Acronis True Image or other imagining software.

[nath]

Do any of you lot have experience with this? I've a client with a moderately ropey old computer, about £3000 worth of software on it and a slim chance of getting all of the codes and discs needed if we wanted to reinstall to another (or even the same) machine. After a pretty serious scare a week ago I suggested I should look in to imaging software to take a snapshot of the drive should it fuck up again. I recall Acronis doing something like this but after checking ebuyer there are some pretty poor reviews.

So, anyone know if it's crap or if there are any alternatives that'd do a suitable job?

Cheers!

 

[ST^]

I installed a trial of Acronis and it didn't work, also refused to uninstall. "Fatal error during installation". I've had the fucking thing sitting in my Add Remove programs for over a year.

Use Norton Ghost.

 

[nath]

That goes against my religion though - nothing Norton ever touches my clients PC's :\. Have you much experience with Ghost?

 

[Chilly]

acronis is good. use it.

 

[Kryten]

acronis is the dogs bollocks - it's a mile ahead of Ghost and for good reason. I even use it ahead of Symantec's enterprise level rubbish (aka BESR)

 

[Bodhi]

Acronis = teh sex. I would spec it in my solutions at work if it wasn't so fucking expensive for multi-server environments. Backup, imaging, P2V's, it can do all of them, and is generally lovely to use.

 

[smurkin]

Acronis is good - I bought it after a try out. My only gumble was that it didn't (might now) come with a partitioning tool for reallocating space to the left. I made quite a few images from RAID0 without any problem.

I think windows 7 will make some sort of system image now - probably no good for your old pc.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

Acronis is pretty damned good. Although I back up my data regularly, the thought of having to rebuild my primary system (at home) fills me with dread as its been refined over many months of careful config. The latest version can create a nice VHD as well as the usual recovery disks. Very sweet. I've not tried mounting it into a VM yet myself but its on the To-Do list very soon just out of nosiness.

I've used it in both home and enterprise environments with good results. the only times I've had problems it has been with somewhat dodgy/damaged systems, for example, a system where partition magic had already cocked the system somewhat (a while ago now admittedly).

 

[nath]

Cheers guys, Acronis it is.

 

[Bodhi]

Acronis is pretty damned good. Although I back up my data regularly, the thought of having to rebuild my primary system (at home) fills me with dread as its been refined over many months of careful config. The latest version can create a nice VHD as well as the usual recovery disks. Very sweet. I've not tried mounting it into a VM yet myself but its on the To-Do list very soon just out of nosiness.

I've used it in both home and enterprise environments with good results. the only times I've had problems it has been with somewhat dodgy/damaged systems, for example, a system where partition magic had already cocked the system somewhat (a while ago now admittedly).

VHD's are fecking useless though, as it means you have to use MS to virtualise. In my experience whenever you do that you end up with just as much hardware as when you started, just managing it all is an enormous pain in the arse.

VMDK's = teh win. Luckily Acronis will convert it into one of those as well, if you select the option that says "I have a brain and virtualise properly".