Acronis True Image 11 (PC)

Well like so many, I bought it when it was on offer...

Installed and made my fist whole system back up. Lets face it, you never know if its done it right until you have to use it...fortunately it had as I reformatted my harddrive and reinstalled as hoped...

thats the good

the bad is since then I have not been able to create another wholesystem backup - well not one that I feel confident of...

and after 3 or 4 emails to their support - each time it has taken AT LEAST 1 week to reply and then displays a complete lack of understanding of the question

if you need to be sure that you have a good backup, shop elsewhere

I couldn't ask for more with this product, it did exactly what it claims to do. On my XP laptop I managed to create a backup, replace the hard disk and then restore my disk image. My laptop was working again within about 15 minutes. Superb!

If you are doubtful after reading some of the awful reviews here, just download the trial version direct from Acronis and try it before you buy. Experiment with making backups, using the incremental features and so on. I did just that and didn't hesitate to part with my money afterwards.

Worth every penny for such peace of mind!

I had heard that backing-up with Acronis was hard to configure but after trying for a week, I realise that 'hard' was an under-statement! I am running Vista SP1 and am backing to an external Maxtor h/d. The first problem was in scheduling backups for which I eventually downlaoded a 'fix' from Acronis. Now it insists on asking for a password despite none existing. Yesterday it worked, today - despite no changes having been made to the set-up - it didn't. I give up and am going back to Norton Ghost.

Operating Sytem: Vista Home Premium 64bit.

Like many others who have tried Acronis True Image I've also felt completely let down by this piece of software. Rather than provide me with a reliable means of returning my PC to a known good state by restoring a backup, I found that the supposedly good backup image I had left me unable to load windows! Thinking I may had been unlucky I then attempted to restore from an older backup image I had taken, again I was totally unable to load windows. Two back up images - both failed. Needless to say this unreliable software has ended up where it deserves - in the bin!

Note: I ran True Image directly from the supplied CD to create all my backup images and also to restore my HD from the images.

Just before I tried some old software on my newly built Vista based PC I created a backup with True Image. The software I tried (a game) worked but was not as good as I remembered, so I wanted to return my PC to how it was prior to installation. In my experience uninstalling software always seems to result is something being left behind so I wanted to restore my PC to it's original state, hence my choice to restore from my backup. However, True Image totally failed me and rather than provide me with a means of restoring my PC to a know good state, it actually destroyed my operating system partition. The end result was that I spent hours having to re-install Vista and my software.

Over the years I have always been of the impression through magazine reviews etc. that True Image is rated very highly, sadly from personal experience it turns out this is simply not true!

Backup software by its nature needs to be not only reliable, but very reliable this software is neither of these, quite simply I found True Image 11 to be utter rubbish - buyer beware.

I'm running a Vista system and am trying to use Acronis for backups.

The user interface is confusing but once you get the hang of what it is trying to do then it is usable. It has the nice idea of specified backup locations, these have quotas such as size and number of backups etc. The problem is that it doesn't work properly. It usually hangs when it tries to delete old backups, so fails to keep to the quotas.

Setting up a small backup of 3 directories every hour resulted in the disks hammering continually and my process tables full of Acronis processes, seemingly doing nothing. I am currently running a backup that has been stuck at "18 seconds remaining" for half an hour now. I have no idea what it thinks it is doing.

I reported the quota problem to Acronis a few weeks ago, absolutely no response from them. Not a good sign. I downloaded the latest build but it made no difference.

Two stars rather than one because the backups did work when I tested them, and it would be a nice piece of software if it actually worked properly. Alas buggy backup software just isn't worth the risk in my opinion. The problems may be Vista specific, so it may be OK for XP.