Works but a challenge
November 18, 2008
Bought this with the sole intention of cloning a failing hard drive with a larger one. Figured this would save me hours of work installing and transferring programs. Well, I installed it with no problems and ran the Clone program. It did everything it was supposed to do in the order shown in the instructions. The program is slightly lacking in instructional material but workable. When it was done, nothing had been written to the new drive. Tried several more variations, still with no joy. Now I end up spending hours/days researching and reading FAQ's and reviews to find any answers to my questions. After many hours of reading reviews I finally found a ray of hope and tried again. Success!! It worked flawlessly! It completed the clone in a relatively short period of time and the new larger cloned hard drive is running my system with no noticeable issues. What I found:
1. Do you need to format the new drive? No, although I did during the numerous different combinations I tried. The program found it and reformatted it to create the partition for the clone with no problem.
2. To follow up on #1. When I formatted the drive I named it something I could easily spot. This is helpful if you have several drives in your system.
3. If it doesn't work the first time following the directions, don't waste time trying other configurations. Just reboot with the program disk in the CD drive and it will boot up and allow you to perform the tasks you want. This is what I finally did and after this if worked as advertised.
I gave 3 stars because the program finally did what it was supposed to do after many hours of research. If this had been a simple note in their directions it would saved a great amount of time. I was just about to return it as a defective program when I found the suggestion to boot up from the disk.
Buggy software, no support
November 11, 2008
After I bought Acronis True Image 11 Home I was having several problems, mostly involving the software hanging. I went to the Acronis website to try to look up solutions. The website didn't work at all, for days, then wouldn't let me log in for several more. I wrote them an email about this. Got canned email acknowledgement with statement that they'd get back to me. They never did.
Later I sent them a question about yet another of the technical problems I was having (and couldn't find an answer to in their knowledge base). Again I got a canned email acknowledgement with statement that they'd get back to me. It took them 22 days to return my email. In the meantime I had already contacted the Better Business Bureau. That was weeks ago, and they haven't responded to the BBB either.
What really bothers me about this is that, although Acronis can't be bothered to respond to my support email questions, they've been sending me emails offering to sell me the new, improved version (True Image Home 2009) for almost as much money as I paid for the original problematic software just a few months ago! They don't seem to have any problem sending marketing email!
Better Than True Image 10
November 11, 2008
I owned True Image 10 for a year before recently upgrading to 11. 10 did the job on more than one occasion, including a full restore of the C Drive, but it never lived up to my expectations because unless I booted with Vista, Acronis was unable to see the 500 Gig USB drive I purchased specifically for doing backups. If I booted with the Acronis recovery CD, the USB drive was invisible. Acronis tech support was sympathetic, but was never able to solve the problem.
A couple of weeks ago 11 went on sale, so I thought I'd give it a try. Problem solved! The recovery CD can see, and restore from, my 500 Gig drive, the interface is noticeably slicker, and there are several utilities not present in 10. I am happy as a clam! Great piece of software.
Why 5 stars? Because Amazon wouldn't let me give it 6!
November 9, 2008
I purchased Acronis True Image 11 Home Edition in August from Amazon for $30. I immediately did an image backup of my C drive and squirreled it away. The process to create the image backup is so easy, even your grandmother (or a caveman) could do it.
I didn't immediately review this program until I tested it under fire. That test came yesterday, when I picked up some nasty DLL files that were trying to attach themselves as "IE helpers" -- that kind of help I don't need. I tried to delete these files, but couldn't. I tried to restore from a system restore point, but that wouldn't work either. I tried to repair Windows XP, but again those pesky DDL files were still there.
I thought to myself, now is the time to test Acronis. I opted to restore everything on my C drive from the Acronis image backup, as I didn't know what files may have been corrupted. Less than 1/2 later (actually I think it only took about 10 minutes), my PC was back to its normal self and those pesky DLL files were gone.
This is a definite 5-star program, and I would recommend it at twice the price. If I didn't have Acronis, I would be spending my entire weekend rebuilding my C drive. That's not my idea of a "fun" weekend. With that in mind, I figure that I have already recouped my investment. I have 100% confidence in this program.
Clumsy but Effective Back-up and Restore
November 9, 2008
Does back-up and restore. Instructions are cryptic and incomplete. It took two days to restore my hard drive. I finally got on line with one of their techs (a very good service) and figured it out.
The problem was that it makes multiple files when writing to a FAT drive, and the instructions didn't say which file to back up or in what order. It turns out that backing up any one file will automatically invoke the others. Also, there are several choices about back-up which aren't obvious to the casual user.
