Re: Bad Experience with Acronis Backup Software

Ken

I have not tried Save 7 restore but my understanding is that it is an
improved "Goback", i.e. constant mirroring which will get you back to your
last good message but will not help if there is a disk hardware crash. If it
is like GoBack it will considerably slow performance.

Ghost 10 works very well, not as fully featured as Acronis and it has to go
out of Windows to perform some actions. You may have difficulties installing
it, or it may go wrong after Windows update because it needs specific
version of Microsoft's ".net framework &hot fix 1 thereto".
For a single user I would recommend Acronis Home vs. 10. The only drawback
is that it disables shadow copy (which is enabled in the Work Station
version) which means that tape backup and file sync programs make not work
properly

John


"Ken_T" <nofear451-techie@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1170048055.913455.147320@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hello John Butler,

I consider myself no more than a beginner, so I appreciate your
pointing out a couple of the weaknesses of Acronis True Image. I have
had a gut level distrust of that program despite the fact that many
people trust it implicitly. I can't justify my feeling, but now that
you have pointed out a couple of problems with ATI, I feel vindicated.
I won't bother to repeat your 2 major points. Readers can read them
for themselves in Post # 31. I will continue my search for the optimum
disk imaging B/U program for me.

You said that Symantec Ghost 10 is still a very good backup program.
What do you think of Symantec (Norton) Save and Restore? Is Save and
Restore newer than Ghost 10? Do you think that Save and Restore is
intended to replace Ghost 10? I'll have to visit the Symantec site and
see what Save and Restore is all about. I don't even know if it is an
imaging B/U program.

Are there any programs not mentioned in this thread that you would
recommend?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Ken Taggart



On Jan 26, 7:59 am, "John Butler" <oncle...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It is interesting to follow this thread and see how end users suffer from
lack of comprehensive information about backup software developments.

I hope that the following information may be useful.

Powerquest was small company that specialised in disk management. First
it
developed Partition Magic which allowed partitioning on the fly and then
Drive Image which did system backups in the form of disk images of whole
drives onto another drive. PQ were in completion with Norton Ghost for
image
backup. The bought by Symantec that now markets DI as Ghost 10 latest
version of is 10: a disadvantage of is that it needs Microsoft's
.netframework installed, even for single users but it is still a very
good
backup program.
True Image was developed by Acronis as image backup software and later
Disk
Director was developed as a competitor to Partition magic. From a simple
disk imaging program for genreral users, True Image has grown into a
multiple version product focused on the corporate market. It is still
good
but added complexity has reduced reliability. A significant problem with
the later versions is that the "rescue disk" may not work with the CD\DVD
drive on your computer. Alas! when the time comes, after a crash to
restore
an Acronis image from your archives, you cannot access it because your CD
drive will not mount the Acronis loader. This loader is written in an old
version of Linux and may not be up to date with your motherboard or CD
drive. Users are not completely lost in such cases because they can
install
Windows onto a scratch drive, install Acronis also and then, from within
Windows on the scratch drive, restore the archived image to their regular
Windows drive. This is a reliable fix but not for beginners.
So new users with Acronis mustto check that the rescue disk works when
the
program is installed and when it isr upgraded, or if they change their
hardware because even though the rescue disk worked when True image was
first installed it rescue may not work after software or hardware changes
in
the system.
Onclejon

"DonCPA" <Don...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
messagenews:E1E4EDD0-958E-403B-AE1A-FC4CF1585A1E@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



Thank you all for the helpful remarks. We purchased ATI some time ago
and
never really made as much use of it as we could have. I just keep
writing
batches to capture all the data files on a daily scheduled basis. But
I
am
not happy with that solution and am thinking ATI may be a lot better if
I
use
it right. Does it work with SBS03? We have WinXP Pro on all the
workstations here, so I presume it would be a good way of saving time
if
we
had to restore a workstation. At least with the batches (I use xcopy a
lot)
I can get an image of the network data storage onto an external drive
in
about 10 to 20 minutes per daily session. But if ATI runs on SBS, then
I
want to backup the whole server to capture the system and programs for
offsite storage in case of a disaster. It would be really cool to set
up
a
remote redundant server and do it automatically, but I don't have a
clue
how
that would work, and it looks like SBS actively gets in the way when
you
try
that.

Thanks again everyone for the ideas already.

Don

"JPan" wrote:

The true test of system backup software is when you have a need to
recover a disk. That test came for me with Acronis True Image Home a
few days ago. I am sad to report that it failed miserably. Not only
was their bootable recovery CD software confused (mouse didn't work
and
it couldn't see my drives), but also running the recovery under
Windows
XP failed without a single message (not even to the error log). All
this has been made worse by the general lack of concern and
responsiveness by their customer sevice department (which conveniently
doesn't seem to publish a phone number). I want to share this with
anyone looking for a backup solution so they don't get burned like I
did. I am a software professional with a BS in Computer Science, so I
assure you I'm not some novice that doesn't understand how to use
software (in case you were wondering).

JPan- Hide quoted text -- Show quoted text -



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