Acronis True Image Home 2010

True Image 2010 worked reliably for me, including 2 actual bootable hard-drive restorations. I’ve been using Acronis True Image in several versions over the years, and the previous 2009 edition was the nadir of their product line. For me at least, Acronis has redeemed themselves after the erratic and dangerous-to-your-data behavior of their last edition.

Pros: Disk imaging for TOTAL disk restoration capabilities, full and incremental backup, selective directory/file type data backup, editing capability of the backup image, back-up image mounting as a logical drive for easy viewing and cut & paste from image to other drives with Windows Explorer, live backup (use computer while backing), recovery manager in conjunction with Acronis Secure Zone (restoration of operating system drive while still having use of computer), bootable CD with backup and recovery capabilities, bootable from image of disk.

Cons: None that I could find so far. I am suspicious that uninstalling may be an issue, as it was in the past.

Major improvements from the past:

1) The Try & Decide feature now works even if a reboot is required for the newly installed application or system change. The Acronis Try & Decide can truly undo a change in its entirety, even if critical files are over-written, something window’s System Restore could never do. But, System Restore could survive a reboot, which in the past Acronis couldn’t. Now, all situations are covered by True Image 2010, and I have been able to fearlessly change, upgrade, or install on my system and effortlessly reverse the changes if I don’t like the results.

2) USB/multi-boot support is robust. In the past, forgetting to remove a flash drive while using True Image could result in dangerously wacky behavior such as corrupting the master boot record or deleting the C: drive. Having a complex computer system, say USB drives and multiple operating systems, was a recipe for disaster. Legacy FAT32 application software also clashed if the Acronis Secure Zone was installed. All these past issues appear to be resolved. I did a backup and fully-bootable disk-image restoration for a Windows XP/Windows 7RC-64-bit multi-boot system using an external USB 2.0 hard drive for storing the images, with other USB flash drives plugged in, and 2 internal SATA hard disks in 4 partitions.

What I didn’t test: I didn’t make backups to DVD media; Acronis states it is possible make images spanning several DVDs.

Other Thoughts: A reasonable person might wonder why anyone such as myself would give Acronis another chance after the problems of the recent past. There are 2 things about this addition of True Image that I find very valuable compared to other imaging software I’ve tried: 1) The Try & Decide feature was always useful, but with the improvement to survive reboots it’s now the single most important feature for me; I like to try a lot of new configurations, and completely undoing experiments can be easily accomplished. 2) I have use of the computer while backing up, which makes it unobtrusive to do frequent backups.

Backup speed on my system is about 3 gigabytes/minute, so a drive with 120 gigs of data took about 40 minutes to image (and I could still surf the net during the process). Restoring a drive goes at 3 gigs/minutes based upon compressed image size, so a 9 gig image took 3 minutes to restore to the uncompressed size of 20 gigs.

Now, some general words of caution for would be users who are new to the disk imaging game. This type of software works with and independently from the host operating system. By its very nature it is a law unto itself, and the operating system can’t really protect you from rogue behavior. The potential for trashing your system is very real. That’s why I did extensive testing of True Image 2010 on a fully cloned system. I can’t suggest strongly enough that BEFORE you install True Image to your computer’s HD you should attempt to make a back up by simply using the bootable True Image CD in your optical drive. If you can’t make a back up from the bootable CD, things may go badly should you choose to install True Image 2010 on your computer. Since this sofware interacts directly with the BIOS, be cautious about BIOS upgrades. Keep current with upgrades from Acronis. Finally, it’s just a plain good idea to have partition management software (such as Acronis Disk Director or Active @ BootDisk) available for emergency use to recover deleted partitions. Sorry to make it all sound so scary, but any disk imaging software (acronis or not) is powerful stuff. And when things go wrong, the results can be quite bad.

My system as tested: Dual boot Windows XP Pro SP3 32-bit/Windows 7 RC 64-bit; Acronis True Image Home 2010 software installed to 64-bit Windows 7 RC partition; Acronis Secure Zone (FAT32) partition installed; Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P motherboard w/Intel P45 + ICH10R Chipset and Award BIOS version F7; Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 processor.

Rating: 5 / 5

After purchasing a 1TB external USB drive so that I can make backups of my (64bit) laptop’s 500GB HDD, I’ve been trying out many different backup programs.

In the past, I had been using Ghost 2003 (DOS boot floppy) — which I considered one of the best pieces of software ever created. I never bothered with the actual Window’s Ghost 2003 install, other than simply just to create a boot floppy. Once I had a working boot floppy, I uninstalled the Window’s Ghost 2003. My preferred method of doing backups is very simply. I simply want to boot into the backup program externally from any installed OS and manually perform backup/restores with an external USB HDD. I have no desire for automated backups. In the past, Ghost 2003 (DOS boot floppy) worked faithfully for me over many years covering (32bit) Win98, Win2000, WinXP, Linux, FreeBSD, and even Vista. While in recent years, I would have to manually repair the MBR and bootloaders after restores with Ghost 2003, it still remained an excellent program. Unfortunately, with the arrival of mainstream 64bit hardware, Ghost 2003 is now obsolete. Even more unfortunate is that Symantec, after borging PowerQuest, completely changed Ghost after 2003. Usually Symantec destroys any product that they acquire, but in this case they destroyed their own product (Ghost) after acquiring PowerQuest DriveImage — which, just like PowerQuest PartitionMagic, was also an excellent product in it’s own right before being borged by Symantec.

After quite a bit of work, I was actually able to get Ghost 2003 to recognize an internal SATA drive, boot from a USB pen drive, and “work” with 64bit hardware, but there were still a few things going “weird”. Read the wikipedia Ghost article on how to get all that going if you want to give it a try.

What I am after is likely very common for what many others are after. I simply want to boot up into a backup program from an external source (CD/DVD, USB drive) and be able to do both backup and restores between an internal HDD and an external USB HDD. I don’t even want a “main” backup program to have to be installed on an OS. I don’t need nor even want automated backups. I certainly don’t want the backup program creating any special “recovery partition” on the internal HDD. I just want a simple, and more importantly: reliable, completely external backup/restore solution.

So, my journey to find a replacement for Ghost 2003 has started. After trying out the trials, this is what I have found so far:

Most of the backup programs are finding themselves using the least-common-denominator approach these days, which I find to be quite troubling.

- Ghost (latest version). Absolute complete rubbish. By “simplifying” everything, they have made it more complicated than needs be. Not to mention that my first attempt to install this program resulted in a hang. I had to uninstall and reinstall it. That definitely doesn’t start out with much confidence. Ghost no longer allows for the creation of “boot media”. Like most other backup programs, you now can only create “recovery media”. This is boot media that allows you to do restores, but doesn’t allow you to do backups. To do backups, you must run the main Window’s Ghost program from an actual installed OS. I find this recent trend to be really, really, really, stupid.

- Acronis TrueImage. Installed fine. Does the “recovery media” allow you to do both backups and restores? I couldn’t get the “recovery media” to even work. TI has a bunch of automated backup features, all of which I could care less about. I had two MAJOR problems with TI, however. The first problem is that it did not allow a backup image to be created of my /entire/ HDD (containing multiple OS’s). I would have to backup each partition individually. This is inexcusable. I want the option to be able to backup my entire HDD into one image. I want every single bit off the HDD in that image, the MBR and everything. I don’t want to have fix MBRs, bootloaders, fstab’s, etc, after doing restores. My second major problem with TI is that I could not get the “recovery media” to boot. It hangs after the initial splash screen, with a blinking CAPS LOCK key. I believe it may be a SATA issue, however there has been little response to others with the same problem on Acronis’s support forums. This was simply too troublesome for me to continue using TI. I had no confidence with TI. My two stars for TI is because “I didn’t like it”, obviously because the “recovery media” didn’t even work for me.

- Macrium Reflect Free Edition. This is what I finally settled on for now. It works and works rather well, but like Ghost, the “recovery media” only allows for restores. Again, you have to actually be in Windows and running the main program to do backups. However, on the plus side, it does allow the entire HDD (with multiple OS’s) to be backed up into a single image. It backed up everything: Vista, XP, Linux, Swap, FreeBSD. I was able to collect enough courage to try out a restore and it went without a hitch. I also made a backup of just the Vista partition, out of caution that I (unlikely) may want to fallback to Vista after the free Win7 upgrade arrives from Toshiba. I’m happy with Macrium Reflect (especially since it is free), but still would like to have the completely external approach. The “recovery media” runs in a Linux environment and loads a little on the slow side, however works well once it is loaded.

- FarStone DriveClone Express. This one seems to be exactly what I am after, however there are no trials to try it out. Willing to take a chance on it and spend the $32 (google for promo). If I do, I’ll update this after giving it a spin.

- NTFS Active Boot Disk. This one not only also seemed to be exactly what I was after, but also seemed to really have potential. After downloading and trying out the trial, I am impressed with it for the most part. The actual installed program is simply to create boot media, either on a CD/DVD or on a USB drive. While it may be possible to get the other backup programs’ boot media onto a USB drive, I really like how NTFS Active Boot Disk thought out to do it for you. Everything is done from the boot media: backups and restores. There are also quite a few other handy utilities on the boot media. I was able to not only backup the entire HDD (with multiple OS’s) into one image, but also individual partitions. If the OS filesytem isn’t natively supported by Active Boot Disk, you can still backup as a raw image. This means that this backup program will work with /everything/. The boot media runs in a WinPE environment and loads quickly. The downside on this program is that it is relatively expensive when compared with the others. I really like being able to do everything externally and also boot up from a USB drive on my keychain. Edit add: Now that I have used this program more, I am finding a few rough edges. I have yet to try doing a HDD restore, but I have been doing USB drive restores (which it also supports). The first attempt to restore a USB drive from an image always results in a (-5) error when it attempts to write the partition table, however it works fine on the second attempt. Also some of the WinPE utilities (i.e., File Explorer) give an error when deleting files. This may be from WinPE itself and not necessarily the Active Boot programs. While you can successfully do everything that this program is designed for, some things are needing a little “hand holding” and coercion. I feel as if Active Boot Disk and WinPE could use a little more polish.

Summary: It is unfortunate that there is no longer a single utility out there that simply just works extremely well. I’m finding this problem not only with backup programs, but also other utility programs of recent years. I feel as if software has taken a down turn over the last few years. Programs seem to be “dumbed down” these days and also released before they are fully polished. Try out several backup programs before you commit to one of them. While TrueImage didn’t work for me, it may work for you. Give Macrium Reflect Free Edition a try. Many will likely find that this program does everything that need and does it well. Best of all, it is free. If you are like me in that you want a completely external approach to doing manual backups and restores, take a look at NTFS Active Boot Disk and look for reviews for FarStone DriveClone Express.
Rating: 2 / 5

I’ve been an Acronis user for a long time. I decided to upgrade to True Image 2010 from True Image 10 in preparation for upgrading to Windows 7. I’m running Vista SP2 32 bit on a Dell XPS M1530. This setup has been running very well for me without any problems for over a year. However, this install gave me a blue screen of death right at the end of the install process. A quick search on Google showed that many people were complaining of this problem. Following advice I found from the search, I ended up uninstalling my old version of True Image 10 and using Regedit to manually remove registry settings this install added. This time the software installed. I thought I was home free.

I was wrong. After rebooting and running I got another blue screen of death. I went to the Acronis site to get support and found that I had to PAY TO GET SUPPORT!!! There is no email nor a phone number for support unless you pay! There are support forums, but it’s entirely self service and not well monitored by Acronis employees. I resorted to downloading the most recent build to see if that fixed the problem. Nope! Another blue screen of death upon launching the app.

Also, I was getting really irritated at installing the software so many times. The serial number is 64 digits and I had to enter all 64 digits each time. This was adding insult to injury!

Backup software is supposed to provide peace of mind. If I can’t even get the app to run without crashing, what would happen when I REALLY needed this app to restore. My data is too valuable. I’ve returned the software. I’m done with Acronis.

I’m evaluating O&O Disk Image. It installed without any problems. My first backup went smooth. So far so good!
Rating: 1 / 5

BEWARE OF THIS PRODUCT! Acronis’ support is absolutely awful as is the reliability of this product. Upon installation, I clicked their advertised “One Click Backup” icon which was installed directly on my desktop. The application then proceeded to create a “safe zone” on my hard drive and reduce its capacity by 50%. Once the icon is clicked, they provide NO option to abort operation. The documentation is not clear as to how to delete this area so the alternative is to contact support. Then when you try to get support, guess what – THEY ONLY PROVIDE SUPPORT FOR A FEE!! They say that they provide 30-days free support but that’s only if you purchase directly from them! Since I purchased from Amazon, Aconis considers the start date of the free support as the day that AMAZON places the order with Acronis; not the date that the Amazon customer places/receives the product. Unbelieveable! Also, several features don’t work as advertised (as evidenced by their knowledge base). For example, they offer a feature to create a “bootable CD” which contains the necessary Acronis software” to use in case you need to do a recovery and your system won’t boot. This is a critical element. Guess what? IT DOESN’T WORK! The Acronis fix is to use a 3rd party software to create a bootable CD and copy the Acronis files to the CD. This is a known problem with Acronis for 2-versions and they still haven’t created a fix. Unbelieveable. Good luck if you purchase this product.

UPDATE: Guess What – The current build of this application also FAILS TO PERFORM ITS PRIMARY FUNCTION – create an image to an external hard drive. I purchased an external 1TB HD to provide adequate storage for my backups. When I performed the backup, I received an error, “Target Drive is Running Out of Space,” and then aborted the operation. Since this HD had 1TB free space and I was backing up an internal 500GB HD, this was obviously was an error in the application. Once again, Acronis required a $9.95 fees to even talk to their support group. Thus, even through Acronis puts out a poorly tested product with flaws, they charge you $9.95 for help. UNBELIEVEABLE. I will say this, however – once you do talk to their service people, they are quite helpful and committed to finding a fix. They spent about 45 minutes trying to solve this problem. Finally, the technican researched further and learned that this is a known issue which will be fixed in a later release. They then found a workaround which was to run the software directly from the CD rather than from the installed version. They even helped create a bootable CD to perform this function. In the end, I got my backup successfully completed and received a promise to get a notification when a new build is released. However, this was about 2-weeks ago and a new build has not yet been released. I guess this is either a bigger problem than they thought or it’s not considered a big enough problem to quickly put out another build.

IN CONCLUSION: If you decide to purchase this product, expect some technical issues – especially with Windows 7. Then, if you decide to pay the $9.95 fee to contact support, expect a good experience. Since contacting support (twice now), I’ve been contacted several times by the support group via surveys, etc. in an attempt to get feedback (they even provided a “post” to this review). My personal opinion is that the issues with the policies of Acronis are with their Senior Management/Owners. They obviously have a different opinion as to their responsiblilty to put out a well tested and reliable product and then stand behind it. It’s too bad that they are such jerks as most people can tolerate a few problems with software provided that the company has enough integrity to stand behind their products. Charging a fee to fix a problem created by their software is simply unacceptable and warrants considering products other than Acronis.

FINAL UPDATE: Acronis still has NOT fixed this bug. Note that now it has been several months with NO resolution. Acronis now does NOT ACKNOWLEDGE this is a problem although they originally sated that they did. Also, on two separate calls to their technical support group spaced several months ago, they confirmed the problem by taking control of my system and duplicating the issue. Now they simply don’t return emails or help in any way.

NOTE: IF you read the number of negative comments submitted to Amazon, you’ll notice that Acronis has an individual, Vladimir, respond with a post. He apologizes for the reviewers problems and promises that they were an exception. THIS IS SIMPLY NOT TRUE – DON’T BE FOOLED. ACRONIS’ ACTIONS/PERFORMANCE WOULD SUGGEST THAT THEY SIMPLY DON’T CARE OR CAN’T FIX THE PROBLEMS. Either way, they will still take your money and provide you with a defective product. With all these compliants, I’m quite surprised that Amazon still sells the product.

If you have similar frustrations, I suggest that you post a compliant to the Better Business Bureau. Perhaps lowering Acronis’ BBB rating will influence them to become a responsible company.

RESOLUTION: Finally, after almost three months, two paid calls to support, compliant to Amazon and a compliant to the Better Business Bureau. It turns out that there is an option deeply embedded in their tools options which allows the User to set a value for the amount of remaining free space available before the application provides a warning. Nice feature the developers built in – only problem is that this feature isn’t documented. Thus, no one in Acronis seems to know of its existence. This feature was turned on and set to 70 TB on installation. When this is changed to something reasonable, like 10 GB, the application works fine.

For those of you who have taken the time to read all my ravings about Acronis, please understand that I do NOT challenge the sincerety of the support team Acronis has hired in India. They are doing what they can and sincerely want to help. It appears that the issues are with the “mothership” not investing in adequate training and documentation on this product to allow them to be effective. That being said, there is still NO EXCUSE for NOT FOLLOWING THROUGH or SIMPLY WALKING AWAY FROM A PROBLEM THEY CANNOT SOLVE.

Rating: 1 / 5

The product has a lot of potential but the support is non-existent. I even called the NA headquarters in MA to find a real email address in order to either rectify my situation or at least voice my concerns about the substandard support. The response I got was that they know that there are issues but that apparently they are not accepting contacts even via snail-mail (yes I was more than willing to write a real letter). How can I recommend this product to my clients?
Rating: 1 / 5

Hello all!

Let me introduce myself. My name is Yana and I’m writing you on behalf of Acronis Customer Central.

First of all I would like to thank you for sincere and detailed feedback! We really appreciate your opinion, even if it is negative. We believe that every customer that complaints is giving us an opportunity to make things right. And since we incorporate this feedback into our approach, we will be better able to meet clients needs and thereby be more successful in our venture.

KD and Ed, I sincerely regret that you faced this inconvenience with the product and support. I would like to assure you that in case you are still in 30 days after purchase timeframe or have any issues with/after restoration – there is no need to pay for support, it is absolutely free as well as for the trial versions.
So should you have any issues with the bootable media – you can simply contact us via chat or Forum, or webform – and we will immediately send you a new one in ISO format with the instructions how to burn it onto the CD.
You are correct – currently we do not have direct e-mail system. Instead of it you should use our website form. This feature was implemented to speed up the support process and avoid bouncing back of customer’s e-mails. You can find the details instructions on how to reach support via webform, chat or phone right in this KB article. http://kb.acronis.com/content/8153

Marianne, thank you for your feedback. I completely share your concern – and be sure your comments will be forwarded to our Management team. Currently we are working hard on improving the situation, and strongly believe that this problem will be fixed in the shortest timeframes.

I’d like to specially thank S.Gore and AK for their valuable and full comments with detailed analysis.

We really appreciate the time you found to leave your feedback and share your experience with others. Should you decide to share your concerns or suggestions with us – do not hesitate to contact our Support directly or visit our Forum (http://forum.acronis.com/)!
Should you need anything else or have any further questions – feel free to contact us at your earliest convenience, we will be happy to help you!

Thank you
Best regards,
Yana | Acronis Support Professional