Acronis True Image 6.0: A Powerful Data Backup & Cloning Tool [Archive]

View Full Version : Acronis True Image 6.0: A Powerful Data Backup & Cloning Tool

damager

08-13-2003, 05:35 PM

Nice review - I use True Image as well, and have been happy with it for the most part. The most glaring weakness right now is the lack of a "Verify Image" capability. According to Acronis, they are working on one, but have no idea when it will be released.

Jacob

08-13-2003, 05:42 PM

Dazbot

08-13-2003, 05:50 PM

One feature I like about this product that I don't think you mentioned in your review is the ability to map a backup as a drive.

This is very useful if you say, uninstall something that removes a shared file that is critical to another application. You can just open the backup file and copy the file required from the backup file. No need to just re-image.

I don't know if ghost can do that yet. I believe PowerQuest recently came out with a version of their imaging software that does this kind of thing too.

Ghost includes Ghost Explorer which allows you to do the same thing, it also allows you to add/remove from images of FAT32 partitions etc but not NTFS or Disk images. But it doesn't like swapping between CDs/DVDs when loading an image. I have to copy them to the PC to access them :cry:

Fuzzy John

08-13-2003, 05:54 PM

I don't know if ghost can do that yet. I believe PowerQuest recently came out with a version of their imaging software that does this kind of thing too.Ghost could do that at least since Ghost 2001. Drive Image can do it as well. Neither one maps a letter drive though. They use their own programs for exploring images.

One drawback I found with Drive Image is that they will not restore a file that is compressed with NTFS. I believe Drive Image will not restore encrypted files either. There is no error message generated. The restore of files seems to go normally but there are no files to be found.

Jacob

08-13-2003, 05:58 PM

I use ghost and DriveImage at work .. but never needed to access a single file or had it installed - we just use it to create and restore images for test systems.

bibap

08-13-2003, 06:02 PM

rlobrecht

08-13-2003, 06:17 PM

I even use it to back up Linux systems. Everything works the same, except you can't mount the image as a drive.

Thefo

08-13-2003, 06:28 PM

I use both Ghost and DeployCenter (Enterprise version of Drive Image but much more powerful) here at work but I'll have to check this out as I always image every PC I own religiously.

egads

08-13-2003, 06:37 PM

Despite what you feel about Drive Image, it is a much more full-featured product IMHO. I've been using it for years (since version 4) and have never had a failure. It has two vital elements that the above software lacks: a scheduler and image verification. I have it scheduled to back up my C drive to my D drive, and my D drive to my C drive, after I go to bed. The next day I just burn the images to a DVD RW.

I find Ghost to be a very "iffy" program. It regularly refuses to make an image citing various arcane problems, but Drive Image does the image just fine. I've given up on Ghost.

I agree 100% I've used all three and DriveImage always just works. We use Ghost at work here and I hate it. DriveImage just added the one thing in my mind that is was missing, backing up to a USB HD. I've not tried it out yet, but hope to soon. True Image is nice and works, but I would use Drive Image and Ghost before it.

ECOslin

08-13-2003, 06:43 PM

I believe in hardware, I believe in Raid. Recently I had two 20gig drives left over from other projects, so I changed my work pc, which already had two 20gig drives setup as Raid1 thru a Promise Fasttrak pci card, to a Raid5 using 4 twenty gigabyte drives.

I used WinXP's backup program to create a compressed copy of my files to another machine on my network. Kinda worked, copied the data, kept rebooting due to an invalid Windows configuration until I re-used my XP cd to recover.

I'd like a good backup method, but I've tried one or two programs that had me burning 6 or more CDr disks and continually swapping between disk 6, disk 1, disk 5, disk 1, disk 6, disk 1, disk 4, disk 1.

Iomega is 'spose to come out with something new, 'WHACK'(iron pipe on head)

Sorry, shouldn't mention the 'I' word, but I need a method of inexpensive and reliable high density backup storage. I haven't tried DVDr high-volume backup burning yet, has anyone? I'm wary of finding that the DVD separated or bubbled while in a stored folder and the data is toast.

I've used Ghost many times over a network by Dos boot disk, I've not tried the most recent versions(in the past two years). Occasionally duplicates would get confused, when configuring twenty classroom PCs from the same image with limited number of network 'named' boot disks.

Edward

T-Will

08-13-2003, 06:48 PM

Sounds like a good program!

This article brings up a question, how many of you guys have a separate file server set up in your homes? What OS do you run and what do you guys use it for?

I was thinking about setting one up as a backup and MP3 storage, but I'd like to hear what everyone else uses a home server for.

Acronis

08-13-2003, 06:51 PM

Thanks for the kind words about Acronis True Image. The shortcomings experssed in the review and subsequent letters are being addressed at this very moment.

You are quite correct about Acronis True Image 6.0 not having a image verification tool built in. However, such a tool will be in the next version, which is due out soon. In the meantime, a free tool is available to registered Acronis True Image users from the Acronis Support Team. Just contact the team at [email protected] and request the check image tool. You will be sent a link and can download the tool.

As for the scheduler, that too is going to be in the next version. There will be many more new features, although I'm not at liberty to discuss them now.

Please check back with Acronis at www.acronis.com for information on the new version later this year.

Jason Dunn

08-13-2003, 06:56 PM

This article brings up a question, how many of you guys have a separate file server set up in your homes? What OS do you run and what do you guys use it for?

I've tried a few, Windows 2000 Server, then Windows 2003 Web Server, but now I'm back to just plain Windows XP Professional on it. I have a 3rd party FTP server installed, and I understand how XP works - 2003 Server was a little much for my needs (and confusing to use). I have my machine connected with only two cables: ethernet and power. I use Remote Desktop to access it, so it can stay safely tucked away in the back room beside my router and cable modem. Works like a charm! I have 200 GB of hard drives in it, so I have enough space for almost anything.

aviator

08-13-2003, 06:56 PM

I got this Acronis True Image after seeing it mentioned here a couple of months back and am well pleased that I did. Since then it has saved me alot of time on several occassions! I'm well pleased with this product.

dhettel

08-13-2003, 07:45 PM

Bob Anderson

08-13-2003, 08:15 PM

After struggling to find a good backup solution for my home network, I decided upon Dantz's Retrospect. http://www.dantz.com/

It is a cool application, even with it's slightly confusing user interface. What I like most is it's network ability, scheduling ability, backup to CD or DVD, and self booting disks BUT most impressive is it's ability to not duplicate backup files.

What does that mean (duplicate backup files?) Well, let's put it this way... let's say you have three machines (two desktops and a laptop) and they all have the same fonts installed... when Dantz builds it's backup catalog it won't duplicate files it already has backed up if they are identical. So instead of having 150 fonts backed up 3 times on your home network, you'll only have one set of 150!!! Same goes with system files too; that's where a HUGE space savings can come from.

Of course, all this power is tempered by the user -- if all you is make backups to DVD, well, then it can't possibly use that "no duplication" feature... but all in all.. if you want a powerful application to do backups this is got all bases covered.

Oh... did I mention Mac support and data verification?

This is one amazing product. I couldn't believe all it could do until I got my hands on it!!!

wilkinsjme

08-13-2003, 09:59 PM

I had this same problem. Were you trying to create a backup to an NTFS drive using the CD-R boot disk?
That is what I tried to do and have been told this currently isn't possible at the time. I've been able to image to a FAT32 drive with the CD-R though.

When using the CD-R boot disc, I was unable to back up a partition to another partition on the same hard drive - the error reported was that the "drive is read-only".

clarkth

08-14-2003, 12:47 AM

I use Handy Backup v3.9 for weekly backups (I'm on the road most of the week), and Acronis for an Image copy of my entire hard drive once a month. This works out very well for my laptop and iPaq 2825 also as I connect it to my LAN and back them up once a week to an exteranl hard drive which holds all of my backups (disconnected when I'm not backing up).

hshortt

08-14-2003, 09:23 AM

You know I need a tool like this and reading this review and the comments posted I felt that Acronis might be the software for me.

So I get the trial, install it, reboot and then it tells me it cannot create images of Windows Dynamic Disks, therfore, for me it's totally useless.

Damn thing.

Jason Dunn

08-14-2003, 02:51 PM

So I get the trial, install it, reboot and then it tells me it cannot create images of Windows Dynamic Disks, therfore, for me it's totally useless.

Interesting - you're the first person I've heard of that uses Dynamic Disks. :-) I've always wondered about it, but I've never known enough about Dynamic Disks to know if it's a smart move or not (in terms of cost/performance/benefits).

hshortt

08-15-2003, 11:21 AM

Wow, really?? Well just two of the things that can be done with dynamic disks are

Combining free space on one drive to another drive to create a bigger volume, thereby extending the partition sizes.

Mount points - When accessing a particular folder on a share it's actual reference is a completly different partition. Very useful.

Some offical information from https://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/proddocs/datacenter/dm_dynamic_overview.asp

Dynamic disks and volumes

Dynamic disks provide features that basic disks
basic disks
A physical disk that can be accessed by MS-DOS and all Windows-based operating systems. Basic disks can contain up to four primary partitions, or three primary partitions and an extended partition with multiple logical drives. If you want to create partitions that span multiple disks, you must first convert the basic disk to a dynamic disk by using Disk Management or the Diskpart.exe command-line tool.do not, such as the ability to create volumes that span multiple disks (spanned and striped volumes), and the ability to create fault tolerant fault tolerant
The ability of computer hardware or software to ensure data integrity when hardware failures occur. Fault-tolerant features appear in many server operating systems and include mirrored volumes, RAID-5 volumes, and server clusters.volumes (mirrored and RAID-5 volumes). All volumes on dynamic disks are known as dynamic volumes.

There are five types of dynamic volumes: simple
simple
A dynamic volume made up of disk space from a single dynamic disk. A simple volume can consist of a single region on a disk or multiple regions of the same disk that are linked together. If the simple volume is not a system volume or boot volume, you can extend it within the same disk or onto additional disks. If you extend a simple volume across multiple disks, it becomes a spanned volume. You can create simple volumes only on dynamic disks. Simple volumes are not fault tolerant, but you can mirror them to create mirrored volumes on computers running the Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003 families of operating systems., spanned spanned
A dynamic volume consisting of disk space on more than one physical disk. You can increase the size of a spanned volume by extending it onto additional dynamic disks. You can create spanned volumes only on dynamic disks. Spanned volumes are not fault tolerant and cannot be mirrored., striped striped
A dynamic volume that stores data in stripes on two or more physical disks. Data in a striped volume is allocated alternately and evenly (in stripes) across the disks. Striped volumes offer the best performance of all the volumes that are available in Windows, but they do not provide fault tolerance. If a disk in a striped volume fails, the data in the entire volume is lost. You can create striped volumes only on dynamic disks. Striped volumes cannot be mirrored or extended., mirrored mirrored
A fault-tolerant volume that duplicates data on two physical disks. A mirrored volume provides data redundancy by using two identical volumes, which are called mirrors, to duplicate the information contained on the volume. A mirror is always located on a different disk. If one of the physical disks fails, the data on the failed disk becomes unavailable, but the system continues to operate in the mirror on the remaining disk. You can create mirrored volumes only on dynamic disks on computers running the Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003 families of operating systems. You cannot extend mirrored volumes., and RAID-5 RAID-5
A fault-tolerant volume with data and parity striped intermittently across three or more physical disks. Parity is a calculated value that is used to reconstruct data after a failure. If a portion of a physical disk fails, Windows recreates the data that was on the failed portion from the remaining data and parity. You can create RAID-5 volumes only on dynamic disks on computers running the Windows 2000 Server or Windows Server 2003 families of operating systems. You cannot mirror or extend RAID-5 volumes. In Windows NT 4.0, a RAID-5 volume was known as a striped set with parity.. Mirrored and RAID-5 volumes are fault tolerant and are available only on computers running Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, Windows 2000 Datacenter Server, or the Windows Server 2003 family of operating systems. You can, however, use a computer running Windows XP Professional to remotely create mirrored and RAID-5 volumes on these operating systems.

Regardless of whether the dynamic disk uses the master boot record (MBR)
master boot record (MBR)
The first sector on a hard disk, which begins the process of starting the computer. The MBR contains the partition table for the disk and a small amount of executable code called the master boot code.or GUID partition table (GPT) GUID partition table (GPT)
A disk-partitioning scheme that is used by the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) in Itanium-based computers. GPT offers more advantages than master boot record (MBR) partitioning because it allows up to 128 partitions per disk, provides support for volumes up to 18 exabytes in size, allows primary and backup partition tables for redundancy, and supports unique disk and partition IDs (GUIDs).partition style, you can create up to 2,000 dynamic volumes, although the recommended number of dynamic volumes is 32 or less.

For information about how to manage dynamic volumes, see Manage dynamic volumes.

entropy1980

08-19-2003, 07:30 PM

DriveImage has added DVD-R support along with Firewire and USB drive support, on top of the network imaging and Drive Explorer... It is the most complete solutions available.... my $.02

Jason Dunn

08-13-2004, 05:00 PM

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.acronis.com/products/trueimage/' target='_blank'>http://www.acronis.com/products/trueimage/</a> </div><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/trueimage6_boxshot_large.jpg" /> What is Acronis True Image? Let me quote right from their Web site: "Acronis True Image 6.0 is your ultimate data insurance policy! It takes an exact image of your hard disk drive or separate partitions for complete backup, and allows you to restore all of their contents, including operating systems, programs, personal data and settings. In the event of fatal software or hardware failure Acronis True Image protects your data, even when ordinary file backup software does not work." That's it in a nutshell. If you want to see a full features list, <a href="http://www.acronis.com/products/trueimage/">go check out their Web site</a>. This is a Quick Look article, designed to give you a brief overview of the tool and what I thought about it in practice. I've been using Acronis True Image for several months now, and it's an amazing tool that I wouldn't want to be without - but there were a few painful bumps and bruises along the way that you should be aware of (and hopefully avoid).<!> The Best Boot-Up CD I Own The single most useful feature that Acronis True Image has for my needs is the bootable CD that allows me to image entire partitions or drives across my network. This might be old news to Norton Ghost users, but this was the first time I had ever experienced such bliss and I was thrilled with it. Every few months, I format my hard drive and start over with a clean install of Windows XP (I'm very hard on my OS and routinely fill it up with junk), and having something other than a blank slate to start over with is very helpful. This is where Acronis True Image comes in. I installed XP, patched it up, installed all my favourite applications, configured and tweaked everything to my liking, then took an snapshot image of the machine in that state. As part of the snapshot, you can choose how much compression to use, password protect it, and add a very verbose text description - this is an excellent place to list what builds of the software you've installed, etc. When I want to return to that pristine state, I boot up using the True Image CD, pick the image from my network server, and in under an hour I'm back up and running. I can't overstate how useful and powerful this one feature is. The CD boot disc is impressive - it has a full graphic user interface, mouse control (even with a drop shadow) and works exactly like the Windows application. From the boot disc, it was able to recognize my external Firewire DVD-R and burn CD-Rs through it. I'd love to see a native DVD burning driver though, to make things easier for those of us with DVD burners. More Than Just a Pretty Boot CD The boot disc is only part of the equation though - this application will allow you to back up Windows from within Windows. This is no small feat and something that many backup programs can't accomplish. You can even continue to use your computer while it's being backed up - I haven't tested this myself, but that's what their marketing department claims. :wink: And speaking of their marketing department, I'm sure this isn't something they want to see me write, but once you've created that boot CD, it's a powerful tool unto itself - even on computers that don't have True Image installed. I've used it on more than one occasion to make an image of another computer I've been working on just in case I mess something up. This makes it a good tool to have in your emergency toolkit. Not Entirely Perfect... There's room for improvement though. I'm a product manager at heart, as much as I really like True Image, it could use some enhancements. :D I should note that all of these comments are based on my use of the product over the past few months - there's a newer version that I haven't checked out yet that just might address them. <a href="http://www.regnow.com/softsell/visitor.cgi?action=site&affiliate=24298&vendor=4864&ref=http://www.acronis.com/files/trueimage6.0_d_en.exe">Download the demo</a> and see if it does. One of the worst bugs I found is that when it runs into a problem during an imaging process, it gives you can error - then promptly quits the whole process and exits. It doesn't matter if you're 99% finished - it just stops. As you can imagine this can be quite frustrating! I was doing a backup over the network and halfway through the process received this error: "Failed to write data to the image archive file. A possible reason may be poor media quality." Poor media quality? Over a network? Unlikely. :roll: Possible reasons for this failure could be packet loss or insufficient drive space on the network drive. Regardless, the error message should be more descriptive, and it should have an option to retry or even restart using a different media source/location. Simply exiting isn't a graceful failure. It turned out that I didn't have enough drive space on the network drive I was pushing the image onto, but the software should check for the estimated space needed before it starts. The process can also mysteriously end in the middle of a backup - I was burning a 1.8 gig partition image, and right after I put in disc three, it exited and rebooted without warning. I tried again, but there were some strange slow-downs during the process - during the burn of disc two the progress indicator paused for several minutes without explanation. I nearly cancelled the backup because I thought it had locked up, but it started up again just before I hit cancel. There are also unhelpful errors when backing up to a CD-R: if you enter an incorrect file name, it gives you an error message stating "Please enter another file name". It doesn't tell you how the file name is wrong or what structure it needs to have (here's a hint: you need to have the proper extension on the end of the file name). No Data/Media Verification? Ouch! Lastly, there seems to be no form of data and media verification. I spent 30 minutes backing up a partition, and the process completed successfully. I rebooted, then tried to restore that same partition. I put in disc one, and it sat there scanning the disc without any noticeable activity for several minutes. It then gave an error message and asked for disc two. I put in disc two, and it took over three minutes before this error message popped up: "The drive is not ready. A possible reason may be poor media quality." I'm finding this out NOW? Woe is the user who does a backup and thinks it's valid without first testing it! When using the CD-R boot disc, I was unable to back up a partition to another partition on the same hard drive - the error reported was that the "drive is read-only". I confirmed that the partition I was trying to use is formatted and can be written to, but the software refused to write to the drive. This leads me to believe that you cannot create an image file on the same hard drive as your source - though it would be nice if the warning simply said that! But the most frustrating problem of all is demonstrated by the photo below: <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/bad burns.jpg" /> Those are all of the bad discs I burned trying to get it to work. What was the problem? I had a new 32x CD-R burner at the time (I now have a 48x), but like many people I try to buy my CD-Rs in bulk. I had a big spindle of 100 discs certified for 24x burn speeds. Guess what? True Image burns at the fastest speed possible for the CD-R, and doesn't give you the option to slow it down. It took me weeks and all of those wasted CDs, and several email messages with Acronis tech support (which is excellent by the way), to figure out the problem. The solution here is to allow the user to specify the burn speed, just the way they can in any good CD burning application. It's also important to remember that this tool has no scheduling feature - it's not designed to be an incremental file-based backup tool like <a href="http://www.handybackup.net">Handy Backup</a>. True Image works nicely in conjunction with Handy Backup - I use Handy Backup daily, and True Image weekly or monthly (depending if I remember - this is why scheduling is so critical for file backups!). Bottom Line: A Must-Have Tool Despite my seemingly long list of gripes above, I couldn't do without this tool. The CD-R burning speed was the most painful glitch, and as long as you have the right speed media to match your CD-R, you won't get bitten by that one (or just back up across a network). I tend to only back up across my network now, and thus the tool is faultless for me. If Acronis can polish up the issues I mentioned above, this application would be almost perfect. The product can be purchased directly from Acronis for only $44.95 (and you can <a href="http://www.regnow.com/softsell/visitor.cgi?action=site&affiliate=24298&vendor=4864&ref=http://www.acronis.com/files/trueimage6.0_d_en.exe">download a free demo</a> - just be aware that you can't restore the data using it, only back it up) - I consider that to be a bargain considering the sheer power of this application. Acronis is also excellent about <a href="http://www.acronis.com/support/updates/">keeping the application up to date</a>, which is highly commendable. It's one of my pet peeves that companies like PowerQuest seem to come out with a new version of Partition Magic every eight months and ask their customers to pay for minor improvements that should be free (like support for larger hard drives). Acronis True Image is a permanent part of my toolkit, and it should be of yours too. [Affiliate]