my primary development machine so that I start with a fresh operating system and program base. In the past I have used Norton Ghost to do my base restores. Ghost is ok but has performance issues and ocassionally crashes. After 1 month of using Acronis 10 and 5 restores I am so pleased with the product that I upgraded to version 11. Both Acronis 10 and 11 are reliable and fast. After working about 1 week with version 11 I am even more pleased with this version of the program. The new try and decide feature allows me to install new software (both mine and others) without affecting the host operating system. This allows me to check if a new program will cause some unexpected result without crashing the host system. The only issue I found, is that if you have a Unix/Linux partition along with a Windows partition, when doing an incremental or differential copy the Master Boot Record gets corrupted between both operating systems . Although not a major problem, if you keep a spare copy of your MBR, it does get annoying if you don't realize this is an issue. That is the only reason I give it 4 stars. If you don't run Unix or Linux on the same computer as Windows don't worry about it, you'll never see this problem. Excellent Product.