Subscribe to our Review: Acronis True Image vs Symantec Ghost
A regular Ghost user tries out True Image V9 and concludes that Ghost V10 has met its match
Foreword from Gizmo
A drive imaging program is a utility that creates a backup snapshot or image of your disk drives, most commonly your system drive.
Imaging programs differ from data backup programs in that they can backup the Windows Operating system itself.
You can use that backup image to recover from system failures, spyware infections, installations gone wrong or any of the dozens of other things that can seriously mess up your PC.
Imaging programs can be used to backup data as well as your operating system but are not ideal for that task. Recent versions of imaging programs have improved in this area but many folks, myself included, prefer to use imaging programs to back up Windows and data backup programs like Genie, to backup regularly changing data.
Every PC I own has a drive imaging utility installed and I use these regularly to make image backups of the C: drives. I simply can't tell you just how many times I've been able to use these backup images to restore a non-working PC to perfect health. Restoring from an image only takes me minutes while a full Windows re-install can take many hours or even days when you take into account re-installing application programs. That's why I recommend the system drive of every PC should be imaged regularly using a reliable imaging program.
Now let me tell you the harsh truth: when it comes to the best imaging program it's a two horse race between the commercial products Acronis True Image and Norton Ghost with the freeware contenders trailing by a couple of miles. Not that there aren't some usable freeware products; it's just they aren't in the same league when it comes to function, features and reliability.
Choosing between True Image and Ghost is tough because they are both quality programs. That's why I asked regular Support Alert contributor J.W. to review the latest versions of these products.
Acronis True Image vs. Norton Ghost
When Gizmo asked me to review Acronis True Image V9, I was delighted. I had been using Norton Ghost V9 and wasn't happy with the product due to on-going problems with corrupted images. Additionally I had never used True Image so the review provided me with an opportunity to look at the how Ghost compared to its main competitor in a live system, doing real work. Installation Woes Right from the start I had problems with both Norton Ghost and Acronis True Image on my PC. The problems as it turned out were partly caused by Process Guard, a security application that runs on my PC. However this problem proved to be a blessing in disguise as it allowed me to test out the support provided by Symantec and Acronis. Symantec support for Ghost was abysmal; an odyssey of condescending replies, canned responses and the apparent inability of the Indian support staff to understand the English language. Eventually, I wrote a personal letter to the Chairman & CEO of Symantec, John W. Thompson, asking for his help and assistance. My plea worked and I was put in contact with an “Executive Support” group. They seemed much more anxious to help and started off well by sending me the latest version of Ghost 10. I was optimistic that with the receipt this new version that the problems I had been experiencing with corrupted Ghost image backups would disappear. Sadly, that was not to be. Even with the latest V10 release I had more invalid backup’s, completely baffling the “Executive Support” group. After a number of emails back and forth, they adamantly pronounce that not one but BOTH of my U320 SCSI hard drives were broken and needed to be immediately replaced! After expressing my incredulity with this diagnosis, they decided to try blaming the problem on my CPU processor. Anything it seemed other than their product. Their last email to me was pure bathos: “Do not bother responding to this email as there is nothing else I can help you with and it will not be responded to.” So much for Symantec "executive" level support. I was clearly on my own. The experience with Acronis support was much better. Their support team was also baffled, but at least they maintained their composure, didn’t make any nonsensical recommendations such as replacing my hard drives and were civil. Eventually I solved the problem myself; another application, Process Guard, was interfering with the operation of the programs. Once Process Guard was uninstalled, the immediate difficulties were resolved allowing me to move forward with my comparative review. But a vital lesson about support was learned and not to be forgotten. Furthermore some serious problems with Ghost remained. Even after removing Process Guard from my PC, I continued to have on-going problems with Ghost V10 with corrupted image files. Not all images had the problem, only some. I only discovered this when I attempted to recover from an image file only to find the image was unusable. Subsequently I started studying the image creation log files only to find that corrupt images were not uncommon. Worse still you get no warning or notification of the problem other than entries in the log files. Here's a typical entry. EVENT # : 5108 This problem may be unique to my PC but I suspect not. I suggest all Ghost users start monitoring their log files and test the integrity of existing, high value backups. And of you are experiencing problems, don't expect too much help from Symantec. 1) True Image will run on any Windows version from Windows 98 forward. Ghost 9/10 requires Win2000 SP4 minimum and Microsoft .Net Framework 1.1. True Image does not require .Net Framework. 2) Both products offer the ability to do full or incremental backups. Since I have plenty of free hard drive storage, I always do a full backup for all drives. I feel more comfortable with full backups abstractly rather than having to deal with partial backups if I should need to do a restore. 3) Ghost has changed the nomenclature for their backups in Ghost 10 to “Recovery Points”. Additionally, it appears that Ghost 9 backups are not compatible with Ghost 10. At least, I was unable to find a way to access my old Ghost 9 backups using Ghost 10. Furthermore, Ghost 9 & Ghost 10 cannot exist on the same machine. If accurate, this would be a serious deficiency in Ghost. Perhaps I could access the Ghost 9 backups using Ghost 2003 from DOS but I haven’t had time to try this. Why is this important? The Ghost backups I have kept are early stage Windows backups with the basic OS build and about 50% of my regular software installed. If I have to or choose to rebuild my OS, then starting from one of these backups significantly shortens the time to get a fully configured system up and running. 4) True Image can backup individual files or folders. Ghost does not offer this level of granularity and can only backup full drives or partitions. 5) Both products offer the ability to list and restore individual files or folders from an image backup. From the user viewpoint, Ghost is a bit more straightforward on this process. You just find the image archive you want and click the Explore button. Ghost mounts the image on a spare drive letter. True Image does the same but uses separate Wizards labeled PLUG & UNPLUG (mount & unmount a virtual drive). 6) Ghost has a useful feature that allows you to run a backup when one of these events occurs: a) Any application is installed b) Any user logs on to the computer c) Any user logs off from the computer d) The data added to a drive exceeds an amount (in megabytes) you specify e) The Maxtor OneTouch (an external hard drive) button has been pushed. 7) While True Image does not offer the ability to start a backup on the pre-configured events like Ghost does, it does offer a feature called Pre/Post Commands that allows you to do just about any task before and/or after a particular backup runs. Ghost does not offer a similar feature. I’d like to see the functionality in point #5 implemented in True Image. 8) Examining the UI’s for both applications, they are reasonably similar Windows driven interfaces both designed to show pretty “eye candy”. 9) There was a significant change in the UI from Ghost 9 to Ghost 10. Ghost 10 seems to me to have “dumbed” down the interface, which I did not appreciate. While all the functionality that was previously in Ghost 9 appears to be in Ghost 10, individual functions are spread out across multiple screens and are harder to get to. To me, True Image’s UI is clearer, more robust and I like it better. 10) This is the main UI for Norton Ghost 10: This is the main UI for Acronis True Image:
11) True Image has extra functions such as being able to turn off Windows System Restore and preparing and adding a new hard disk to your system, which Norton Ghost 10 does not offer. 12) True Image allows you to setup a secure and private partition called the Acronis Secure Zone to store backups in. Norton Ghost does not offer similar functionality. Used in conjunction with the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager, you can boot into a Linux version of True Image directly without using a boot CD. This functionality is useful where you might have totally hosed your boot partition. Note that when the Startup Recovery Manager is activated, the normal MBR record will be overwritten. 13) Norton Ghost 10’s help file is more robust and easier to locate information in than the True Image implementation: a) Clicking on the help button in True Image always takes you to the main help window, not to the section applicable to the area that you were in and are looking for help with. So you then have to waste time wandering through help file looking for the right item. The help file is non-standard and there aren’t any functions for searching or printing. b) Norton Ghost 10’s help file is standard Windows fare and includes index and search functionality. It is easy to use. 14) Unlike Ghost, True Image doesn’t include a menu drop down link to check for new updates (Live Update). a) Both products require activation/registration of the product first. b) The True Image update check is a manual process. You have to click Help-Web Support, which takes you to http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/support/. Then you have to click the "Get a product update" link. This takes you to a page with a list of the latest builds for ALL Acronis products. Then go back to the Help menu and check the About entry for what build you have. Return to the product update page and check your build against what is the latest build. This is a waste of clicks and user time. 15) True Image does not have the ability to limit the number of backups for a specific drive/partition as Ghost does. a) With Ghost, you can set a limit of say two backups for whatever backup job you have defined. Ghost appends a sequential number to each backup so that the file name is different from the previous backup. When the number of backups (for a particular job) is exceeded, Ghost automatically deletes the oldest one. b) True Image cannot do this and you would have to create a script or manually rename the backups if you want to maintain more than one version. Be aware that if you do not rename the previous backup that you want to save, True Image will overwrite it without issuing a confirmation message or warning. I have been told that duplicating this Ghost functionality to let the user set a backup job limit and adding a sequential number to the file name is near the top of the to-do list for True Image and will be implemented soon. I hope so! 16) I run a freeware program called Spy-The-Spy, which lets me monitor changes to files in certain folders on my C: drive in real time. Unlike Ghost 9, at periodic points throughout the day, Ghost 10 regularly updates a file called SYMLCRST.DLL (below). There are as many as 10 updates daily and they come at odd and varying intervals. I was unable to determine what triggers an update. Symantec Executive Support was also unable to provide an explanation as to WHY this file was bring regularly updated. Mr. Levi Smith claimed this was “proprietary” information!
17) Doing a comparison of the backups of Ghost vs. True Image, I found that on equal backups, True Image had an 8-10% smaller backup footprint size. Performance wise, both products took nearly the same amount of time to backup selected logical hard drives. 18) Looking at the image restore capabilities of both products a) The Ghost DOS interface is driven by the original install CD. Just insert the product CD and reboot. You do not have to create a separate boot CD, as you must do with True Image if you are not using their Startup Recovery Manager. True Image’s primary restore environment is Linux but there is also a more limited DOS environment if the Linux version doesn’t work. b) The Ghost 9 & 10 DOS interfaces are much slower to boot up than the True Image version and all Ghost operations were slower than with True Image on my system. 19) Both programs can backup to a hard disk. a) True Image also installs their own ASPI layer, allowing them to backup an image directly to a CD (or DVD if you have packet-writing software installed). b) Ghost can backup to a hard drive and other device types. But note that backing up to removable media is a manual operation and cannot be scheduled, as additional media may have to be inserted to contain the full backup. 20) Ghost 9 & 10 provides the user the ability to select destinations for error messages from the system event log, the Ghost internal log or SMTP email. I prefer the event log option since I run a program called Event Sentry that emails event errors to my POP3 email account. This eliminates me having to remember to look at the event log or the programs internal log to see if everything ran successfully.
21) True Image only provides a Windows log with an option to export this log to a file. Support for True Image has informed me that writing to the Windows Event Log is on their list of future enhancements for TI 9.x. 22) The Ghost log viewer for a completed backup provides only minimal information that the backup succeeded or failed. No information is provided on the start time in the viewer. You’d have to go look up the scheduled start time to determine that information, making computing the total time for a backup a manual and annoying two-step process. 23) The True Image log provides more information but gets a bit messy because of including distracting prep messages related to analyzing all drives before getting started on the backup job. TI support was not able to explain why they need to analyze other drives during a backup for a specific drive. Furthermore, in the message column of the viewer, even though the column is “stretchable”, they end those “Analyzing partition” messages with a “...” which usually means that there is too much information to fit in the space provided. However, according to support - not in this case. They could not explain WHY they use the “...” or what this was supposed to represent.
24) True Image can export status to a text log file, which Ghost can’t do. However, even though the export is in text format with a default “.log” extension, for some reason, it is littered with HTML tags (like below) making it very difficult to read. Acronis support did not know why this was occurring. Additionally, it is impossible to easily interpret the time stamps. Editor's note: This report is actually in XML and can be easily read in an XML viewer or editor. a) <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <log build="2337" product="Acronis True Image" uuid="C23BC3C1-D098-4828-8C6F-37DE1B2813CB" version="9.0"> i) <event code="2" id="1" message="The "I_Backup" operation started" module="100" time="1140241688" type="2" /> ii) <event code="503" id="2" message="Analyzing partition 0-0..." module="1" time="1140241688" type="2" /> xix) <event code="504" id="19" message="Pending operation 116 started: "Creating partition image"" module="1" time="1140241692" type="2" /> xx) <event code="504" id="20" message="Pending operation 3 started: "Verifying backup archive"" module="1" time="1140241983" type="2" /> xxi) <event code="6" id="21" message="Operation has succeeded." module="100" time="1140242176" type="2" /> </log> b) However, True Image’s log detail is substantially better than Ghost. You see all the detail from start to finish of the operation and at least in the standard display window, it is easy to see the total amount of time consumed for the backup operation. Finally, it has been my experience over the years that few people verify their image backups or experimentally try to boot up the image restore DOS program before they need it. This is a serious mistake! I cannot stress strongly enough that it is CRITICAL that you VERIFY image backups. Being caught with a backup that you think is good but really isn’t, is a recipe for disaster. Second, you MUST test that you can boot into the DOS recovery program BEFORE you actually need it. Third, if you want to go the full mile, then you should also create a copy of your hard drive (or a logical disk) first using a process that you have confidence in and know works. Then try to do a test restore from an image backup outside of Windows, checking that everything works and becoming familiar with the process before a real error occurs (and rest assured, one eventually will occur). It’s far too easy to make serious mistakes while frustrated and under the stress of trying to restore a bad drive from DOS/Linux if you haven’t had any prior experience doing so or working with the driving program. While each program has certain unique features, the core functionality of both programs is essentially equal. However, True Image’s overall functionality, reliability and UI are more robust and more understandable than Symantec Norton Ghost versions 9 or 10. Most importantly, in my experience, Symantec’s Ghost versions 9 & 10 have proven to be unreliable and my experience with Ghost (really, all of Symantec) technical support has consistently been dreadful. I would still choose Acronis True Image over Ghost on functionality and presentation alone; however, on quality of support alone, I cannot and will not recommend any Symantec program. Furthermore, Symantec has a long & sordid history of acquiring products or complete companies and then discontinuing the products. I would not be surprised if Ghost were treated similarly in the not-distant future. Partition Magic, which they also acquired from PowerQuest a couple of years back in release 8 has yet to be updated by Symantec. The fact that Symantec tech support/development has been unable to isolate the regular random corruption problems I have been experiencing across two releases of the product does not bode well for the future of the Ghost product, in my mind. I have removed Symantec Ghost from my system. My recommendation and personal choice going forward for a disk-imaging program is Acronis True Image. (1) Norton Ghost V10, $69.99 No trial available, Windows XP Home Edition/Professional, Windows 2000 Professional ONLY http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/backup_recovery/ghost10/index.html (2) Acronis True Image V11, $49.99 14 day trial, Windows XP/Vista, 87MB Download Trial Version True Image Home V11 Support this site: If you buy from either of the sites listed above then this site will receive a small contribution from the vendor as a result of your purchase. This doesn't add to your cost but it helps with the running expenses of our site. If you don't feel comfortable with this then go directly to the vendor's site.
EVENT LOG : Application
EVENT TYPE : Error
SOURCE : Norton Ghost
CATEGORY : High Priority
EVENT ID : 100
COMPUTER : MYCOMP1
TIME : 2/10/2006 7:40:33 AM
MESSAGE : Description: Error EC8F17B7: Cannot create recovery points for job: Recovery point of I:\. Error EA39070A: The internal structure of the image file is invalid or unsupported.
Details: 0xEA39070A
Source: Norton Ghost 
Includes Norton Ghost 2003 for Windows Me & 98 users
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I use Sandboxie with Firefox and Noscript on my XP and the Acronis True Image Try & Decide mode on another partition when I surf the net. So by clearing Sandboxie and Try & Decide and quitting Try & Decide and not saving anything keeps my system pretty clean. The only thing that worries me is that the Used Area in Try & Decide does tend to grow slightly over time...which I would have hoped there would be nothing at all in the Used Area..especially after I clean it. I usually periodically also remove the Try & Decide, then recreate it for a new slate....nothing in the user area. Sandboxie is also great...it shows how much stuff is trying to work it's way into your box that you would not normally be aware of.
i have used both, i think acronis is best.
you don't even need to install the software to create or restore images. you just need the bootable rescue disk, which can even be created while program runs in windows.
I used Drive Image 7 for many years - althought it was flaky and generated cryptic messages - overall it saved my bacon a few times. It also allowed migration to new hard drives. I believe DI was bought by Norton and subsequently disappeared from the market! Recently I purchased a WD hard drive and used the free WD Acronis software to clone the old hard drive - no problems. This software is available at the WD site and only works works with wd drives (naturally). Another imaging software that appears to work is included as part of the opearting system of Windows Vista Business - used it several times and appeared to work fine.
I wonder how Nortons Ghost v14 and Acronis True Image 2010 would compare.
I have had just as much bad luck with Acronis's tech support.
I guess in the end its just who you get a roll of the dice. Ghost v14 seems to have allot of nice features and Nortons Ghost v14 does have a trial version to dl its a 30-day and can be gotten at http://nct.symantecstore.com/fulfill/0184.074
Acronis True Image 2010 trial is 30 days as well and can be gotten at
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/download/trueimage/
The only other thing I like about Ghost over True Image is that even though Symantec is cheap but Symantec gives you a 90 day upgrade path. So if you buy Ghost 14 now and in 90 days Ghost v15 comes out you get it free. Acronis wants to charge $29.99 (really $30) for the update.
Ghost is $69.99 and upgrade is $49.99 with free 90 day full version update*
True Image is $49.99 and upgrade is $29.99 with free 30 day full version update*
*free full version update is going from one full version to another with in so much time after purchace.
I just read through the comments on this article and you guys have scared me to death. I never realized how lucky I've been. I've been using Norton Ghost 2002 once a week or more to clone and restore partitions, with 100% success. It doesn't recognize external drives though, which is an ability I want. I'm about to get a Western Digital 750 GB My Book Essential Edition USB drive. I found this article in researching the newest Ghost versus the newest Acronis. Now I'm not sure I want either one.
I've been an avid computer user since the late eighties, and I built the computer I'm using now. I've always been frustrated by available backup options. It seems to me the number one requirement of a backup process is that it be reliable, and the second requirement is that it be simple. To me, compression, images, proprietary formats, trying to back up Windows from within Windows, and process complexity all lessen reliability. I just want to copy all the files so that they can be copied back and work just like they did before.
I have two internal disks, each with multiple partitions. I use Ghost (from a boot diskette) to clone single partitions from disk 1 to disk 2. That's also how I restore a partition, by cloning it from disk 2 to disk 1, which I've done dozens of times. I have never had a cloning backup or restore fail. If I ever need to restore individual files I just copy them manually using Windows explorer. It's all very simple and so far 100% reliable. My only problem was originally writing the command lines to put in the batch files on the backup and restore diskettes. Ghost 2002 has a horrible user interface that confuses me every time I use it. You don't want to be confused when you're about to overwrite a disk partition. That's why I figured out the proper command lines, put them on the boot diskettes, and never had to worry about it again.
Last year I got a free copy of Acronis True Image 10 during a promotion. I've been using that to back up to an external USB disk about once a month, but now Acronis refuses to recognize the external drive. It gives me an error that says something about the disk not accepting a new address. I researched the error and found other people with the same problem. Acronis support posted a workaround which involved pressing a hot key and entering a Linux command. The workaround did not solve my problem.
Like many posters here, I've gotten fed up with Symantec. I loved Norton Utilities way back when, then Norton Antivirus, SystemWorks, and even CleanSweep, but over the last several years I've lost faith in Symantec. Ghost 2002 is the last Symantec program I trust, and from the comments here it sounds like I don't want a newer version of Ghost. I'm excited about getting a 750 GB external drive, but I need a simple reliable backup program. Ghost 2002 doesn't recognize USB drives. I'll probably experiment with Acronis 10 for awhile. I just hope it recognizes the external drive.
Sorry to ramble so long. Perhaps some readers will find my comments helpful.
Jon
Ghost 2004 has been a reliable product for me, imaging partitions and restoring successfully. But there has always been a very low rate of currupted files, maybe one in fifty, so I learned early on to make multiple backup images, three or four commonly, including a DVD hardcopy.
Booting from DOS has worked.
Never could backup to an external hard drive.
The interface sequence for this version, as others have mentioned for other versions, is NOT user friendly -- but once learned, it has worked for me every time.
I'm getting a new computer built to specs at a local shop this week, with dual OS boots, XP Pro and 7 (since 7 is just out and dual boots are easy, I'm told). Will see if my old Ghost works -- and then, with those images to backup from if necessary, I plan to test both a new Ghost and Acronis. I'll let you know how it goes.
I love disc imaging. Saved my butt many times. My shop's tech likes Acronis. And I'm not a fan of Symantec any longer -- like everyone -- but if Ghost works then I'll use it. We'll see.
I've rented out the Unibomber's old cabin and it's pretty lonely out here in the woods. Thank goodness for convesations like this and all you fine people.
TJ
Get Ghost 2003. It recognizes both USB and firewire drives (with the newest update). I've been using it for many years but no go in Vista.
Rather than put all your eggs in the backup or ghost basket, seems like you could get a lot more mileage out of a mirrored or RAID 5 hard drive array. Not that backups are bad, but better to avoid needing to restore in the first place if possible.
How would RAID 5 or 1 protect a user from a failed or corrupt OS? The answer is - it won't.
I think all but one of my restores was because the content of the original was messed up by a program and I wanted to get the original back to the way it was. Wouldn't a mirroring or RAID setup simply guarantee that I had another copy of the messed-up original rather a copy of the original prior to the problem? Perhaps I don't understand mirroring or RAID.
Jon
I want an exact copy of my current hard drive on a new computer with all the settings and programs intact. I then plan on deleting everything on my old computer and just using the new one. Will Acronis allow me to do that or will I lose some functionality with the "new" copied computer? I don't want just a backup or snap shot. I want my fully functioning "old" computer on my "new" computer.
Well if you go to Acronis' website and look at their snap deploy..that is exactly what it does, if you pay the additional $12.49 per license you get the Universal Deployment as well, this allows for you to make sure that the correct drivers are installed on the correct box etc etc.
IMHO as a general rule this either can't be done, or is extremely risky. Unless the old and the new computer are practically identical then there will be differences in the driver software needed for the 2 computers - and imaging the old hard disk over the new hard disk will write the wrong drivers in. If you are lucky, and the 2 computers are fairly similar the old drivers might work - but I would not be confident it would ever be a stable computer.
The application for this software is essentially to build a clean version of the computer, then take an image - which means you only have to go through the hours of building once.
Sure, you'd have a problem 5 years ago, but most imaging tools nowadays allow for bare metal recovery to dissimmilar hardware using Universal restore technology. Acronis does this, check it out.
Help ...
I've tried running Acronis True Image. Here is the problem I encountered:
My original is an 80Gb harddisk. I wanted to upgrade to a 320Gb. I ran Full Backup, and then retore to my new 320Gb harddisk.
Problem: The 320Gb now appears to be 80Gb. I can't find the additional 240Gb in any partition (I use Paragon to manage partitions). All the programs appear to be working fine. Even when I check the 320Gb harddisk on another computer, it now appears to be only 80Gb.
Any ideas what I can do?
You don't say which version you're using but it's basically the same. When you clone pick the custom option and make sure to choose 'proportional' and it does just what it says. I clone from 160GB drives to a 64GB SSD and don't have any such problem.
I had a similar thing happen to me when I tried upgrading a Dell laptop from a 100GB drive to a 320GB drive. The problem was not with Acronis TI, but rather with the Master Boot Record. The support for the Media Direct functionality is managed from there (along with a hidden FAT partition). I wasn't interested in preserving the Media Direct "feature". I found a utility that wrote the standard info to the MBR. When I restored the Acronis backup I skipped the restoration of the MBR and got the full size of the drive to appear. I did come across postings in forums that describe how to move the Media Direct partition and edit the MBR to recognize it in its new location.
Partition Magic 8 will allow you to see and expand the 80bg to the full 320Gb. Easus also makes a fine tool that works on all our servers to resize the drive partitions.
It sounds like copying the 80 GB Acronis backup to your new drive made one 80 GB partition, leaving the remaining 240 GB unallocated. I would use PartitionMagic or a similar partition-managing program to increase the size of the 80 GB partition without data loss. I'm not familiar with Paragon, but I just looked it up and what I read indicates that Paragon can perform that task. Since the answer seems obvious and since you already use Paragon to manage partitions, perhaps you already tried to do that and ran into a problem.
Hello,
I've recently written a guide on how to use Symantec Ghost Properly:
http://wiki.spectralcoding.com/index.php/Symantec_Ghost
I hope this helps!
Thanks,
Smark
http://www.spectralcoding.com/
I had a Dell desktop with XP Home and used Ghost from Norton SystemWorks 2003 for six years and it worked fine. I recently got a new computer to handle a 30" monitor. It came with XP Pro. I installed my old Ghost on it but when I tried to run it, it froze my computer so badly that I could not recover and had to reinstall the OS. Seeking a replacement, I tried XXClone, which cloned my C: drive OK but it could not create a workable rescue disc. But after reading this great site, I took the advice from post #9 and DL'd Seagate DiscWizard (66 MB). It has a clear interface and worked quite smoothly. I first used it to create a bootable CD that worked fine. I then cloned my C: drive to my external HD; it did the job perfectly. The program comes from Acronis and might be the same as Acronis True Image that sells for $50. Thank you Seagate!
For anyones info, if you have a Seagate or Maxtor drive they both have an older vcersion of Acronis for free. I forget what it's called with each company but you can google up that answer.
The following is my opinion at the date posted. All software is subject to improvement. The main issue discussed here is related to Acronis doing data backups.
I've just abandoned using Acronis True Image Echo Enterprise for doing data backups. The product was brought in here by an outside consultant (before I arrived). IMO its imaging is its strong point. Its unreliable for data backups.
Let's say we are planning a weekly full backup on Friday's at 11:00pm followed by daily differentials at the same time on Monday-Thurdsay the next week. The backups are made to network attached storage and later FTP'd offsite. All backups are verified at the time they are made.
Each diffential backup is dependent on a Full Backup. Acronis differentials appear to be storing a delta to the original file in the full backup. This dependency causes the differential backups to be invalid or "corrupted" if the Weekly Full backup file is modified, overwritten or moved. The differentials do not stand on their own.
Let's say you have completed a week's cycle and you have the following backups as of Friday morning:
Backup_1.tib (The full from the previous Friday)
Backup_2.itb (Monday Differential)
Backup_3.itb (Tuesday Differential)
Backup_4.itb (Wednesday Differential)
Backup_5.itb (Thursday Differential)
Now it's Friday night and time for the Weekly Full backup. The Job starts. Acronis figures out what it wants to do and starts writing to Backup_1.tib.
The moment Backup_1.tib is modified, the differential backups 2 through 5 are no longer usable.
If your system crashes during the weekly backup (before it completes) you will no longer have any valid backup files in your online storage. Murphy says this will happen. This means hours of extra work to retrieve backup files from remote storage over a WAN.
Pet Peeves:
No concept of backup devices or rotating media.
No effective dates for schedules. You have to leave the task unscheduled until the first day you want it to run. (Who's got time for that)
No Fifth Week in monthly schedules - they have:
First Week
Second Week
Third Week
Fourth Week
Last Week
Some months have 4 weeks some have 5 weeks. A job scheduled for the Last Week runs on the 4th or 5th week depending on how many weeks are in the month. If you have a Fourth week job and a Last week job you will get a "collision" of backup jobs. They need a Fifth Week choice that only runs if there is actually a fifth week.
Backup Jobs Hang or get Stuck - There's no watchdog timer for a job. If you have 3 jobs that run sequentially and the first hangs on an open file, none of the remaining jobs complete. Real backup software flags the error after a number of attempts and then moves on to the next file. I'd rather be missing a single file than complete backups.
The Cancel Task function doesn't work on jobs that are stuck - you have to reboot.
There is no function to put a scheduled task "On Hold". You have to unschedule it.
I basically have found this software to lack essential functionality for backups. I do not recommend this product for doing data backups. I would use this product as a first step in disaster recovery. Make the machine operational and then use other products to backup and restore data.
Well of course, that happens with every single differential backup procedure. The second you modify the original file of which differentials were associated with then the differentials become useless. I don't see how that is difficult to understand. If you want your differentials to work then don't modify the damn original/full backup file. Instead create an entirely new full backup and leave the previous week's alone. So that way you'll have a two week backup rotation cycle.
To put it in your terms do:
Backup_W1.tib (full backup Friday, week 1)
Backup_W1_diff1.itb (Monday Differential)
Backup_W1_diff2.itb (Tuesday Differential)
Backup_W1_diff3.itb (Wednesday Differential)
Backup_W1_diff4.itb (Thursday Differential)
Backup_W2.tib (full backup Friday, week 2)
Backup_W2_diff1.itb (Monday Differential)
Backup_W2_diff2.itb (Tuesday Differential)
Backup_W2_diff3.itb (Wednesday Differential)
Backup_W2_diff4.itb (Thursday Differential)
Return back to Backup_W1.tib on the third Friday and the cycle continues.
Nobody wants to hand-manage their backups.
The question is, can this be configured to happen automatically?
My reading of the original posting on this thread is that it automatically re-uses the same filenames, but I've not used the product yet. *Can* it be configured to automatically do rotation in the way you describe, or are you suggesting a manual procedure?
>> The question is, can this be configured to happen automatically?
Sure. Write a series of scripts to do all these things and save your images in date coded sequential formats.
Or purchase a product that has a scheduler built-in to handle progressive backups: Symantec NetBackup, Backup Exec, CommVault Galaxy, Bakbone NetVault and others.
It sounds like you need some help - these packages are easier than writing it yourself, but none of them are inexpensive. But they ARE reliable. How much is your time and data worth?
I have Acronis......love it.
BC
A couple questions.
1. Do either of these programs have the ability to boot from their disk with an option to support RAID 0 drivers on boot?
2. Is there any indication how either of these programs will function under WIN 7?
Thanks in advance.
please edit my last post from "comments 3,4" to read "comments of May 7 and May 11"
If you register, you could do this yourself. What have you got to loose? Anyway, thank you for your contributions.
Those who "know," regard Peter Norton as a legend in the history of PCs, processing, and programming. The original (pre-Symantec) Norton Utilities were some of the very best written software to date. For every giant step that Microsoft has taken to make the world a less productive, at least we could once look to Norton and Borland to write truly worthwhile (and beyond) software.
But no kidding. Furthering comments comments of May 7 and May 11, and others above: Symantec stomps on Norton's honor with their desecration of software and having the audacity to use Norton's name. I agree. Symantec is the problem. And, yes, before they put their grimy mitts upon it, Ghost was vital to me - and with Symantec, it became useless.
Yes Norton Utilities was "the" GOD send back in the day, I could not live without it nor could any other respectable computer professional. and Symantec pissed all over it. Then they bought PowerQuest (Partition Magic, Drive Image) and pissed all over it. I think it is safe to say Symantec has ruined everything they have touched.
Thank goodness for BootIt NG I am able to live without Partition Magic
Yes I Still have and use PM 8.05 but it sometime has problems with large drives.
It seems these comments also apply to Symantec's virus and security programs as well, at least in my experience. I used to use them, but no more.
Here are my recent experiences -
From earlier experiences, I have sort of given up on imaging Partitions.
I now just image the whole drive.
Buy Seagate drives (more reliable).
Get Seagate's FREE Disc Wizard, (which burns to a bootable CD)
Don't run imaging software live (from within Windows).
Disconnect as many drives as you can (during Image builds, and also Image Restores).
I now do a three pronged approach -
- At least once, Image from drive to another drive (via IDE cables), and put away in a safe place. (I would try booting into it first)
- Image to an external USB drive, and Verify the image.
(If you are paranoid like me, you could also test recovering it to another drive)
- Have a large internal drive (with NO bootable OS), and place images into there.
(Again Verify the image)
Never move your images between drives, and especially not to/from external USB drives.
I have images on USB drives, that Verify. But after copying the image to internal drive, they become corrupt.
My Googling suggests that both Seagate, and Acronis have those problems. (Seagate's is based on Acronis.)
When it really hits the fan (PC dies), then you will have to Restore an image to a foreign PC -
After Restore, DO NOT boot into the drive.
Use XP CD, and do a Repair install.
Half way through the install, XP does a flippin reboot.
You have no guarantee that it will succeed.
If any of you have Bill Gates over for dinner, get him to do what I have described above.
Then just prior to the re-boot get him to hold a loaded revolver to his head.
Tell him to use it, if the following error occurs -
a disk read error has occurred
press ctrl+alt+del to restart
Googling, reveals better men than me, have been stumped by that one.
There are a plethora of causes, so you could try them all (I did).
But sometimes you will find that you cannot fix it.
I have suspected for a while, that it is the complexity of NTFS.
Recently, on a PC which refused to re-boot properly, during the Repair, I Restored an image, and immediately converted it to FAT32.
I then did the Repair Install, and it was 'a piece of cake'.
Rob
Seagate drives SUCK!
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&...
I'm guessing that the reason some of you are having problems with the software is that you have it running in the background performing incremental backups (not a good idea).
I've found that the best way to keep your personal files safe and up to date is by partitioning your hard drive or installing a second hard drive and then moving the "My Documents folder" to the new partition or hard drive. That way your personal files are not on the same disk as the operating system, so if your OS crashes your files should be safe.
Once you have separated your personal files from the OS, then you should backup Windows and all of your programs with either Acronis or Ghost, verify your backup and then turn Acronis or Ghost OFF until either of them is needed to restore your backup.
Personally I prefer Acronis because it creates a hidden partition on a different drive to the one your backing up and it will even backup onto DVD's for added peace of mind.
can you make a mirror image disk using Acronis? I want to purchase a larger H/D for my notebook because I don't have the Windows O/S install disk. Dell doesn't include it the purchase price. If you read this can you reply to:
*******.*****@yahoo.com
Thank you
I must have been a really lucky user all this time. I take full system backups very seriously and always have. I began with the original Norton Ghost in the early 90's. It was solid as a rock and saved my bacon on many occasions. When Symantec bought out Norton, it seems they really mucked things up. Symantec "Ghost 2003" was as solid as a rock. I can't tell you how many times I was able to restore after I something went south. I liked the simplicity of the DOS load off a diskette. It was so easy and so fast that I would Bit level clone weekly. It took maybe 17 minutes. Still used it on XP-Pro and loved it!
Then I bought a new system and whoa....gotta get new version. I bought Symantec Ghost 12. Since I had restored so many times with the old Norton Ghost and the Symantec Ghost 2003 I had a false sense of security. I had a system crash and tired to restore with Ghost 12. No way! Total loss of data. This happened three times to me . (I'm a slow learner)! I have NEVER been able to restore from Ghost 12. It seems as though I've lost an old friend. I have a spare system that I play with and try new stuff. Acronis seems to work fine. I've created crashes on purpose just to see what would happen. It has restored well each time. I'm not one to be impressed by the GUI or any of that other eye candy, I just want a program to run "as advertised". It seems that Symantec destroyed Ghost. Bummer
Like you, I have found the old 'boot floppy Ghost 2003' to be bullet proof. Used it many times to get out of jail.
The only problem I ever had was recently when I wanted to clone my small WinXP C: drive to a new 1000GB drive I had bought. I made a Ghost2003 image on a nearby partition as usual. Then with the new 1000GB drive I didn't know whether it was up to me to provide the new C: & D: partitions? So I decided I would make new C: & D: partitons on it. But when I attempted to put the old C: image on the new larger C: partition, the Ghost2003 restore process failed for the first time in my life. It put something there, but on reboot, XP just came up as a hires XP logo then the system hung. Whether it was because the Ghost image was now being aked to run on a different sized partition, I don't know.
Anyway my strategy now is:
Use the floppy DOS version of Ghost2003 to save C: to an image on my D: drive. And whenever I have made significent changes to XP, I do a resave to a new image, keeping old ones just in case I need to go back in time. So now I know my C: drive is backed up reliably.
And for my D: drive which has all my photos & docs etc, I just manually do a complete save to a USB drive every 2 weeks. It takes a while, but you can go away & do something else apart from sitting at your computer. And you have the reassurance that it HAS WORKED And your files ARE SAFE. No more crossing my fingers with Ghost 9 (which I had tried but became untrustful of), wondering if this or that might make my image file unrecoverable in the future. This way I get to sleep peacefully each night.
Phil Manley
I too have had issues with Ghost. Older versions were great. New ones are trash. Unfortunately all of Symantec is trash. Another thread. :(
I found that Acronis worked great up until you attempted to restore. It would NOT work. Come to find out there was some sort of bug that when you booted up with their CD, it would not recognize the backup media. Apparently they have fixed this 'minor' detail with that latest version. :(
The problem I have with Acronis is support. It is non-existent! They simply do not value customers and as such, have no customer service skills what so ever. Very depressing. Don't take my word for it. Try to get something resolved. I finally gave up and asked my credit card company to reverse the charges. Interestingly enough that was enough to finally get them to respond. Too late unfortunately. If they would just fix their support section I think I'd give them another try. I like their product and idea of how to do it.
Used Ghost and Acronis. Acronis is still the reliable one. I have made and restored countless images using Acronis, and never once failed. With Ghost, I will put the success rate at 50%. And we are talking about running on the same computer. Forget about the defective ram theory, it is simply not valid.
Agree with #30. How do you access SUPPORT from Acronis? Have tried everything and they even failed to register me after following instructions after download. Still trying to get SUPPORT to assist.
CMS Products are not freeware, and we don't appreciate unsolicited advertising.
peter
I personally have used WD Lifeguard tools for over 30 years.
Never had a problem cloning a drive until MS came up with XP and authentication. You would'nt think a byte by byte copy to an identical drive which was zeroed would be an issue. Guess again.
I put the blame squarely on MS shoulders as these same drives and system under a Win98 OS worked perfectly. Skipped all other OS until XP.
My2Cents
I have read the review and comments back to Jan, 2009.
I tried the trial version of Acronis True Image Home 2009 without success. I tried to clone one Western Digital 80 MB drive to an identical external drive, but the software kept hanging up and never completed the job. I emailed Acronis tech support, but they took so long to respond that my trial version expired. I uninstalled it and tried to install a new trial version, but was told my trial period had expired. Apparently, the first one left some signal on my system (can this be considered malware?).
So, I am still looking for some cloning/imaging software. But I also have a question: The claims in numerous comments about failed images really scare me! Using a 2-drive system, like I have, how can I verify that the image works like the original?
Thanks to anyone who can help.
You have the trial version with limited function. I have acronis installed and can assure you it really works. It has saved me numerous times. I suggest you buy the full version and give it a try. The acronis secure zone is awesome. Being able to press f11 in dos to restore a drive is great.
If you work with it I think you will really appreciate it. I have use norton ghost in the past with poor results. I really liked powerquest drive image pro, but symantec bought them out and ruined it.
I used Acronis True Image on my HP notebook that has various Nvidia hardware. Although the image CD will boot, when you actually try to write the image back to the HD, it says that it can't find a HD. In reading so far, it appears that True Image has a problem with some Nvidia drivers. They recommend changing settings in the BIOS but my BIOS has limited options and their recommended changes aren't available to me.
I'm a five year self taught half wit (as opposed to a total dimwit) and have had several versions of Acronis and none of them would ever recogonize my backup drives, informing me they were possibly 'dirty', whatever that means. They were all external drives, all new and freshly formatted so I just used the imaging part of the program and it worked fine. No compression involved as far as I know and when you image the disk it requires you to switch them out immediately, so if the image was bad you'd know it right away. And I always had my freshly cleaned and defragged original drive as my backup. Now I'm using Acronis 2009 on a new Dell with two drives and an external e-sata plug which is connected to a 250GB external drive. The new version backs up to my second internal drive or the e-sata drive and always validates the backup as the last part of the backup sequence. I've already had occasion to use one of these backups and it restored the whole system in a few minutes. To me, just the imaging part of the program made it worth the cost and now that it can actually schedule regular backups I find I prefer just making an image disk whenever I make any big changes to my system or once a month if I don't. With drive space so cheap these days I don't see why you'd need to compress a backup. I keep my OS drive pretty bare, with all my document files (which I just copy to about half a dozen places) on another drive and the backup files are the same size as the disk space I'm using on C: drive, so can't you make backups and opt out of compressing them? I really don't know enough to check but if the backup file is exactly the same size as the original that means it's not compressed, right? And I didn't play with any settings (I don't think) to shut down compression. It just seems that compressed files are less dependable than non compressed ones so why compress them in the first place? Space is cheap, compression brings problems with it, so why do it?
I agree. Hard disk space is cheap. And compression is just adding another layer of complexity and possibly trouble. Your approach is valid.
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