Acronis True Image thoughts and questions

[Deckard]

Hello everyone,

did anyone check the Acronis forums before purchasing True Image?

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=65

I was planning to purchase the Version 9, but what I have read there scared the hell out of me. It looks like it's a quite buggy software.

I know, this kind of software is being developed continously, but in my opinion, there is very little room for error, when it comes to hard drive imaging and partitioning.

Lost data can cause more trouble than one can imagine.

For those, who are using True Image, I'll have a couple of questions;

1) What version are you using?
2) How big are your hard drive images?
3) Did you test the images to see whether they work or not?
4) Did you test the Rescue Media CD that you have created with True Image for functionality?

Thanks taking time and replying in advance.

Regards
Alex

[s0larian]

A friend of me tried to restore an Aconis 8 Image once and it didn't work. Same happend for me with Rescue and Recovery 2 (I got a bluescreen during the restore process from an external USB drive, but I think the USB harddisk was defect somehow). So my advice is: never just believe what other people are telling. To be really sure you must do a full recovery process yourself at least once! Just making backups doesn't do the job, if you never tried to restore a backup.

[leoblob]

This is just one guy's experience...

I have v8.0 and I've used it to clone hard drives... both 40GB and 80GB. It's worked perfectly. I've actually taken out my original drive, put in the cloned drive, and all worked just as it should. I've probably done this 5 times (I like to experiment/tinker) and each time, the cloned drive worked perfectly. In one case, I'm even running a clone of a clone, with no problems. My OS is WIN2K.

I got the recommendation to use this software from this forum, and for me, it turned out to be an excellent suggestion.

I have not tried the Rescue Media CD, so I don't have any experience with that.

[Nolonemo]

I use v8.

I've cloned a bunch of drives with no problem.

Once I had a corrupted backup image, not sure why it happened.

My current practice for backup is to image my TP drive over a network twice, once to each of the hard drives in my desktop. When I image I split into 1.4GB chunks, partly because of supersition that corruption is less likely, but also so that I can burn the image to DVD if I go on the road. You should always verify the image after creating, but I don't always (I image once every week or two and keep the two most recent images, so I have considerable redundancy).

You should test the boot CD created with Acronis. On one build, the mouse didn't work well in full mode (I believe you need to boot into full mode to see the CD/DVD drive in the TP). The next build solved the problem.

There do seem to be some reports of problems with corruption and external USB drives. If you can't backup to a networked machine, I'd get a second HD to pop into the ultrabay for backup.

All in all a very solid program for me, one which I recommend highly. My gripe with v9 is that they didn't enable burning to DVD without having third party packet-writing software installed on the machine. No reason for me to upgrade.

[d lehmann]

I still use Ti7 and works flawlessly for me. I have done bunches of drives. I preferr to image over a network from the boot cd with tib file sizes of 700mb so they can be burned to cd or dvd with a reliable burn prog of your choice.
A bare xppro install ends up being 2.8gig for me.
The only way to be sure if it works is to do an actual restore to a spare hdrive. Like you said you can't take chances.
If you buy v9 now, apparently they will also give you v8 free and it is not buggy, although it will not have support for some of the newest raid controllers etc, but this shouldn't affect a thinkpad. This happens every time they release a new version. It seems new versions are released when they need more money and not when a new version is ready. I would suggest not installing the prog, but just running from the boot cd.
BTW, if you buy a 2nd hdrive adapter from ibm, it comes with an image propram all for less than 50 bucks. It works perfectly. The odd thing is that it looks identical to Acronis, but called ezgig made by Apricorn, a much older company than Acronis. Perhaps some of the programmers ventured on their own to create Acronis.
So buy ti9, and get Ti8 that works now and wait 6 months to switch to Ti9 when it's fixed, or get the adapter from ibm.

[Deckard]

Thanks for the replies so far.

It looks like the Version 8 is working fine. I'll go and try to find a copy, but all the shops I've looked at have TI9.

If I'm correct, the latest build is 937, can anyone acknowledge this?

[d lehmann]

Thanks for the replies so far.

It looks like the Version 8 is working fine. I'll go and try to find a copy, but all the shops I've looked at have TI9.

If I'm correct, the latest build is 937, can anyone acknowledge this?

Perhaps you didn't catch this part; Let me explain in more detail.

Buy and download Acronis TI9 from their website. You will also be allowed to download TI8 (the latest version) at the same time. Use TI8 until TI9 is bug free (probably a few months). Since you will be a licensed owner of TI9 too, you will be entitled to all of the TI9 updates, which I am sure there will be a lot of. Then you should be able to stay current for approx a year and a half, until they roll out TI10.

[Deckard]

d lehmann, indeed I missed that part. That sounds like to be the best solution.

Thanks.