Review of Acronis True Image Home
Acronis has just released their newest version of the True Image hard drive imaging and computer backup solution for home users. Our previous reviews of the True image software left little room for improvement but Acronis has definitely added some nice new features including a slick new Windows Vista interface. Some of the features added to this new addition are a new One-Click Protection scheme, Full Text Search of backups and images and Set and Forget backups.
This review of Acronis True Image Home shows how easy it is to image and restore your computer and explores some of the other new features of the backup and imaging utility. The computer used for the review is running Windows Vista Ultimate. Acronis offers a free trial of the software so you can follow along with the tutorial if you desire. Once you download the software and run the executable file this is the setup screen that greets you. Simply click to install Acronis True Image Home.
The Installation was uneventful but there is a required reboot so you should have all other applications closed during the installation.
After the reboot, the first screen you will see when you open Acronis True Image 2009 Home is one of the new features of the backup utility. Here you can create a backup task quickly and easily with just one click. I specified an external drive for a backup location and clicked the Protect button to create a backup of the computer including the system volume and Master Boot Record.
This is the Operation Progress Screen. Notice that you can work while the backup operation is in progress and it doesn’t look like it will take too long.
The operation completed successfully.
When the image was created and the backup completed, you can see that the computer is now scheduled to run a backup at the same time every week. The scheduled times and intervals can be easily changed to anything you feel will protect your computer data.
If the need arises that you need to restore the image or backup that was just created, that process is just as simple as creating the image of the computer in the first place. Simply click on Backup and Restore on the main menu and highlight the image backup that you want restored and click the Restore button.
Then you will be given the option to choose your restore method. You can restore whole disks and partitions or you can choose to restore only the select files or folders from the original disk backup. I will choose to restore the entire image that was just created. It is a good idea to test the image restore feature before you really need it. The Acronis True Image products are rock solid but you never know.
The next step is to specify the restore settings and mark the partition as active.
When all of the steps of the Acronis True Image Restore Wizard were completed you are shown the following options screen. It simply says that it will delete the primary partition and restore the original image and the Master Boot Record. The Restore Wizard also states that a reboot is required so I quickly saved this web page and smacked the Proceed button to restore the image.
The restore of the partition went just as fast as the creation of the computer image. When the computer booted back up, there were a couple of other tasks that needed to be completed. I needed to create a bootable CD using the Acronis Media Builder. Here is a review of the bootable CD creation process. I also activated the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager. The Acronis Startup Recovery Manager allows you to restore your computer at boot time before the operating system starts by pressing the F11 key at boot time. This is a nice feature to have at your disposal in case your computer won’t boot to the operating system. By clicking on the Protection State button, I can see that my system is protected to the max with Acronis True Image 2009 Home.
Another nice feature that Acronis added to the True Image 2009 backup utility is the ability to perform a search of your backup archives. I did a search for Acronis in the backups and it quickly displayed the results. It also allows you to expand the search with either Windows Search or you the Google Desktop search.
Acronis True Image 2009 Home has a few extra cleanup utilities that should be mentioned. The Acronis Drive Cleanser destroys confidential information on your hard drives using a selected data destruction method for secure data destruction on your hard drive. The File Shredder destroys all traces left by your files and folders using a selected data destruction method for guaranteed destruction of your files and folders. The System Clean-Up utility destroys your computer usage history like your usernames and passwords.
This review of Acronis True Image 2009 Home version shows that Acronis has truly improved an already award winning computer imaging and backup solution. An image of Windows Vista was created and restored in a matter of minutes and a backup schedule was created to ensure future data protection. This Acronis product does everything that it claims to be able to do. For that reason, Acronis True Image Home gets an honorable Brontobyte on a scale of bytes to Brontobytes. This is a recommended computer backup and imaging solution to have in your toolbox.
Post Comments or Give your own Review of Acronis True Image 2009 Home:
|
