Sarasota PC Monitor

Acronis True Image 10

A Software Review
by Gene Barlow

Acronis just announced the latest release of their award winning backup utility, Acronis True Image 10.0 Home product. This is a significant new version of this best of breed backup utility. The many new features of this release make it the most powerful and complete backup utility on the market.

This is just the product you need to be using to protect your important computer information from hard drive crashes and the damage that viruses and faulty software can cause. Copies of this new release can be ordered from our web site at www.usergroupstore.com for just $29. That includes a training CD that will show you the Perfect Backup Approach you should be using with this exciting product. Order your copy today and be ready when problems occur.

Acronis True Image became famous for its ability to create an image of your entire hard drive to let you backup your operating system, application programs, and data files. This new release continues to do this full drive backup to perfection. This is the basis of any good backup system and is used extensively in the Perfect Backup Approach.

New File Backup Enhancements: A year ago, Acronis included in True Image the ability to also backup individual files and folders, as long as you could identify them. With version 10, you can tell True Image what types of files you wish to backup and it will find them on your hard drive and back them up for you. Using this advance function, you can find and backup your Word documents, Excel Spreadsheets, Quicken files, music files, video files, digital photo images, and other categories of files without knowing where they are located on your hard drive. You can also now backup your Outlook files including your email folders, contacts, appointments, to-do lists, and other parts of the Outlook files. True Image 10 also helps you to backup dozens of application program settings, so that if you need to reinstall an application, you do not need to adjust all of the settings and options associated with that application

The ability to backup individual files has become a powerful addition to Acronis True Image 10.0 Home.

New Backup Scheduling Enhancements: Another important new feature in Acronis True Image is the ability to completely automate your backups so that you do not have to think about them. Three new functions have been added to True Image 10 to accomplish this. First, you can now define backup policies that let you specify exactly what you want to do. For example, you could specify that you want to make a full backup image at the beginning of each month and then incremental backup images each week till the next full backup is scheduled and True Image will implement your policy. Also, you can manage your backup locations with rules so that you do not have to worry about the naming of your backup files or how many backup images you will keep before older backups are automatically erased to make room for new backup images. When you reach a certain number of full or incremental backups, new backups will automatically erase older images for you. You can also specify the amount of space on the drive that you want to use or the age of the backup before it will be erased. Finally, you can request that an email message be sent to you when a backup is completed. Now with Acronis True Image 10.0 Home edition, you can setup your backups for automatic running and forget about them. It couldn't be easier.

Other New Enhancements: There are several other important new features that have been added to True Image 10. You can now backup to an FTP site on the Internet with True Image 10. You can do a quick backup of specific files without having to open True Image to start the backup. The end-user interface has been cleaned up to make the product easier to use. You can now explorer your backup image files directly without having to mount an image on Windows and then use Windows Explorer to look inside these image files. You can consolidate several backup images to save room on your backup hard drive. The Acronis Secure Zone can now be password protected to prevent others from accessing your important backups. These and many other changes make this the best release of Acronis True Image ever. It was a clear winner before this release. It is unquestionably the top backup utility available today with these new features.

Acronis True Image 10.0 Home edition is available from us for only $29 at our user group discount price. This is slightly less than the upgrade price through Acronis and you get a full new license of the product and not an upgrade license. This price also includes a copy of our backup training tutorial titled the Perfect Backup Approach, a $10 value. In addition, I try to help my customers when they have questions about True Image, in addition to the normal technical support through Acronis. You can order your copy of Acronis True Image 10.0 Home from us at www.usergroupstore.com. Make sure you use the order code of UGTIH10 when placing your order.

If you are a current user of Acronis True Image, then you will want to get this new release and put all of the new features to work for you. If you have not started a backup plan for your computer, then this is the best product to accomplish this important task for you. In either case, place your order today so that you can enjoy this new product soon. If you have any questions about this article or Acronis True Image 10.0 Home, please send them to gene@ugr.com. I look forward to helping you if I can.

What's new in True Image 10?

EDITOR'S COMMENTS: Backing up your hard drive is a vital, absolutely essential task you must perform on a regular basis. If your hard drive fails (not at all uncommon), you may be looking at the loss of months or years of your efforts and vital information, as well as possibly irretrievable and expensive loss of your software and your operating system. The only prevention for this disaster is a decent, recent backup...an absolute must for every computer owner!

I can't count the number of calls I have received from members who have run into an unfixable problem on their computer. I advise them to restore the last backup they had when things were normal. Invariably they inform me they have no backup. Oh, well! The only complete and proper method of fully backing up your hard drive and all its contents is to create an image...a complete byte for byte copy of your drive. By far the best and easiest to use backup software that will do this is Acronis True Image.

Its latest version 10 makes it easier yet to use.

This must-have software is my personal choice. Thus far, it has saved my life on more than one occasion including many for restoring just individual files and folders from backups.

The Acronis representative to user groups and an especially good friend to ours in Sarasota, Gene Barlow (ugr.com), makes this outstanding software available to us at considerable discount. It has our highest recommendation and I respectfully urge you get it today! :

Copyright 2006. This article is from the Decmeber 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.

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