Acronis True Image Home 2009

This article was contributed by Paul, from AllAcronis.com, an Acronis re-seller. The views expressed are those of Paul and are not necessarily those of this site.

What distinguish Acronis True Image Home 2009 from other backup/restore software? What are the advantages and disadvantages and more?.

There are several exclusive features of the Acronis True Image Home 2009 software that distinguish it from other products. Acronis True Image Home 2009 provides multiple backup options in one product: Acronis disk imaging backup option allows you to protect your entire PC, protect your music, photos, videos, email and application settings.

ADVANTAGES:

• Supports Microsoft Vista (including x64 edition), so you can safely upgrade to this new operating system
• Allows you to create backup rules, so you do not have to worry about managing your backups
• Enables you to receive e-mail notifications on your backup status, so you have peace of mind knowing your PC is protected
• Find specific files by exploring backup files
• Use your system during a recovery with the Acronis Snap Restore feature
• Save data to special partition on your hard drive, the Acronis Secure Zone. There is no need to purchase an extra hard drive, CDs, or DVDs to protect your data. This is especially useful for notebook computers.
• Use Try&Decide feature to install potentially unstable software or downloading suspicious e-mails to evaluate them and then decide if you want to keep this stuff on your machine or revert the system back in seconds by simply rebooting your computer.
• Restart your computer by hitting the F11 key in case you computer does not boot correctly with the Acronis Recovery Manager. Even if your operating system has been deleted, the Acronis Recovery Manager can boot your computer
• Run backups while you are using your computer
• Restore your entire PC in minutes, including the operating system, applications, and user settings without reinstallation of any software
• Automate backups on a regular basis by creating a schedule
• Walks you through each task so that you don't need to be a computer expert to use it
• As Acronis True Image programs use Snapshot technology there are no restrictions using different applications while performing backup archive creation. It means you can backup your system from within Windows and run other applications;
• Acronis True Image is the only disk imaging product that excludes large unnecessary files, resulting in a noticeably smaller image size and significantly quicker disk imaging process. The following files are excluded from image archives: paging file, hibernation files
• There is no need to renew the license, Acronis company may just recommend you to do so. So you don't have to upgrade your version of Acronis True Image every year;
• You can create backups in ZIP format so in case you want to restore it later there is no need to use program itself;
• You can save images directly to CD/DVD discs so there is no need to have any third-party software for image burning. You can also use the following media as storage device:flash drives, ftp servers, external drives, NAS devices, IOMEGA drives, network share and some others;
• OS supports includes: Windows Vista (including x64 Edition); Windows 2000 Professional SP4; Windows XP SP2, SP3; Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.

 DISADVANTAGES:

• According to Acronis software licensing policy you should purchase one copy of Acronis program per each machine;
• Acronis True Image can't perfrom schedule task from hibernation mode;
• Schedule tasks on NAS devices are not properly performed;
• Can't search .tib files (Acronis True Image backup archives extension) on removable media;
• No Windows XP Home support;
• Incompatibility with another backup/restore software
• Almost all Acronis Corporate products should be purchased with 1-year maintanance (additional price).

Description of unique Acronis Snap Shot technology:

Once Acronis True Image initializes the backup process of a volume (which logically corresponds to a single partition, if there are no Dynamic Disks), Acronis Snapshot Manager flushes the file system mounted to that volume temporarily freezing all the operations on the system volume. Immediately thereafter, the Snapshot Manager driver creates a point-in-time view of the system volume and a bitmap describing the used sectors on this volume. Once the bitmap is created, the filter driver unfreezes the I/O operations on the system volume. It generally takes only several seconds to create a point-in-time view of the volume. After that, the operating system continues working as the imaging process is under way.

Acronis True Image reads the sectors on the system volume according to the created bitmap. Once a sector is read, the appropriate bit in the bitmap is reset. In its turn, the Acronis driver continues working to hold the point-in-time view of the system volume. Whenever the driver sees a writing operation directed at the system volume, it checks whether these sectors are already backed-up, if they are not, the driver saves the data to the sectors that will be overwritten to a special buffer created by the software, then it allows the sectors to be overwritten. Acronis True Image backs up the sectors from the special buffer, so that all the sectors of the point-in-time view of the system volume will be backed up intact. Meanwhile, the operating system continues working and the user will not notice anything unusual in the operating system functionality.

Some useful links:

• Restore image to dissimilar hardware using AUR (Acronis Universal Restore), step-by-step: http://www.acronis.com/r/support/en/kb/502/aur_restore.html
• Create Acronis bootable flash drives: http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/support/kb/articles/388/ Backup system with VSS http://www.acronis.com/r/support/en/kb/827/backup_vss.htm
• Step-by-step instructions how to create BartPE disc with Acronis True Image: http://www.allacronis.com/step-by-step-2.php

Paul
http://www.allacronis.com/