Acronis True Image – Backup never felt so good
Backup for the rest of us
We all know we need to backup our data. Most people tend to manually copy their important pictures, documents and other information to a flash drive or an external hard-drive. For most people that is enough to give the belief of a level of security. But how often do you really do this? Chances are you are only backing up your information when you think of it (hardly ever) or when you already notice your computer is having problems. So the fact is that you are rolling dice in a virtual craps game and it’s just a matter of time before you roll a seven. Then you’re done.
You may have most of your information but you can’t get to it until you fix any hardware issues and reinstall the OS.
Acronis saves lives
Between the 3 machines I have at home and the multiple external drives I have for data storage, I can’t begin to put a value on everything. Sure the computers are easy to replace. Finding a deal at Tiger Direct or any number of online stores wouldn’t take too much time to find an affordable replacement. The real cost would be in losing my data. Losing my music, video and pictures alone would probably cripple me, adding the loss of my web development files, documents and other misc. files, I would be brought to tears. It happened once a few years back, and I’m not ashamed to say I cried. That’s why I invested in external drives and looking at software to automate the process.
When my computer took another dump due to a ‘catastrophic failure’ I thought all was lost. I was able to restore my machine from an image within 20 minutes and everything was back to normal and I was ready to roll. Life saved. In the case of a machine having to deal with the failure below, my image still would have worked on a new computer.
How I use Acronis.
Getting a backup software that you can schedule makes the entire process easy and mindless. Imaging is far better than file based backups for a quick restore. This is why most computers come with a factory CD that you can boot from and restore a computer back to the factory settings. The problem with factory settings is that you have to deal with all the garbage files that came on you computer to begin with and uninstall them one by one.
After getting a new computer, before I install anything (even Firefox) I spend time removing all the useless software that gets bundled in. It takes up space and memory resources that I would rather use elsewhere. After that is done, the first thing I do is install my backup software, in this case I use Acronis. Once the software is installed I take a full image of my machine and that is my NEW factory image. Then I’ll go through the process of install the software I use most often. Firefox for a browser, Trillian for IM, Microsoft Office, Webroot and other stuff. Then I take another image and call that my ideal machine.
My ideal machine is the image I will use 99.999% of the time when I restore. The only reason I keep the new factory image on hand is if I really want to blow out the machine and start from scratch, or if I am getting rid of the machine by selling it.
Using the scheduler, I automate the process to do a backup every couple of days in the middle of the night and put the image on an external drive which is then scheduled to move the same image to another drive. Redundancy is the key!
I think Acronis True Image rocks. That’s why I work with them building a reseller channel. It’s not hard to explain what sets the application apart from others out there. There are many players in the Backup/Disaster Recovery arena and they all have their pros and cons. After working with a few different companies that do this, I have never seen a software do a restore of an image easier than Acronis. Don’t take my word for it, go to the website and get a copy for your home computer to see the magic for yourself.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed! Categories: Blog, Technology Tags: acronis, backup-software, backups, backup_software, belief, Catastrophic Failure, Craps Game, craps_game, Data Storage, data_applications, data_storage, disk-director, downloads, exact_copy, External Hard Drive, external_hard_drive, failure, financial_documents, Flash Drive, good_reason, Hardware Issues, hardware_issues, hard_drives, Image Backup, image_home, koka sexton, Matter Of Time, matter_of_time, Meijer, migrate-computers, migrate-easy, Music Video, music_video, New Computer, new_computer, partition-software, photo, recovery_solution, Rolling Dice, rolling_dice, tiger, Tiger Direct, tiger_direct, topato, true-image, true_image, unstable_software, Virtual Craps, virtual_craps
There are 9 comments. Leave a comment!
¬ Sid
#1853 August 25th, 2008 at 3:47 am
Laughed so hard at picture. That’s what I call catastrophic failure. There are allot of bad backup programs out there, but Acronis makes one of the best. I recommend it to anyone.
Sid’s last blog post..Best Windows backup software
¬ image host
#2858 January 13th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
Nice post, thanks!
image host’s last blog post..1
¬ Dale
#3564 March 10th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
NOt sure if you are a question answerer or not, but here goes:
I want a software that will allow me to routinely mirror my desktop and laptop. I would like to not just backup files/programs, but use the software to exactly copy everything on my desktop, including OS (XP) along with all programs/applications and download/overwrite all of that onto my laptop, or vice versa. And then I would want to do this on occasion to assure that both are always exactly the same in their entirity. I realize I can simply copy files etc. using a zip but this isn’t what I prefer to do. If you can advise, I will be most thankful. Acronis seems to be the only software I can locate that “might” do as I want……Thanks in advance………DaleH.
¬ Richie
#3990 May 29th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
To say the Acronis saves lives is pretty bold. But it really does seem like a life saver when crashes occur – and you job is on the line! How do your spell relief
A.C.R.O.N.I.S.
Richie’s last blog post..Casino Craps?
¬ Video Search
#3994 May 30th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
Very Nice
¬ Dr. Venkmannn
#4016 June 9th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
For the love of your sanity DO NOT INSTALL ACRONIS! Let me tell you why. Firstly their software is really not any more impressive – and far more risky to use – than several other imaging programs available, including the free-ware one called Clonezilla which we now use. All they really have is a nice GUI and clever looking bells and whistles. Secondly, they write devastatingly intractable, inaccessible and malcious code. Thats right. Malicious.
Too many people who are not really computer savvy are trumpeting about the web praising Acronis without anyone questioning it. In our large health clinic, IT staff installed a ‘trial’ version of Acronis and although its initial performance seemed amazing, master boot records became corrupted upon restoration of images that had been built ‘incrementally’ or ‘differentially’ – features that Acronis brags about. after we saw this degradation we decide to de-install Acronis and thats where malice comes in.
When we de-installed it – or TRIED to – there was really no way to completely remove it. The provided Acronis uninstaller was useless and cycled for over 2 hours accomplishing nothing. The native Windows uninstaller would not take it out and complained of this error or that. 3rd-party uninstallers like Revo and Perfect would only remove the folders but could not access Acronis registry keys. More real malice was evident when IT staff could not even access the registry keys do manually remove them. They were locked out by Acronis secretive and hardened code that will not even allow systems administrators with ALL special permissions to touch them. Our IT staff tried to re-install it, modify it, repair it then re remove it. All in vain. They tried to take it out through DOS but noting worked.
In the end we brought in a forensic IT firm of international reputation and they battled for 3 days to remove it and finally were able to crack the malicious and secretive code-writing of Acronis. They told us they had seen had seen some bad stuff in their international endeavors but nothing quite as hardened and dangerous to a PC as this supposedly ‘saving’ and beneficial software. They are warning everyone they deal with to avoid it like the plague.
To add insult to injury, Acronis never even returned our frantic e-mails for 10 days! By then we had to take action to get access to patient and lab data on our own. It cost us thousands of dollars.
Before you consider acting on the recommendations of what some Acronis-happy newbie has written down about buying this dangerous software do your self a favour, GOOGLE a few lines like this:
1) Acronis won’t de-install
2) Whay won’t Acronis unistall
3) I can’t get rid of Acronis
4) Acronis has locked down the registry keys
5) Can’t boot the machine since installing Acronis.
The results of these searches will take off your rose-coloured glasses about Acronis. Anyone with real computer savvy and know-how who has ever tried to de-install Acronis – and we now have corresponded with many – will tell you it’s next to impossible to remove it all. And if you ever decide to re-install it in the hope of a fresh crack at uninstalling it be forewarned – IT WILL QUADRUPLE THE AMOUNT OF ACRONIS REGISTRY ENTRIES THAT ARE PERMANENTLY LOCKED DOWN and you will never be able to eradicate them, regardless of the special permissions you can be granted by XP or Vista. IF YOU INSTALL ACRONIS you will find yourself a captive for as long as that edition of Windows install lasts. The only way to eradicate it is to perform a severe hard drive erasure then reformat the hard drive before you re-install Windows. If you re-install Windows over top of the old files in the partition without wiping it clean with a tool like Active Kill Disk, Acronis will re-surface like a nightmare. A simple forensic file recovery tool will bear me out on this as you will be able to find many traces of Acronis even when the drive is re-formatted.
You have been warned.
Dr. P. Venkmann
Canada
without permissionhas found hundered os lefto
¬ Best Registry Cleaner
#4281 July 3rd, 2009 at 11:10 pm
I use acronis TI myself – nothing bad about it. I like it.
¬ Registry Cleaner Reviews
#4835 October 9th, 2009 at 2:48 pm
Nice articles about registry repair and spyware tools. It looks that we need these tools more and more.
¬ Clean Registry Repair
#5020 December 2nd, 2009 at 11:32 am
I totally agree with your posts. You have to be really careful in choosing the best registry cleaner out there. There are some bogus but the best ones can be found at download.com
Clean Registry Repair’s last blog post..Clean Registry Repair ? The most neglected solution in today’s computer problems.