Acronis True Image 8 review

Verdict:

Review Date: 24 Oct 2005

Price when reviewed: inc VAT

Reviewed By: Simon Edwards

Our Rating 3 stars out of 5

Review
Specs

Disk-imaging programs such as Acronis True Image make copies of your PC's hard disk, turning an entire partition into a single, large file.

Traditionally you'd have to run such programs from a boot CD or use them within Windows, after which the program would shut down the operating system before starting to copy the file. True Image works while you are running Windows and allows you to continue working as it makes the partition copies.

True Image 8 can also create incremental backups of partitions, saving only the changes that have occurred since the previous backup. A full backup of a Windows partition might create a 10GB backup file. An incremental backup saves all the changes made since the full backup, resulting in a much smaller file.

The program can also create a bootable rescue CD that contains all the software you need to back up or restore your disk without Windows. It supports a wide range of CD, DVD, USB and FireWire drives, as well as Windows network shared folders. It's easy to use, and is essential if your disk breaks down and you want to restore a backup of Windows.

Unfortunately, we didn't find True Image to be reliable, which is an issue that also appears on the company's technical support forums. It's not clear whether the fault lies with memory modules, USB hard disks or True Image, but users have had problems creating large image files. We found many of our backups were corrupt. Regardless of where the fault lies, it's concerning when a backup program doesn't warn you automatically when it has created backup files that can't be restored.

This potentially useful program would be great value if we trusted it to make safe backups. If you buy it, run plenty of manual image checks to ensure that your hardware will work with it properly.

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