Imaging Software

I’ve been using Acronis True Image for two years, and I must say I’m satisfied with it. I used Ghost for some time, and True Image creates partition image much faster (is I notices, about 3 times faster). In comparison with Ghost, ATI allows you to set the backup process priority and it has some additional tools, such as such as transfering a system to a new HDD.

I have Acronis True Image 8 and it works fine. It seems easier to use than Ghost and is faster. I've had no problems with it.

I have been using Ghost from back in the version 4 days.  I started using True Image at version 6,  and I still have both.  When I started using True Image,  it would run under windows and not require a system boot into "DOS Mode" to make it work.  Ghost has slowly added this support as time has progressed,  but at a cost.  All Ghost versions prior to the Corporate version 8.0 required a "Real Mode DOS boot" to work.  Starting in version 8.0,  you could run a 32 bit application to image a drive as long as you weren't trying to image your system boot drive.  This meant that to image your boot drive,  you still had to reboot the system...

True Image v6 was dog slow,  but it worked and worked reliably.  It would take about 3-4 hours to image my system to an external USB2 drive.  Since it worked under windows,  I had access to image onto external drives that Ghost didn't support because I couldn't get DOS drivers for the hardware (USB2 PCMCIA adapters or Firewire drives).  Ghost also made it diffcult to get the version you needed to get things done.  The Ghost progession order was Corp v7.0 -> 2002 -> Corp v7.5 -> 2003 -> Corp v8 -> v9.0.  Each new release added features that the previous didn't have.  One added USB/Firewire support (DOS Drivers) another added the ability to read image files stored on an NTFS partition, another added the ability to write images to an NTFS partition (without loading DOS drivers), and yet another added the ability to image non-boot volumes under windows,  and finally the ability to image anything under windows.  The release allowing imaging without rebooting removes the ability to boot a recover floppy and restore your image,  and requires Ghost to be installed on all systems imaged.

Ture Image v8 images my 80GB drive (about 65-70GB filled) in about 75-90 minutes,  while I'm in windows and doing other things.  It has the ability to build "recovery media" which can boot and restore (or image) a system that doesn't have to have True Image installed on it.  It has supported reading from & writing to NTFS partitions for some time,  although there was a bug for a while that would only allow it to access the first partition on an external drive (but that was fixed several builds ago).  The Server version of True Image even supports imaging Dynamic Volumes under 2000, XP, 2003 (and this is the only software I've found that will do that).  True Image has also supported inccremental images for sime time,  and now even supports scheduled imaging to allow you to make a full image once a month and schedule incrementals to run several times a week (as long as you are imaging to a network disk,  or a local attached drive that will always be available.  Personally,  I prefer True Image's method for accessing optical media (CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW) as it makes it easier to write to RW media,  although I tend to create files on a second disk and later burn those to the optical media for convience.

Both programs have supported the ability to browse image files as virtual disks and copy individual files out from it.  Both now run under Windows (since Ghost is now a re-labeled version of the old PowerQuest Drive Image package) although Ghost is a bit slower.  Both allow you to image a drive and restore onto a drive of a different capacity to upgrade your existing HD without re-installing everyting.  Both allow you to recover from disasters by restoring an image onto a new/clean disk (you need to boot Ghost with the install CD, and True Image with their special recovery CD you create in the install process).

I still use Ghost 8.0 for systems at work because I can use it to restore an image (disaster recovery) when booted from a DOS boot floppy.  I use True Image v8 at home for my notebook because it is easy to use and allows me to image the system while I'm surfing in the evening.  I have used True Image once or twice at work,  but it was difficult since not all of the systems support booting from CD (or CD-RW in some cases),  but it did allow me to image a dynamic volume on a server. 

I prefer True Image myself.

Thanks to all three of you for the info.  I like TI so far so if it keeps working this well for the next two weeks, I think I'll buy it.

I've only run into one problem so far, and I was hoping that you all might be able to help.  TI was unable to image an external USB drive I had that other computers were sharing at the time.  Do I need to end all shares on a drive (which would be a pain) or was this just a random puke...   oh, and it wasn't pretty  -- once TI hit something that it couldn't read it killed all the shares and I to remount the drive and reshare it entirely to get it working on the network again.

I can't help you with that since I have no experience doing it that way. What I do is image my C drive to my D(storage)drive in the same computer. Then as additional backup, I copy the image from the D drive to my external USB 2 drive. That of course works without problems.

Like the other user,  I haven't had that experience either.  I have imaged one external USB drive onto another,  but I don't share my external drives (other than the default hidden share).  I do have them all mounted (using XP mount points) to places on my C: drive,  so they can be accessed as a a folder on my C: drive.  This works well for me,  but then again,  I don't generally let others use my drives across the network.

Thanks again you two.  I tried the image again with the drive still shared but no one accessing it at the time (I set it to run at night) and it completed without problems.

Things seem to be going good and I'm thinking I will buy it in two weeks when the trial expires