Help With Product Selection
I suspect this has been asked before, but I can't find it, so here goes . . .,
Acronis was highly recommended to me by my hardware support guy. What wasn't mentioned was the version of Acronis. That's where I need some help.
I have a tower presently running Win XP SP3 (very possibly will be upgrading to Win 7 soon), a laptop running Win 7 and a second laptop running Win XP SP3. All are networked, although the my database development and website development work is done (virtually 100%) on the tower. I presently use Carbonite for off-site backup and an external 1Tb drive connected to the tower for local backup.
The tower also functions as the network server in my home network.
What version of Acronis is recommended, both for the short term and for when I upgrade (or replace) the tower?
TIA
Dave
If you are running Windows 7 then I believe the only compatible version is ATI 2011.
This is the only reason that I bought ATI 2011 for my new laptop.
I run ATI 2009 which is a much better version on my XP computer.
I appreciate it. I've pretty much come to the 'ATI 2011' conclusion and am running the 30 Day Trial now. The only issue I have is that there is no visual feedback that it is running - no progress bar, or anything else for that matter to let the user know there is activity. Also it seems to respond kind of slow, but neither of these impact operation, just user familiarity, so I'll just get used to it.
Dave
Dave,
During your 30days, make sure you do a full disk backup (including all partitions), create a recovery CD and simulate a recovery from that CD (simulating the case when your system disk fails completely and you have to replace it). Just don't proceed at the last recovery step or do a recovery on a spare disk.
Also, here are a couple of DO's and DON'Ts:
DO:
- read Grover's true image guide. There is a wealth of info there and many idiosynchrasies you'd better get familiar with,
- test various backup destinations, backup schemes,
- keep the same name for the task and the TIB files (you can have different names, but that complicate backup files operations),
- make sure you have the "backup scheme" tab active when you close the backup options window. Otherwise you will lose the automatic cleanup options,
- double check your validation settings. I recommend you turn off the options in the validation schedule advanced settings.
- run backup validations after a new backup, if you edit backup name, destination, or scheme. It is often better to start a new task.
DO NOT:
- manually remove, move, delete TIB files,
- run long incremental of differential backup chains. Loot at it this way: you need to have a full backup, that you have validated and that you feel comfortable going back to (not too old), in case your chain get corrupted
- use the time stamps for the TIB files (@date@, @time@). While this works, it complicates backup files operations or editing backup settings later.
- use Try and Decide or Non Stop Backup for your system partition without having a full disk backup you feel comfortable going back to, just in case these more advanced features don't quite work out for you,