How long does Acronis 13 take in Windows 7
Hi,
Let's say on the C: drive you have Windows 7, microsoft office programs and few Adobe programs but no games, movies or personal documents. Your CPU is intel i5. You have SSD.
1. How long would it take with Acronis 13 to create an image of the C: drive?
2. How long would it take to replace the C: drive with its image?
3. If you have used both Acronis 9 and Acronis 13, how do these two compare in terms or reliability. Are there any bugs, glitches, error messages in Acronis 13 that I should be worried about?
Over the last 4 years Acronis 9 has never failed me once. It has been absolutely perfect and it is still the best software I have ever used. I have Acronis 9 OEM version, Build 3,647. I bought it a few years ago at amazon. I think it was £9. You can read my long review from 2008 at amazon. http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B000N3UYVE/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr…
I'm upgrading from an 8 year old pentium 4 computer with 2.66mhz CPU and 1GB ram running windows XP, to an intel i5 3570K CPU with 16GB ram and SSD running Windows 7. All I want is the new setup not to be slower than my current setup. It takes me 4 minutes at the moment to replace the C: drive with its image.
Hi Colin,
I don't have Windows 7 yet but I googled and it looks like it takes 16GB on disk. So my C: drive will be 19GB. I had no idea it would be so big. My current C: is under 5GB. I should be happy with 10 to 12 minutes I guess.
I always create the images from within windows and I always install them by booting with the Acronis CD.
I will save the C: image either to another partition on the 128GB SSD that holds the operating system or to a new SSD. But it won't be an external drive. I use external drives for uncompressed data backups. The acronis image files go somewhere inside my documents which then get copied to an external drive from time to time.
I haven't used an SSD yet either but I ordered a 128GB samsung. I read that SSD's perform better with 50% or more empty space and don't slow down quickly over time if there is more empty space. I use Acronis as a windows optimization tool. When I make changes to existing programs like excel or photoshop or windows itself, or when I install new programs, I write these changes down and when the list is long enough I go back to the newborn windows using acronis and apply the changes there again and create a new image. This way the windows in the image file never grows older than 1 day but it has all the customizations and programs that I add over years.
I reinstall C image files quite frequently, sometimes multiple times a month. I'm not sure how this will effect the life of an SSD. Maybe I should save the images to an internal sata3 HDD.
Hi,
Can somebody please give me a ballpark figure as to how long Acronis 13 takes?
On youtube there is a guy who reviews Norton Ghost and says it takes 1 hour to reinstall a operating system image.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNROqKOFFAw&playnext=1&list=PLB4AC87B23E…
At the moment it takes me 4 minutes with Acronis 9 to reinstall a windows XP image in an 8 year old pentium 4 computer. I just go to the kitchen to make a tea and when I come back I have a fresh and fully optimized and perfect windows.
I still have no idea how long Acronis 13 will take with Windows 7 on a new computer. Is it 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour?
I haven't purchased windows 7 or Acronis 13 yet. I ordered all the parts for me new PC except these two software. If it is going to take too long I might stick with windows xp and acronis 9. I will just go any buy the windows XP 64 bit version.
<I still have no idea how long Acronis 13 will take with Windows 7 on a new computer. Is it 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour?
How long is a piece of string? It depends. You haven't told us what applications you'll install, the hardware you'll use, or the backup destination. All have an impact on time.
My C: partition includes Win7 installation and applications, in under 30 GB. I can create an ATI image of it to an external HD in around 9 minutes including validation.
I haven't purchased windows 7 or Acronis 13 yet. I ordered all the parts for me new PC except these two software. If it is going to take too long I might stick with windows xp and acronis 9. I will just go any buy the windows XP 64 bit version.
That seems kind of like the tail wagging the dog. Choose your OS based on your needs and preferences, not based on how long it takes to install or backup.
Marcello,
Your mileage will vary.
To give you an idea, on my computer running Win 7 64bit, and a windows experience of 7.8, running a backup from an SSD to an eSata disk of a fresh Windows 7 install with Adobe CS, Office, etc. (about 30GB) took me 8mn. Restoring the image took 8 mn from the recovery CD.
After a few more games intall, more data on the SSD, I am now backing up 66GB to an USB 2.0 in 20mn. I recently restored a Win7 and a Win8 version of this from the recovery CD in 13mn.
Based on the information in last 2 posts, my estimate is that it will take me 8 or 9 minutes to create an image and again 8 or 9 minutes to reinstall it. Seems reasonable.
tuttle,
I wrote the details in message #3. 3GB of programs except 16GB of windows 7. So in total 19GB C: drive. Will save to internal SSD. My CPU is intel core i5 3570K not overclocked with 16GB ram.
Now the only problem is that I'm too annoyed with Windows 7. I was about to buy this windows:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Windows-software-intended-builders/dp…
But according to information in microsoft site the Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit comes with 16GB ram limit.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366778%28v=vs…
That's rubbish really. Even the 64 bit XP has 128 GB ram limit as you can see on the same page.
The windows 7 version that has higher ram limit is the professional version and costs about £160. There is no way I'm gonna buy that.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Windows-Professional-Full-Version/dp/…
I will save the C: image either to another partition on the 128GB SSD that holds the operating system or to a new SSD. But it won't be an external drive.
Backing up to a partition on your OS drive is not a good backup strategy. If that drive fails, you'd lose your system and data and your backups.
Even backing up to another internal drive is not ideal. If the PC were to suffer a power spike, fire, theft, etc., you'd still be without a separate backup.
IMO, external HDs are an ideal medium for backups. They're portable and can easily be stored separately from the PC. Removeable drive bays offer similar benefits.
tuttle,
I do indeed backup all my documents to an external drive and the C: images are inside my documents in D: so they go to an external drive as well together with the rest of my files. In fact on the next paragraph after that quote I mentioned that.
The reason I have the C: images in two different places is because those image files are very important to me. If the external drive were to fail I would still have the image file inside my documents. I have a text file where I have recorded every change I made in windows and any program I have and it is a long long file with over 200 items. It would take hours of work to re do them. I think a backup strategy needs to assume that 1 drive can fail at any time so you should have every file in two different drives.
My current setup is like this on my 8 year old machine:
C: partition on HDD: windows and programs
D: partition on HDD: my documents including C images
USB HDD drive: copy of D
My new setup will be like this:
C: partition on SSD: windows and programs
D: partition on SSD: my documents including C images
E: internal HDD: media files
USB HDD drive: copy of D, + copy of E
By the way, can somebody please tell me if Acronis 13 does uncompressed data backup and sync? I have the OEM version of Acronis 9 so at the moment I use another program for sync. I want my data files to be uncompressed, as if they were hand copied.
As can be seen from the marketing bumph from Acronis TI2013 has a sync operation, however this is a two way sync, that is, if you delete somehtin on your main drive it will also delete that file in the sync folder the same as if you add or delete something in the sync folder it will be added or deleted from your main system.
Syncs are not compressed and you can set 2013 to make files and folders backups without compression.
This version of True Image is TIH 2013 not v13, referring to it as 13 is likely to cause confusion at some point especially if you talk to support or an Acronis developer, internally to Acronis, v13 refers to True Image 2011.
Hi,
I wanted to post an update. I have build my new PC yesterday and installed Windows 7. I took an image of the C: drive with Acronis 2013 trial version and then I reinstalled the image.
As you can read above, I estimated that it would take me 8 or 9 minutes but I was amazed by the speed because it took only 1minute 45seconds to create an image of C: and again the same to reinstall the image.
This is the hardware I'm using:
CPU: intel core i5 3570K
Ram: 16GB crucial
SSD: Samsung 830 SATA3 6GB/S, 128 GB, partitioned as C: 89GB and E:30GB, you get 119GB in total, not the full 128GB for some reason.
Motherboard: Asrock H77 Pro4-M micro ATX
Size of data on C: 34 GB
Size of C: image (.tib file): 5.7GB
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium
When creating the C: image I did it within Windows and I saved the image to another partition on the same SSD. Of course I will copy that file to an external HDD. In Windows 7 you can easily partition a drive within windows. Before I used to use a program called gparted in windows XP so I was very happy to do the partitioning within windows 7 without installing any program.
When loading the C: image I did it with the Acronis boot CD. The Acronis 2013 trial version lets you create a bootable iso file which you burn to a CD.
I'm truly amazed by Acronis 2013. It is the best software ever and probably the most misunderstood and undervalued software as well. Acronis makes time travel possible, not in real world but in your computer.
No matter how many viruses my PC has, no matter how many system files I delete, no matter how many useless programs I install, Acronis takes me back to the Windows I have perfected over time in less than 2 minutes. That's what I call amazing.
My nightmare with Norton Ghost:
My Samsung 830, 128GB SSD which I bought from amazon.co.uk for £80.00 (it's great) came with Norton Ghost 15. It is on it's own CD and has a working product key on the CD packaging (unlike the Acronis Western Digital edition which comes with some HDD's and you don't get an Acronis CD but instead a download link and the product key supplied doesn't work according amazon.co.uk reviews).
So initially I was happy get a free Norton Ghost 15 which appears to be a full version. But my happiness didn't last long because I made the big mistake of installing this bloody useless piece of crap software to my computer. What a joke.
I had never used Norton Ghost before. From all the reviews that compare Norton Ghost to Acronis, I had the impression that this is a serious software. It is a joke. If you have used Windows recovery program in windows XP, Norton Ghost is just like that software, unreliable, complicated and untrustworthy.
When I first started Norton Ghost 15, it said something about talking to the agent and creating recovery point. Than it gave an error. It said can't talk to windows agent.
At this point I shut down the program and restarted it and started checking out menus. All I want to do it to create an image of the C drive and save that image to the E drive. My C drive is 34GB. I have set the E partition to 30GB because the C image will be compressed so it should fit in there easily.
The Norton Ghost 15 menus are so bloody complicated. There was something called "create a copy of a drive or partition". So I tried that. It gave an error because it said destination is not big enough. It turns out this process doesn't have a compression option. So I would get a 34GB copy of a 34GB drive. I'm not sure if I would end up with a single file or with one to one copies of thousands of files because I didn't try it because it is not what I want.
So I checked other menus. The problem is Norton Ghost 15 wants you to create a scheduled task that will run regularly. Then it will create countless recovery points each time you run that task. For example you will be able to return back to the 2 year old recovery point or a 2 week old one.
I don't work that way. I always go back to the first day I installed windows. Then I do all the changes to the 1 day old windows and then I take another image. My new windows image is still 1 day old.
So Norton Ghost 15 and I had some difficulty talking to each other because the useless way it approaches drive imaging. All I want to do is to create a bloody image of the C: drive. It can't be so hard. There is another menu called "create a one time backup". I thought that must be it. However again it kept talking, talking to windows agent, getting information about recovery point, creating recovery point and all that crap.
I kept checking and checking and Norton Ghost kept talking and talking about recovery points. I hate that. I hate everything about windows recovery utility. Don't talk to me with the same language because it is stupid. What is the point of having recovery points? If you get some piece of invisible malware on your computer somewhere along the time over the years or if your windows is bloated with pieces of software that were left behind, the last thing you want is to keep the same windows and just change some settings so you can pretend you have gone back to a recovery point while in fact lots of the actual files you had are still there.
Anyway, thanks God the Acronis trial version came to rescue. I was worried that the 2013 version would be too complicated compared to my old Acronis 09. I had seen some screenshots with lots of settings. But it is still the same simple program that I love.