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| ![Acronis True Image 11 Home [OLD VERSION]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51iwyudQDXL._SL500_.jpg)
| From: Acronis
List Price: $49.95
Buy New: $28.98
You Save: $20.97 (42%)
New (6) from $28.98
Rating:  189 reviews
Sales Rank: 102
Format: Cd-rom
Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows 2000, Windows Xp
Media: CD-ROM
Operating System: Windows Vista
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.3 x 1.3
MPN: 2229212
Model: 890204002043
UPC: 890204002029
EAN: 0890204002029
ASIN: B000VLZCEW
Release Date: October 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 189
 Shareware quality December 6, 2007
Jim Lewis (NJ USA)
26 out of 29 found this review helpful
Although the program seems to be making a backup, the program is poorly designed. I do a simple vanilla backup to DVD each morning and it takes 12 steps! Run app. Click Backup and Restore. Click Manage Tasks. Click Daily backup. Click Start Task. It says "Scheduled task started" even though it was not a scheduled task. Wait 10 sec. The disk ejects (for no reason ... and even if the option to not eject is enabled). Click OK. The disk retracts. Backup occurs. Disk ejects (for no reason). Push disk back in. Click to continue. Backup finishes. Close app. And you can't even minimize the app. during the backup. It's annoying to go thru these steps every day when the software could easily be designed to work in half the number of steps. And when the disk becomes full there is no option to span disks and the program gets into a strange state where you have to reboot the computer to allow the program to work properly again. And this software fills up about 10 times the space of my prior backup utility requiring far more frequent disk changes and hence cost. If the programmers can't even handle the most basic error of disk full, can't develop an efficient sequence for the most vanilla of backup types and wastes a huge amount of disk space, it makes me wonder if my data is even safely backed up. As for support, they responded to my emails but I got no resolution to a simple question after several rounds.
 Great Software November 30, 2007
Obadiah (Middleton, WI USA)
20 out of 21 found this review helpful
In years past I used software such as Norton Ghost. In that circumstance I paid nearly twice as much for that product as this one cost. The results of each product are as stark as their price difference was. I never did get NG to work properly and thank heavens I checked it prior to a real hard drive emergency.
On the other hand, Acronis 11 worked like a dream, and trust me, I was skeptical of the functionality of this software from a little heard from company. In addition, anyone who has ever tried to clone an operating drive (the "C" drive) knows that it can be very tricky and often does not work due to hidden files not copying properly, partitions not being properly established, or files getting corrupted in the cloning process.
Well, let me tell you, I just cloned my 320 gig "C" drive with 180 gigs of data, files, and programs on it to a server quality 750 gig hard drive which then became my new "C" drive. The result on my XP system was flawless. My machine booted without a hitch and every program worked as if nothing otherwise happened. The program was very easy to use and was very intuitive.
I have purchased many utility software products in the past that promised a lot on the box and frustratingly never worked anywhere near what the box claimed the program would do. Acronis 11 worked like a dream. This has now become my main and trusted program for backing up my critical data. Highly recommended.
 Wonderful, but fatally flawed product May 9, 2008
John H. Meyer (Carmel, CA USA)
17 out of 17 found this review helpful
I have used this product for almost five years. I used many other PC backup products prior to this and was impressed by the simplicity of the Trueimage interface, the fact that it would do both drive image backup (for restoring an entire partition) as well as file backup. It was also MUCH faster than products I previously used from Stomp and Seagate.
Over the years, I recommended this product to dozens of friends and clients, and actually looked forward to the chore of backing up.
But then, Acronis lost its way.
Somewhere around version 9, the backups I created sometimes would not "validate" (a feature built into Trueimage to tell you whether your backup is going to be able to restore). And then, one day when disaster struck and I had to restore for real, I found out that the image backup of my boot drive was "corrupt" and I was unable to restore. Fortunately, I had another image backup that I had created a few weeks earlier and was able to use that.
I then spent the next year working with Acronis tech support and posting on their forums trying to get an answer. What I found is that dozens and dozens and dozens of other people are having the exact same problem. Acronis tells everyone that it is due to faulty RAM, but everyone who has the problem goes ahead and runs the MEMTEST32 program, finds out that their RAM is perfectly fine, and are then left hung out to dry. (To be fair a very small percentage find out they do have a RAM problem, so this is not entirely a red herring - although it is pretty close to that).
So, what you have here is a fantastic, dynamite product, with all the features, speed, and user interface you could ever hope to have, sold at a reasonable price, but with a fatal flaw that renders it unusable to a sizable percentage of its intended market.
So go ahead and buy it (better yet, download the trial) and see if it works on your computer. Make sure to select the "validate" option so that you can tell if the backup you just made has any chance of being restored. If you get the message that the archive is corrupt, do NOT purchase this product because it is going to be nothing but a headache.
The Acronis tech support people were slow, but ultimately responsive, and did try to help, but it has become clear that they know they have a problem, and that their engineering team is unwilling or simply unable to provide a fix to the flaws they have let creep into this wonderful program.
decent software but still has a few kinks November 2, 2007
Brad A. North (Gladstone, MO)
16 out of 34 found this review helpful
True Image Home Version 11.0 Build 8027 was used for this review.
I installed this software on Windows XP with Service Pack 2 and every available update from Microsoft Update service. It appeared to perform a backup of my C: drive partition with no observable problems. However, during the backup process, all the software shows is a current progress bar and a total progress bar. The only bar that has any relevance is the current progress bar. I never ever seen the total progress bar move until possibly after the entire operation was completed. I cant stand any kind of software that monopolizes the entire computer for several minutes on end without ANY KIND OF RELEVANT DATA being displayed on-screen about what it is doing. Could the current file/sector being copied been displayed? Yes. Could the remaining number of sectors/files left to be copied have been displayed? Yes. Could an estimated required number of DVDs been shown? Yes. Could the start time and finish time in minutes have been shown? Yes. What did the programmers of this software show during the entire backup process? A green bar that advances about every 10 minutes. At least have an advanced options choice to see whats going on. Anyway, moving on. After an hour or so backup procedure of approximately 20 gigabytes which ultimately required 3 full DVDS and about 1/8th of a 4th DVD, the backup completes. So now, I attempt to explore the archive by putting in DVD 1. The logical disc to start on in almost any circumstance. Not here. The software wants the last disc of the archive. Why? I have no clue. Maybe the programmers were so shortsighted that they thought it would be more useful to save a couple of megabytes of space for the user than to write the "table of contents" of the backup on each DVD. Considering DVDs can be purchased as cheap as .18 cents a disc I personally would opted for having the TOC written on every DVD rather than having to swap a disc every time I blink, which is what this software had me doing. Okay, so the disc swap and the quirky request to start on the last DVD instead of the first are issues I press through and accept. My backup is whats important. Well, I never could verify that my backup was completed successfully. When I tried to explore the backup I had just made, the software had me swapping my backup DVDs like I was a plate juggling clown. Only I was juggling DVDs instead of plates. I felt like an idiot. Please insert disc 1, 3, 4, 2, 1, 4, 3, 4, 1. This was ridiculous. There should be absolutely no reason to request the same DVD more than once just to explore the archives.
I have 4 DVDs of data I cannot explore let alone restore. And even if I am doing something wrong somewhere it shouldnt be this difficult to figure out. I am a very experienced Windows user. I've been using Windows since 95 came out.
Maybe, just maybe, this software works better at backing up data to a larger removable source where disc swapping isnt required. I may try that method on a different day if I can justify wasting even more time on this product that has definitely failed to impress me on the first try.
edit: Okay, I went back and tried to restore my backup again. I found a "much" easier way to restore a backup from multiple DVDs. When I tried to restore my backup "from" the DVDs the software had me juggling the 4 DVDs like a plate juggling clown. So I decided to copy the .TIB files(True Images file format) from each DVD to the hard drive, making sure they were in the same location, and attempt to do a restore that way. I was much happier with this restoration method. There was no constant request from True Image to swap DVDs and the partial restore was successful.
Bottom Line: This software seems to work very well IF you do not split your backup over multiple cds/dvds. If you have no other choice than to backup your hard drive over multiple cds/dvds, make sure that when you go to restore the backup you copy ALL of your .TIB files to the same directory of the target hard drive and THEN begin restoring. Otherwise, you will be juggling DVDs until only God knows when. After 11 different request to swap DVDs from a 4-DVD backup set during an attempt to perform a restore I simply cancelled the operation and moved on.
 A smooth backup December 1, 2007
George F. Greenwald (Eugene, OR, USA)
16 out of 17 found this review helpful
Backups are an essential part of maintaining a computer or a system. Yet too many people are secure (falsely) in the knowledge that the data on their hard drive is secure and will be available at any time.
Those who have worked with computers for some time know that this belief is far from being a fact. Hard drives fail....essentially all of them. And programs and data get corrupted either from an external source such as a virus or from the process of programs reading and writing to a hard disk. So, your data, at some point will not be available to you.
The only real protection is to back up that informtion. The data you have should be backed up frequently, and the programs on a regural basis, as well.
The products that promise to make this process easy are in the hundreds. Those that actually do the job are very few. Perhaps the best and most reliable program for secure backups is Symantec's GHOST. Symantec also bought a program called Drive Image and sold it for some time, eventually dropping that product in favor of its better selling GHOST.
Acronis is one of the few products that I have used and reviewed that work almost as well as GHOST, and do so with much less need for technical knowledge than such programs as GHOST. Its backups are simple to do, and the recovery process works very smoothly.
In particular, I like the fact that one can take an existing drive and create a "clone" of that drive, with all settings, programs and data intact. If this program has one serious limitation is that it cannot make a copy of a single partition on a hard drive and offer a way to restore it to a new hard drive. One must copy the entire disk, including all logical partitions.
It also lacks in proper support. Contacting the company is a chore, assuming that you can even get through to a person. But as long as the product works properly, you should not need the support.
If you do need to copy a single partition (especially the operating systme) go with GHOST. Otherwise, Acronis will work well for you at about 1/2 the price.
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