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Review of Acronis True Image Home 2012

This review of Acronis True Image Home 2012 will mostly focus on the new features of the already renowned computer backup and recovery software.  New to this version is the ability to sync files and folders with multiple computers, improved network backup capabilities and a way to take advantage of an excess of 2 terabyte drives that some OS’s do not allow.  There looks to be many improvements to True Image 2012 that makes this backup software even more robust than ever.  

The installation of Acronis True Image Home 2012 was uneventful.  The first impressive thing to note about the new version is the new interface.  I thought it was kinda neat anyway.  It shows little page diagrams giving you the option to learn more about the different aspects of the program.  You can take a short tour about how to back up your computer, learn how to recover your system and files and check out a simple slide show about the new file sync module.  Here is a screen shot of the new True Image Interface.

Each of the pages gives you a tour of the backup subject in a cartoonish, easy to understand kind of way.  If you want to learn about the new sync feature, click the page and it shows you a little slide show of how it works.  This slide shows how you can sync data on your computer with your other computers, computers of your friends, local devices and online backup.  This could be a very useful new feature.

There are tabs on top that give you access to the Backup and Recovery tools, the Synchronization utility and other tools and utilities that are available.  I was shocked to see that it had found backups and drive images that had been done years ago with older versions of the program.  Acronis True Image Home 2012 is obviously backwards compatible with older versions.  This screen is also where you will find tools like Disk and Partition backup, Online Backup, Create a Bootable Media, Browse backups and recover from your choice of older backups. This is what you will see under the Backup and Recovery tab.

The next tab is the synchronization screen where you can sync data between one or several computers.  This is new to True Image Home 2012.  The option is available to Sync files with friends, family or co-workers over the Web, or simply sync with local folders, including USB flash drives or external hard drive devices.  Clicking on the Synchronization tab told me that I did not have any syncs yet.  The obvious choice was to click on the New Sync button as shown here. I couldn't resist.

Clicking on the New Sync button brings up the following box where you can specify a folder to synchronize.  I chose a folder called WWW where I store a variety of websites.

Clicking next gave options to select other computers, online storage or a local folder to sync with.  For this review, I chose the local folder option where I had a backup copy of the folder on an external drive.  Once the job is setup, you can invite collaborators, Sync with other PCs, store versions online, etc. This is what the sync job looks like with the available options.

The Tools and Utilities tab has all of the usual handy tools that we have come to rely upon from the True Image backup utility. 

• Try & Decide allows you to perform a potentially unsafe operations in the Try Mode and Decide whether to apply that action or revert it without damaging your PC
• Clone Disk allows you to copy partitions from one disk to another
• Protection Tools including Rescue Media Builder, Acronis Startup Recovery Manager and Acronis Secure Zone
• Security and Privacy includes System Cleanup, Acronis Drive Cleanser and File Shredder
• Disk Management tools to add a new disk, view the current state of the hard drive and the new Acronis Extended Capacity Manager that allows you to use more than 2 Terabytes even if your OS does not support it
• Backup Conversion allows you to convert an Acronis Backup to a Windows Backup and vice versa
• The Image Mounting utility allows you to access an image as an ordinary disk

A lot of neat stuff to help keep your data safe and secure! 

Previous Version Reviews

As you may know from our reviews of previous versions of True Image, this software is a solid tool to help you keep your data safe on your computer. Here are some of our popular previous reviews that show how well True Image performs on various backup and recovery tasks:

Acronis True Image 2011 Review
Image and Restore a computer with True Image
Use Acronis Online Backup with True Image Home
Upgrade a Hard Drive using the Acronis Cloning Utility
Create a Bootable Rescue CD
Create a Bootable Rescue USB Drive

Acronis continues to develop True Image Home to the point that there should be no excuses not to keep your data backed up.  With the new sync feature and the ability to integrate Acronis Online Backup into the program, files are always synchronized, safe and secure while using a very intuitive easy to use backup program.  As with all of the previous versions we have reviewed, Acronis True Image Home 2012 gets an honorable Brontobyte on a scale of Bytes to Brontobytes for this review. 

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Post your Reviews or Comments about Acronis True Image 2012

Comments	Date
By Paul	2011-11-03 05:34:10
It seems they removed proxy server support in the 2012 version. So how do you activate it behind a proxy, or do an online backup?
By Jim	2011-10-10 20:55:49
Greetings! I downloaded the trial version and probably will buy the product later. Question: my ext HD is 250gb and contain lots of misc data that I inadvertently inserted. I want to start anew and use Acronis True Image 2012 to be my only backup data. Would appreciate any recommendation in doing this. Thank you

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