Acronis Software comment

[Gene E. Bloch]

...

I can't even uninstall the Accronis demo (it's not really a "trial
version"). It came with no uninstall routine, and using Vista to
uninstall does not delete it from the Vista list of programs to be
uninstalled. All I can find are a few traces of Acronis environment
statements in the registry, but the damn thing is still on the Vista
program uninstall list and won't go away.

Acronis 8 crashed my new computer (this one) badly. I thought I would
have to use the manufacturer's recovery disk, but after a couple of tries,
Windows recovered my system. Whew...

So then I tried Acronis 2009. It seemed to work, but it ran drivers(?) in
the background that did some strange things with an Acronis image of my old
computer, including messing with Search Indexing and causing some drastic &
scary slowdowns. It's gone now

I currently have Macrium Reflect installed. I have no complaints, except
that I want a clone instead of a proprietary image.

Gene - let us know how it went with Casper. I'm thinking of buying it
but as you said, they don't have a 64-bit Vista trial version. Oddly
enough, you have to buy it in order to try using the bundled 64-bit
version.

Why? "Ours is not to reason why, ours is to buy, buy, buy." :-D

Seriously, though, I'll be looking for your observations.

It will be a few days. My backup situation got very chaotic, due to choices
made by the d*mn system administrator (that's me, of course!). Part of the
problem is I am dealing with three computers now, and beyond that, I want
to have safe & accessible backups of my previous computer, which was an
iMac with Windows XP in a virtual machine. So in some sense it's five
computers, with backups scattered across a few very disorganized external
drives.

I want to get to where the backups are nicely organized and where I have a
clean & accessible backup (or maybe two) of each of the five systems, also
thereby freeing up a couple of drives, before I switch to the new software.
Although a good backup of the iMac will serve as two backups, since I can
get at the Windows stuff via the VM. BTW, the iMac B/U software works a lot
like Casper, as I mentioned somewhere in this thread, which was another
reason I sought out Casper: I like that approach (Clone vs. image? I still
haven't researched that.)

Being a hypocrite (I guess), I get annoyed at people who can't do a better
job at what they're doing than I am doing with all of this

Meanwhile - and seriously - I am very encouraged by Anna's remarks.

 

[Woger]

I don't think it's free anymore.

Yes it is go look.

 

[Tony M]

I am currently using TrueImage 2009 and have not had any problems with it. I
have restored a file from the archive as well as doing a complete Image
restore.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Here's a too long, yet quite incomplete, summary of my recent experiences
w/ backup SW, for everyone who has seen my other posts in this thread - and
cares

When I transferred my older TrueImage 8 from my older XP computer to the
new Vista computer (after uninstalling it from XP), my computer got
seriously locked up and wouldn't boot. Magically, Vista's automated
recovery got me back, after several false starts and a lot of sweat on my
part.

So I did the smart thing (sarcasm) and got the 2009 version, whereupon very
strange things happened to my Windows Search. I had an Acronis image of my
old computer as a file on drive C:, and Acronis made Windows Search scan
*forever* through a virtual drive from that image that somehow Acronis
automatically mounted. I could find no way to stop that (I tried a few), so
I uninstalled Acronis and got Macrium.

OTOH, Macrium only mounts images as read-only, so you can't change
permissions. To read my Macrium images, I had to log on as the
administrator (not *an* administrator account, *the* administrator).

On the third hand, although Acronis can change permissions on an image, it
takes roughly 32 months to do it on the 45GB image I had. Well, almost an
hour, but still a long time.

Casper is OK, if maybe a tad slow, but I had gotten enamored of the idea of
having older versions of files available, which both Acronis and Macrium
can do if you do incremental Bus (also Shadow Protect, I believe, but it's
expensive compared to the others).

At this moment, I again have Acronis installed (the most recent version),
and I no longer keep that Acronis image file on drive C:.

Luckily, I've got a really full head of hair for a man my age, so I can
afford to tear lots of it out.

The above is pretty much representative of the obsessive-compulsive, yet
unproductive, approach that I take to some things

 

[Mike Torello]

Here's a too long, yet quite incomplete, summary of my recent experiences
w/ backup SW, for everyone who has seen my other posts in this thread - and
cares

[snip]

If you think your story was "too long" (88 lines, including about 40
quoted), compare to most posts from Anna - which often bloat to
300 lines.

I've used Acronis True Image in every version since 8 and have yet to
have a problem of any kind with it.

I also use Casper to maintain an internal clone (backup in case of
total drive failure) of my system drive.

I can recommend both... but only recommend Casper for what I am using
it for. Most people (contrary to Anna's claim) will find Acronis True
Image to be more comprehensive (it will clone AND do either
full/incremental imaging or it can backup your choice of data), and it
is much less expensive than Casper.

 

[Michael]

Here's a too long, yet quite incomplete, summary of my recent experiences
w/ backup SW, for everyone who has seen my other posts in this thread -
and
cares

[snip]

If you think your story was "too long" (88 lines, including about 40
quoted), compare to most posts from Anna - which often bloat to
300 lines.

I've used Acronis True Image in every version since 8 and have yet to
have a problem of any kind with it.

I also use Casper to maintain an internal clone (backup in case of
total drive failure) of my system drive.

I can recommend both... but only recommend Casper for what I am using
it for. Most people (contrary to Anna's claim) will find Acronis True
Image to be more comprehensive (it will clone AND do either
full/incremental imaging or it can backup your choice of data), and it
is much less expensive than Casper.

And if you have a Seagate or Maxtor drive it's free, albeit and older
version.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/

If you have a Seagate it's called DiskWizard and if it's a Maxtor it's
called MaxBlast.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Here's a too long, yet quite incomplete, summary of my recent experiences
w/ backup SW, for everyone who has seen my other posts in this thread - and
cares

[snip]

If you think your story was "too long" (88 lines, including about 40
quoted), compare to most posts from Anna - which often bloat to
300 lines.

I do think it was too long, meaning I felt that a lot of people wouldn't
read it, and besides, brevity is the soul of wit

I've used Acronis True Image in every version since 8 and have yet to
have a problem of any kind with it.

I also use Casper to maintain an internal clone (backup in case of
total drive failure) of my system drive.

I can recommend both... but only recommend Casper for what I am using
it for. Most people (contrary to Anna's claim) will find Acronis True
Image to be more comprehensive (it will clone AND do either
full/incremental imaging or it can backup your choice of data), and it
is much less expensive than Casper.

Thanks for telling us your experience.

Your dual scheme sounds good to me, so I'll adopt it - but on external
drives (by preference - but anyway, I can't easily get inside this
all-in-one box).

Casper has a three-computer license that includes three licenses for the
boot disk, for only $70. Unfortunately, said boot disk won't boot on my
laptop, and Casper's tech support person seems not to have known how to fix
it. He did respond quite quickly to my requests for help, though. Points
for that

 

[Mike Torello]

Here's a too long, yet quite incomplete, summary of my recent experiences
w/ backup SW, for everyone who has seen my other posts in this thread - and
cares

[snip]

If you think your story was "too long" (88 lines, including about 40
quoted), compare to most posts from Anna - which often bloat to
300 lines.

I do think it was too long, meaning I felt that a lot of people wouldn't
read it, and besides, brevity is the soul of wit

I've used Acronis True Image in every version since 8 and have yet to
have a problem of any kind with it.

I also use Casper to maintain an internal clone (backup in case of
total drive failure) of my system drive.

I can recommend both... but only recommend Casper for what I am using
it for. Most people (contrary to Anna's claim) will find Acronis True
Image to be more comprehensive (it will clone AND do either
full/incremental imaging or it can backup your choice of data), and it
is much less expensive than Casper.

Thanks for telling us your experience.

Your dual scheme sounds good to me, so I'll adopt it - but on external
drives (by preference - but anyway, I can't easily get inside this
all-in-one box).

Casper has a three-computer license that includes three licenses for the
boot disk, for only $70. Unfortunately, said boot disk won't boot on my
laptop, and Casper's tech support person seems not to have known how to fix
it. He did respond quite quickly to my requests for help, though. Points
for that

I only use Casper on my desktop. I use Acronis True Image on both my
desktop and my notebook... no extra charge.

You don't need the boot disk to do cloning to either an internal or an
external drive with Casper. You can perform the first and subsequent
clones right from within Windows... with the subsequent clones being
much faster (and one-click).

What you MIGHT (WILL?) need it for is to "reverse clone" the external
drive to a new internal drive, or to a corrupted internal drive.

In my situation, where I clone to a second (of four) internal drives,
I do it all from within Windows, and if the primary drive fails, the
cloned drive is second in line in the boot order.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

You don't need the boot disk to do cloning to either an internal or an
external drive with Casper. You can perform the first and subsequent
clones right from within Windows... with the subsequent clones being
much faster (and one-click).

Of course. Although I didn't set up the one-click scheme. I like to go
through the steps - I guess in order to increase the likelihood of an error

What you MIGHT (WILL?) need it for is to "reverse clone" the external
drive to a new internal drive, or to a corrupted internal drive.

Which is why I wanted it to boot from the optical drive...

I often let things percolate in my internal drive (brain) for a while. Thus
I realized that just because I couldn't boot the CD on the laptop didn't
mean I couldn't "reverse clone" (nice phrase). Just pop the laptop's HDD
into a USB->SATA adapter, plug it and the backup drive into a working
computer's USB ports, and clone away.