The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Backing up made easy Ash Nallawalla ash@melbpc.org.au |
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Acronis True Image 11 Home is one of those no-brainer programs that you should get to protect your valuable information, says Ash Nallawalla. |
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For many years, I used another program that came with a portable hard drive but at the APCUG conference, I met Gene Barlow, a long time friend of user groups and who has presented to our group. I said to him that backups were boring - I was happy with my old program, since it "did the job" silently, every day. Gene asked me some questions and it became apparent that I was only backing up some folders, not the entire data drive. I keep programs and the operating system (OS) on the C drive and my data on the second physical drive, which has some partitions, each with their own drive letter. Gene sells Acronis True Image 11 Home at a discounted price to user groups and he invited me to review it. The program works on Windows Vista, Windows XP and Windows 2000 Professional, which should cover most users these days. It takes up 200MB of your drive and can run from a bootable CD for times when your OS has failed. In addition to the FAT 16/32 and NTFS formats found on Windows PC drives, it can also back up Linux formats (over a network) such as Ext2/Ext3, ReiserFS and Linux Swap. It can even copy a corrupted file system as a raw image. Backup You can back up the entire PC to a backup drive of sufficient capacity. That is, the OS, all programs and your data. If space is at a premium, you can back up just the system state, which is your OS and its registry settings but not your folders and data. Backups can be sped up by choosing Incremental (changes since the last backup) or Differential (changes since the last full backup) options. |
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You can back up Microsoft Outlook - not just the email, but your rules,
contacts, appointments and so on. You can schedule backups, so this important
task
is not subject to Murphy's Law.
Recover
Everything you back up can be restored to the PC, notably individual files,
which is not possible with the free versions packaged with some portable drives.
You can validate these backups, so you have peace of mind that the backups are
accurate replicas of your data.
Try & Decide
You can create a protected zone on your PC and try risky things for research
purposes. These could involve infecting your PC with a virus or visiting a
website that's known to plant some nasty file on your PC.
Although most of us won't be trying this, it has a valid use for trying a new
program and removing it without changing
other files or settings on the PC.
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System Upgrades You can clone the hard drive to a new one without spending time reinstalling the OS, programs and personal settings. Privacy You can delete files and activity trail securely - that is, the data cannot be recovered with some "unerase" tool. Conclusion There's no doubt in my mind that Acronis True Image 11 Home will protect my PC and that you should consider it for yours. The price of external hard drives is so low that you can't afford not to have one for your backups. Visit Gene's website ( www.ugr.com ) for the special user group member discount - you must download the product, so a high-speed connection is essential. Gene can't ship CD's outside the US. |
PC Update ratings Ease of use: 8 Features: 9 Documentation: 5 Value for money: 9 We liked: feature set Disliked: nothing really Vendor: Acronis www.acronis.com Reseller Group Relations: www.ugr.com Price: US$29 |
Reprinted from the September 2008 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
