Our Labs Have Adopted Acronis True Image

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, we’re in the process of updating the entire gamut of test suites for all of our performance and non-performance-related content. Yes, it’s taking a lot longer than we could have ever anticipated, part in thanks to various things that came up (such as a four-day trip I took last week). We’re closer than ever to wrapping some up though, so you can expect to see some great things within the next few weeks.

Up to this point, we’ve always used Norton Ghost for all our hard drive backup/restore needs, but with this total test suite overhaul, I decided to test out some of the competition, to see if we could make an improvement there as well. I like Ghost, but it hasn’t proven to be the most reliable for me (sometimes I’d have to restart the restore process two or three times before it would actually work), and it doesn’t allow total drive backups (multiple partitions + MBR) that I could see. Those are two major issues for our particular needs.

Thanks to our review of Kingston’s SSD upgrade kit, I was introduced to Acronis True Image, and to my surprise, the version included allowed me to test out the simple backup/restore with my other drives. So, I tested it out with my new HP dv2, because I wanted to backup the entire drive (to retain the recovery partition), and keep the backup file handy in case I accidentally wipe that partition in the future.

Well, it worked, and the entire process was far easier to pull off than with Ghost. Both partitions along with the MBR were retained, and after wiping the target drive and restoring the backup, it was good as new. This impressed me enough to download the trial of the full-blown version, and again, the feature-set is amazing (especially for $50!). This isn’t an advertisement, but a real-world testament. I’ve only used one feature for any good deal of time, but that one alone is worth the price-tag to me.

We’re waiting on the shipment of a few copies, and once received, I’ll put it all to good use and follow-up in a few weeks with my thoughts. If you’re curious about the entire feature-set, you can check out the product site.

Acronis True Image Home 2009 is an award-winning backup and recovery solution for a good reason: it protects your PC after just one click and allows you to recover from viruses, unstable software downloads, and failed hard drives. Create an exact copy of your PC and restore it from a major failure in minutes, or back up important files and recover them even faster.