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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2593 in Software
• Brand: DreamCatcher
• Model: PCO53050MB
• Released on: 2006-12-12
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000
• Format: CD-ROM

Features

• Complete backup solution for entire PC and user data
• Create an exact copy of PC for a full backup
• Backup and restore music, video, and pictures
• Backup emails and Outlook data and settings
• Protect PC applications; schedule backups automatically

From the Manufacturer
Acronis True Image 10 Home creates the exact copy of your hard disk and allows you to instantly restore the entire machine including operating system, applications, and all the data in the event of a fatal system crash or virus attack--no reinstallations required!

With the new version you also can easily back up your music, video, and digital photos, as well as Outlook e-mails, contacts, calendar, tasks, and user settings with just a few mouse clicks!

• Copy entire PC, including the operating system, applications, user settings, and all data using our patented disk-imaging technology.
• Backup music, video, and digital photos.
• Backup Outlook e-mails, contacts, calendar, tasks, notes, signatures, news folders, e-mail rules, and user settings with just a few mouse clicks.
• Restore all the settings for Microsoft Office, iTunes, Windows Media Player, and dozens of popular applications.

New features introduced in version 10:

• Supports Microsoft Windows Vista: ensure that you can protect your system if you upgrade to the latest version of Windows
• Backup your music, video, and photos: preserve your digital memories
• Outlook backup: preserve your emails, contacts, calendar, tasks, notes, signatures, news folders, e-mail rules, and user settings with just a few mouse clicks
• Application protection: protect your application settings and avoid the time consuming process of redoing your custom settings
• Quick backup of specific files: initiate backup of specific files without being in the Acronis True Image application
• Restore application settings: avoid the hassle of customizing your applications again in case of failure
• Explore backups: easily search and recover particular files in archives just like in Windows Explorer
• Create backup rules: ensure that you never run out of space by setting limits on the amount of space allocated for backups, the number of backups, and the amount of time you keep backups
• Email notifications: peace of mind by obtaining notification that your backups have completed
• Save to FTP: flexibility to store your backups where you want to

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Customer Reviews

Software is Unreliable - Don't Buy It
I have been a TI user for about a year and a half now and I'm researching a replacement. True Image, simply put, does not produce reliable backup images consisently. Inconsistent and unreliable is exactly what one doesn't need in backup software. I recently backed up a box before doing an os upgrade and of course verified the backup up. The upgrade bombed and I needed to go back to my backup image - 3 hours into the restore TI bombs saying the image is corrupt. I move the Image to another box and indeed it can no longer be read. It seems the restore corrupted the image. I posted to the forums and sure enough others have had this problem, their recommendation to do a test restore to a seperate drive for an image. With 300+GB drives which take 6 hours (at 7200RPM) to back up, and 8 hours to restore - a test restore is not a reasonable solution.

The software is flakey and inconsistent when backing up to CDs/DVDS. Sometimes TI will back up to a CD/DVD sometimes not. It says you need the roxio decoder installed, but that doesn't resolve the problem. It's very particular about the specific media, I've found one brand it seems to like consistently. Since I have over a TB in external hard drive storage I've lived with this as a minor inconvenience, but cd/dvd media backups are a feature and one you can't count on.

I've had messages where it can't find ANY HARD DRIVES, again I've found this in the forums with no solution. A restore of an earlier version solved my problem but not of others in the forum.

I've had it read an image the first time and then not the 2nd time I've tried to access it. I've had to play with the file names to get it to read an image, sometimes that works, someones not.

I adminster 5 home boxes and run a small geek-business and I assure you I WOULD NOT PURCHASE THIS SOFTWARE AGAIN, will not recommend it to my customers and recommend you steer clear. In the area of Backups and Recovery reliable backup software is essential.

Don't buy True Image.

The best solution for backups
I'm not sure where these negative reports are coming from. I've used Acronis backup for 4 years now and version 10 works just as well as version 8 and 9 did. I've used Norton Ghost, Partition Magic (before it was purchased by Symantec) and many non-imaging solutions and Acronis beats the competition hands down. I've also used Acronis 10 on Vista without any problems.

It's easy for a novice to use but it also has enough depth that IT professionals (such as myself) have all of the options we need for complete disaster recovery. Most other backup solutions actually just copy files and compress them. Acronis actually takes an image of your hard drive (think of it like a picture). You can use that image to restore a single file, folder, etc or you can use it to restore an entire computer to be EXACTLY the same as it was when you created the image (registry too).

The only negative thing I've found on this product is the fact that the differential/incremental backup can get confused if you just keep creating incremental backups rather than regenerating the original image file. If this all sounds like gibberish, just stick with the "full backup" option and you'll be fine. It also works great backing up to a USB or network drive.

I've used this product (version 10) to restore hundreds of backups on dozens of computers with almost zero problems. If you prefer, Norton Ghost 9 is a good option as well (haven't tried version 10+). I typically make an image using both Norton Ghost 9 and Acronis True Image 10 for mission critical computers. Nothing better than backing up a backup ;)

I hope this helps you decision making process. (I'm not affiliated with either Symatec or Acronis.)

Do you have a few weeks to struggle with this product?
The promises of Acronis True Image are grandiose. Unfortunately, you can spend hours and days trying to get it to work and perhaps never succeed. For instance, after restoring my backup files, Acronis True Image incessantly says it "cannot find any hard disk drives on this computer." The user guide is thorough but inaccurate.

Search for "Acronis Support Forum" and you can see all the problems that other users are having with True Image. You will find on that forum suggested solutions including: edit the registry files after you back them up, buy another piece of Acronis software to fix the problem, and (this one I love) use BartPE software to "boot into a pucker Windows environment where you can run the Windows version of TI to carry out a recovery." (Note: Acronis deletes the really critical comments from the forum.)