Good across hard disks; use caution for backup to DVD
Written: Feb 12 '06 (Updated Mar 03 '07)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Backs up files or entire disks/partitions to other hard disks reliably, in my experience
Cons: DVD backup less stellar, but improved in latest build
The Bottom Line: Recommended when backing up to another hard disk. Too many problems to recommend if backing up to DVD (although there are improvements in the latest build).
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| f8ster's Full Review: Acronis True Image 9.0 Full Version for PC |
(Disclaimer: you should not use this review to infer the suitability or reliability of Acronis True Image 9.0 for your own data protection. The contents of this review reflect my experience only, and the author assumes no liability or risk as a result of your use of this information. Use this information solely at your own risk.)
Quick Summary
Although this product has a nice feature set, several problems and un-restorable archives make this product too questionable for me to recommend for backing up to DVD [edit: see update at the end of this review]. However, it appears to work properly when backing up to other hard disks.
Product Overview
Acronis True Image 9.0 provides two main functions: 1) creating and managing disk partition images, and 2) performing system backups. The system backups may take one of two main forms: a) an entire disk or partition image backup, which may be used to restore your hard drive completely, or b) a ‘Files and Folders’ backup that allows you to select specific files and folders. I used a fully-functional 15-day trial copy for my evaluation.
Entire Partition Image Backup
This feature is useful if you have enough free space on another hard drive to back up your entire system. The product does perform compression, and claims to provide 50-70% compression on the backup archive. However, this compression ratio really depends on your data. I did a typical test of My Documents with some of the larger binaries excluded; I got less than 12% compression in ‘Normal’ compression mode, which is the default mode. The more aggressive compression modes claim to take twice as long to back up.
One drawback to the product is that you cannot exclude directories from the Entire Partition Image Backup. You must back up the entire partition. If you want to be selective when backing up, you must use the ‘Files and Folders’ method. However, ‘Files and Folders’ method does not back up sufficient data to restore your hard drive in case it fails, whereas the Entire Partition Image Backup does.
How the Archives Are Created and Stored
When creating a backup archive, the product creates one large binary file. This file may be written to another folder on your C: drive, another hard drive on your computer, a network drive (or hard drive shared from another computer), or to CD/DVD. You may also specify an optional split at a certain size limit (e.g. 2000 MB). You specify the name of the archive you want to use (e.g. ‘My Monthly Backup’), and the product creates the file with a .tib extension, e.g. ‘My Monthly Backup.tib’. If you chose to split the archive based on a specific size limit, it’ll append a number to the end of each file, e.g. ‘My Monthly Backup1.tib’. This naming scheme can be confusing if you use dates in your names – for example, I used the name ‘Backup 2006-02-11’, and the archive files were created as ‘Backup 2006-02-111.tib’, ‘Backup 2006-02-112.tib’, etc. Because of this, putting a dash or two at the end of the name, if you’re going to split your archives, is probably a good idea.
Backing up to DVD
When writing your archives to DVD, the documentation recommends specifying a split of 2000 MB. On a normal 4.7 GB DVD, this creates 3 files on each DVD – 2 that are 2000 MB each, and one that’s about 400 MB for the leftover space. Each one of the files in the archive is called a ‘volume’, and this can be confusing, because each DVD contains 3 volumes. So, when you’re prompted for the 2nd DVD, you’re told to label it ‘Volume 4’. If you follow the product’s advice, you’ll wind up with DVDs labeled ‘Volume 1,’ ‘Volume 4,’ ‘Volume 7,’ etc. This is a little odd, and of course the numbers will change if you choose to split at some other size, say 1000 MB instead of 2000 MB.
When performing a backup, there is no estimate provided for the number of DVDs you’ll need. In fact, there is no indication at all of how large the backup will be based on the files you’ve selected, so there’s no way to tell if you’ll have enough DVDs to complete the backup unless you go do all of the math yourself outside of the program. This is a non-trivial shortcoming and should be fixed.
My DVD Backup Tests
I performed two large ‘Files and Folders’ backups to brand-new, single-layer 4x DVD+RWs that I formatted and erased. The documentation requires ‘packet writing’ software such as Roxio Drag-To-Disc or Ahead InCD to write DVDs properly. I used a recently-updated version of Ahead InCD (which comes with Nero). I used the same set of file selections each time (about 33GB of data). My DVD drive is the very common NEC 3520A, with the latest firmware updates already applied.
Non-Readable Backups Aren’t Much Good...
Here’s where the bad news begins: neither of my backups was readable for restore. In the first attempt, the backup took 8 DVDs, and the product claimed the ‘Operation Has Succeeded’. However, I decided to use the ‘Check Archive’ feature to double-check the result. During the Check Archive process, the program prematurely stopped and said ‘Operation Has Succeeded’. Of course, I knew this was false since it hadn’t examined the other 6 DVDs, so I looked at the log file. There was an ‘I/O error’ reading the disk. However, the product should not have reported that the check was successful. This incorrect error handling is dangerous and could provide a false sense of security if you’re not paying close attention.
Assuming that maybe I had a bad DVD, I removed it from the stack and replaced it with another new one. I also erased all of the *.tib files from all of the DVDs. I repeated the test with the same backup. This time, however, the backup was 600MB smaller for some reason, and only required 7 DVDs, not 8. This made me very nervous that something hadn’t been backed up, so I attempted to check the archive. This time, the product claimed that the last volume was not a valid archive file, and wouldn’t even allow me to continue the check this time.
Now, it is possible that I simply have a bad batch of DVD+RWs. However, no write errors were ever reported during the backup. More generally, this has really made me reconsider backing up large archives to DVD – if any single DVD goes bad, does that mean the whole backup is unusable? That seems too risky to me, and has convinced me to consider other options, such as an external USB hard drive.
Backup to Another Hard Drive
Having given up on DVD, I decided to try backing up to a network drive (a large drive on another machine on my home network shared via Windows file sharing). This time, I backed up about 3.9GB of data in about 17 minutes, or about 230 MB/minute. I turned off file splitting and got one large 3.4GB file (about 12% compression). This time, the ‘Check Archive’ feature worked properly.
Restore Test
Just to be on the safe side, I chose 5 files at random from the original files, and attempted to restore them from the archive to another location. (Note that there is no way to create a new folder when specifying the restore location, so I suggest you do that before you begin the restore.) The restore was extremely fast and worked properly, restoring the original folder structure containing the files I selected as well.
Emergency Recovery Boot CD
One nice feature of this product is that it’ll allow you to burn a boot CD, containing a version of the program you can run even if your hard disk is completely corrupted or dead. I tested this feature with mixed results. The boot CD worked fine, and I was able to run the product. However, the only drives that were listed were my local hard drive, my DVD drive, and the network – my USB flash drives were not listed. I wonder – if I had an external USB hard drive, would it show up in the list, or not? The product allows you to choose from a ‘safe’ mode that does not have USB support or a ‘normal’ mode that does, and I was using the ‘normal’ mode, so I would have expected to see my USB compact flash drive in the list. However, it is possible that the program would have properly listed a USB hard drive. (I’d really like to know for sure if this will work before I go buy one. The documentation claims it is fully supported.)
I tried navigating to the network, and the first time I did it, the program crashed. However, I rebooted and repeated the steps. The second time, I was able to see the shared network drive on my other computer, and select the archive I had created. I did not go all the way through the restore process during this test, however.
Features Not Tested
The product also has a feature that allows you to boot into the program by hitting F11 when booting your computer, presumably eliminating the need for the boot CD. You may also clone one hard disk to another, or prepare a new hard drive.
If you do a full partition backup, you can ‘plug’ the archive into a temporary drive letter and explore it just as if it were a hard disk. Note that this feature does not work with an archive created via a ‘Files and Folders’ backup.
Summary
This product appears to be best suited for performing entire partition backups from hard disk to hard disk. Its support of network drives for emergency recovery was nice, and in general I liked the emergency recovery boot CD. However, I would not recommend this product if you’re going to use it primarily for backing up to DVD.
Update 7/30/06
Since I wrote this review, I have some additional experience worth sharing. I have since purchased this product and I have been using it very successfully to back up to a second local hard disk. In addition, the DVD-backup feature I complained about appears to have been improved upon. The latest build (3677) now includes its own DVD-burning capability, and it appears to be more reliable. You no longer need to have third-party DVD burning software (like Ahead InCD) installed.
I was able to successfully burn and verify a backup to DVD using this new release. I did, however, have to disable InCD and reboot before it would work. I disabled the automatic startup of "InCD.exe", and set the InCD Helper Service to manual start, then rebooted. Just killing these processes was not sufficient; a reboot was required after disabling them. Once I did this, Acronis was able to access my DVD drive, and my backup was successful.
If you have purchased a copy of 9.0, you can register it at their website and download the latest build. Any build greater than 3625 has the direct-burning capability. Note that they have since renamed this product to "Acronis True Image 9.0 Home."
I have also had good success with the Boot Recovery CD. I was able to boot it and restore a few random files from a recent backup.
Update 3/3/07
Today I completely restored my entire C: drive partition successfully from a full partition backup! I wanted to repartition my hard disk, so I booted off the recovery CD, did a full backup of C: to another drive, then blew away my C: partition and recreated it (long story). I then used the recovery boot CD to restore the entire partition, and it worked perfectly! This was a little unnerving (I was hoping never to have to test this), but it's really nice to know it works. This gives me a lot more faith that I can do a Vista upgrade, then go back to XP if I have to. I am very pleased with this product and it was well worth the purchase price.
For DVD backups of home videos, etc., what I've been doing is backing up first to another area of the hard disk, then using the 'split archive' option to split the archive into 4.7 GB chunks that I can then burn directly onto DVD using Nero. I prefer this method, since I can verify both the Acronis backup as well as verify the burn through Nero. 4.7 GB is one of the built-in selections for the 'split archive' option, and fills up a standard DVD-R or DVD+R.
Recommended:
Yes
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f8ster
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Location: Camas, WA, USA
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