Acronis True Image

Nelski

You v v clever guys have convinced me that I need to buy Acronis True image to back my PC (particularly after the inbuilt windows one told me it would take 14 days to complete the back up!!!!)
My question is which one do I buy as the descriptions are all over my very head, (if you remember I am the techno phobe!)
I am running XP pro.
Thanks

shrek101

This is the one I use

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

Backup 4 pcs with it. I just create 2gb file sizes and put 2x2gb on to dvdr once back up is completed.

wolfman

Think I might try out the trial version myself. I know it's much better than Norton Ghost as far as network admins are concerned.

I've always used Norton Ghost 2003. I've seen Norton Ghost 2005, but it's too heavy, I didn't like it. I like 2003 because it's light and easy to use. It does exactly what I want, so the only improvements would be speed and image size. I'll definitely give Acronis a try though.

shrek101

One good thing about Acronis is that you can mount the image with the program. I never liekd Ghost, I use Drive image until Symantec bought them out too.

wolfman

Just trying Acronis now. Running into a few problems though. It doesn't recognise my Primary drive when in the bootup recovery os. Also sometimes it works and others not regarding my usb mouse and keyboard. Am on google at the moment. Was impressed initially as there's so much you can do, but if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

wolfman

Hmmm. If you have SATA hard drives and SP2 I'd consider steering clear of Acronis True Image for now.

v8 (the latest) is very buggy, and there are numerous posts on their forums about problems with SP2 (for XP) and SATA configurations. I myself am having this problem. I've installed the trial, made an image, then loaded up the bootable recovery mode to see if I'd have the potential to restore, and it couldn't pick up my hard drives.

If you do go for a version of Acronis, look up one of the v7 builds, they are much less buggy from what I've read. In the mean time I'm going to stick with Norton Ghost 2003, which works perfectly with XP SP2 and SATA.

avantra

Tip: Personal computer world magazine give a full version of Arconis True Image 8.0 on their cover cd on the June edition, I get it before the shops so should be out soon. For all the money savers:thats only £3.25 for Arconis TI instead of £29 .

...And I do use version 7.0 as never bother to upgrade.. what version 8.0 cand do that ver7 can't do?

shrek101

I don't yet have any SATA drives so hence I cant confirm nor deny that problems may happen. I works fine on 4 pcs I have with IDE though, all with sp2 and different configurations.

Perhaps when version 9 coems out it will address these issues and any other. It would be nice to have it automatically save images to cd/dvd

wolfman

It does seem like a great application, and looks much better than Norton Ghost. For me though, it doesn't work, and Norton Ghost is working fine anyway. Think I'll wait til version 9 like you say.