Sarasota PC Monitor
True Image 9
A Software Review
byHerb Goldstein
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.As the cover of this month's Monitor may suggest by our presentation, SPCUG has declared January as backup month. It once again reminds you that if your hard drive contains anything that is of value, you better make pretty darn sure you back it up completely and frequently.
Advanced as they may have become, hard drives still fail. For a variety of reasons, data, software applications and files still do become corrupted, deleted or magically disappear into the electronic unknown. The only insurance against irreparable loss is your devotion to making backups; that and an employment of backup software that is fully adequate to do the job.
As regards adequacy and dependability combined with simplicity, it used to be that Powerquest's Drive Image was the hands-down choice to do the job. Unfortunately after Powerquest's untimely demise, it's software fell into the abyss of Symantec to become yet another of its typical deformed resource hogs.
So what's a devoted backup user to do? There's no shortage of backup software available these days. Microsoft even includes one in your operating system. But getting a program that meets all the parameters you need and does it thoroughly and efficiently is something else. Today, there is only one program that meets all the necessary parameters, Acronis True Image, now in an advanced feature-laden version 9.
For starters, True Image creates backups, as the name implies, by imaging, not copying. Imaging is the only method that will create a byte-for-byte duplicate of your original including all the elements of your operating system. It is the only method that is fully complete in every way. Furthermore, True Image allows you to backup to the media of your choice, from a CD, flash drive, or another hard drive (internal or external). Subsequently, you can easily restore anything from a single file to a partition or an entire hard drive. Wizards are provided to make the job easy for novices.
Uniquely, True Image permits you to continue what you are working on while doing either the backup or restore. The latest version, 9, introduces some new neat features. Once having created a full backup, you can do quick incremental backups which contain files that you have added or changed since your original backup and thereafter since your last incremental backup. New and most welcome is the differential backup. It will include all the changes that have occurred since your original backup rather than those since your last differential. In restoring, incrementals need to added one at a time whereas a differential contains everything in one fell swoop that needs to be added to your original. There are a variety of personal preferences that would lead you to choose either method, but True Image gives you the choice. Whether you are making a full, incremental or differential backup, True Image is still the fastest app available.
Also new in version 9 is a clone feature which allows you to completely copy all the contents of your drive to a new hard drive. The "Add a new disk" feature lets you format and partition a new disk drive, readying it for use on your system.
Restoring an entire hard drive or partition is very easy and wizard driven. You can even do the job from a rescue disk that you create when first installing True Image in the instance that your original drive won't boot. The first time you attempt to restore individual files or folders from an image, things can get a little tricky for a novice. True Image Plug Image feature creates a virtual hard drive presented in a Windows Explorer interface and bearing a new drive letter . You can then simply copy over individual files or folders from this new virtual drive to the appropriate location on your original drive. When you are done, one click unmounts the new virtual drive.
Whatever action you need True Image to do, the choices are visibly laid out in version 9's new interface with attractive icons. You can schedule backups unattended with the frequency of your choice. For better or worse, when you create a new full backup, it will not overwrite the former. If for space reasons on your backup drive this presents a problem, you need to go into your file manger and erase the previous either before or after creating the new image.
Version 9 also lets you create a so-called SecureZone, backing up an image to a hidden drive partition, making it inaccessible to viruses and most hackers. Another feature, the Startup Recovery Manager, lets you configure your system so that it can boot up and restore itself without a separate boot disk.
Also new in Acronis True Image 9 is the ability to back up specific files or folders rather than the complete hard disk. This can come in handy if you want to create archival backups of certain folders or off-site backups of particularly important data. In such situations, backing up files to removable media, such as a DVD-R or CD-R disc, is ideal. True Image offers encryption for such backups as a security measure, although the encryption is not military grade.
True Image, although not perfect, has more going for it that any other backup utility we have seen to-date. It has received the Editor's Choice award from several leading computer publication, an honor in which we fully agree. You can obtain a trial download from acronis.com to test it yourself. To purchase, we recommend going to our good frind Gene Barlow's site at ugr.com where you can obtain True Image for the user group discounted price of $34. :
Copyright 2005. This article is from the January 2006 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/
The Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc. has 1,100+ members and was established in 1982. We are members of the Assoc. of PC User Groups (APCUG), the Florida Assoc. of PC Users Groups, Inc., and we are members of the America Online Ambassador Program.
See http://www.spcug.org for all reviews from the Sarasota PC Monitor, go to the Newsletter Section.