Looking at Acronis

[scovilletech]

Hi all,

I have been looking at solutions for backup/imaging of customer's PC's. I have used Clonezilla and Symantec Ghost before but have heard a lot about Acronis, but have some questions.

Do they have a version for techs?

Do you buy one license and you can use it on all your customer's machines, or how does this work?

What version is the best one to get as a computer shop?

Thanks!

 

[johnrobert]

If there is a tech version it will be very expensive

The basic one is for use on only one computer

There would of course be nothing stopping you from using the one license bootable version on other computers, at least you would have bought it unlike the vast majority, but again it would not be legal

 

[gikstar]

There would of course be nothing stopping you from using the one license bootable version on other computers, at least you would have bought it unlike the vast majority, but again it would not be legal

Why not connect your client's hard drive to your bench computer along with the new drive and clone it that way?

I had purchased an SSD drive that came with a disk which turns out to be a copy of Acronis - the disk is titled "SSD Now" and has come in real handy. I do not recall seeing any limitation to it's use.

We are using StorageCrafts Shadow Protect now, and you can download a 30 day version here:http://download.cnet.com/ShadowProtect-Desktop-Edition/3000-2242_4-10528686.html
This program makes a copy faster that anything that I've come across so far. Basically you create a 'backup' image of the client's hard drive then you would use the software again to restore the image to another hard drive.

They have a server version that is fantastic but will run you a grand , unless you can signup as a reseller as we did. Since it's not make by Microsoft, you won't find it in an "Action Pack" .

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

P.I.N.G.
http://ping.windowsdream.com/

EaseUs
http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/

 

[sys-eng]

I suggest reading a few threads on the Acronis forum about MANY problems with their latest two versions 2011 & 2012. Scared me away.

Check out EaseUS Todo for backup.

You say you use Clonezilla. it has worked well for me for years.

 

[hondablaster]

I use Acronis Home 2011 for my personal machine and have extensively used multiple paid workstation versions of it and the bootable media and I love it.

You can also extend the capability of the bootable media by making a winPE 3.0 disk out of it so when you finally find that unsupported controller, you can update the drivers and create a new disk. The first time you do this is confusing but it becomes easier with time.

You're supposed to only use one license for one computer so beware, the bootable media does not stop you from restoring or backing up on different machines.

Keep in mind that these programs are mainly designed for hot backups, meaning that they back up the system while its running and being used. The issue is mainly that restorations don't always restore perfectly making the point of the software very frustrating to its users. If you always use the bootable media for backups and restores, it usually will not fail, I have done about 100 various DELL machines.

The plugin to move your OS to different hardware works like a charm, except when you go from a SATA to IDE it's been hit or miss. So again beware hope this helps.

BTW its a rare day when you go from SATA to old IDE.

 

[hondablaster]

BTW OP

I haven't had a chance to run this yet, but it looks like a promising, no license juggling, Acronis alternative.

http://redobackup.org/

 

[iladelf]

BTW OP

I haven't had a chance to run this yet, but it looks like a promising, no license juggling, Acronis alternative.

http://redobackup.org/

My biggest beef with most of these imaging programs is that they cannot restore an image to a smaller size drive than the original imaged drive. Say, for instance, you have a customer that had a 500 GB drive, had made an image, drive crashed, but all you have available is a 250, and they want to be back up and running immediately. Gots to go track down a drive that's at least 500 in size, even if they don't use near that much drive space. The only one that I currently know of that will restore to a drive of smaller size is Norton Ghost.

That said, Redo does look handy. Will check it out.

 

[hondablaster]

My biggest beef with most of these imaging programs is that they cannot restore an image to a smaller size drive than the original imaged drive. Say, for instance, you have a customer that had a 500 GB drive, had made an image, drive crashed, but all you have available is a 250, and they want to be back up and running immediately. Gots to go track down a drive that's at least 500 in size, even if they don't use near that much drive space. The only one that I currently know of that will restore to a drive of smaller size is Norton Ghost.

That said, Redo does look handy. Will check it out.

Acronis will also move to a smaller disk. Acronis is both a file based clone and a sector based cloner. It doesn't necessarily clone the way we think of cloning. It will rebuild partitions and boot sectors and MBRs to the new sizes and then place the files on that, as opposed to having a specific structure that needs to be kept precise. I hope I made sense

 

[iladelf]

Apologize if I am hijacking the original post, but thanks for the info, hondablaster. That's news to me.

 

[scovilletech]

Thanks for all the insight. For the person who asked about Clonezilla, it has worked well for me as well. I did have one instance where it wanted to take forever to image a 250 Gig drive (as in over 12 hours) not sure what was happening there, but Ghost wanted to take a long time, too. The drive tested good with Crystal Disk, so I'm not sure about that. Anyway, I'm just wanting to look around.

Anybody heard anything good or bad about Snapshot which is portable. You get a 30 day trial and then it costs somewhere around $69? It runs from within Windows, so I don't know how good that is.

Thanks!

 

[dipper]

Become a Acronis Partner and you can get NFR copies of the software.

BTW A while back I tried to restore using Acronis to a smaller disk but couldn't. Is this solved in the current version?

 

[DCGPX]

Become a Acronis Partner and you can get NFR copies of the software.

BTW A while back I tried to restore using Acronis to a smaller disk but couldn't. Is this solved in the current version?

I'm an Acronis Partner so have the NFR versions but it's explicitly explained that you only get them for demo/customer evaluations and they are strictly not for live use.

I've asked several times about tech versions but never had a straight answer, so like most I use my licenced version on my PC which backs up slaved drives. I'm no doubt breaking an EULA somewhere but it's not through lack of trying, Acronis support is lousy but I like their products and very very rarely have they failed me


www.tornadopc.com

 

[cyabro]

We are a shadowprotect partner and they have an IT edition but it costs an arm and a leg. It has to be renewed every year otherwise it stops working.

However we use it every day so I think the cost was worth it.



---
I am here: http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=-35.753940,174.237506

 

[16k_zx81]

Acronis will also move to a smaller disk. Acronis is both a file based clone and a sector based cloner. It doesn't necessarily clone the way we think of cloning. It will rebuild partitions and boot sectors and MBRs to the new sizes and then place the files on that, as opposed to having a specific structure that needs to be kept precise. I hope I made sense

To be fair, I think just about every commercial disk cloning solution these days will deploy to altered disk capacity, and operate sector-by-sector reads.

These features are not unique to Acronis.

Theres a decent features matrix here
http://disk-imaging-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

 

[MobileGeeks]

acronis has the works tech support known to man.

Its important you choose the right backup system.

Give acronis complete miss. Look at shadow protect.