NORTON or ACRONIS?

[Guest]

I need to buy a good imaging program and also want one thats intuitive and
used widely in the work place etc.. Would Norton or Acronis do the job and if
so which is better more widely used by techy pips?

 

[Newbie Coder]

Dave,

Been using Norton Ghost Enterprise for many years & would highly recommend it

 

[Zilbandy]

Would Norton or Acronis do the job and if
so which is better more widely used by techy pips?

Unlike Newbie Coder, I've never used Norton Ghost. I've used Acronis
True Image for several years now and have had no problems with it. So,
we're 1 for Norton, 1 for Acronis.

 

[Uncle Grumpy]

Unlike Newbie Coder, I've never used Norton Ghost. I've used Acronis
True Image for several years now and have had no problems with it. So,
we're 1 for Norton, 1 for Acronis.

I used Norton Ghost for years here too (stopped with 7, I think). No
complaints, but when I first tried Acronis, I was intrigued by its
ability to image my drive while I was still in Windows and that it
could easily restore individual files/directories, etc. the same.

Started with Acronis TI 8, and it's now at 10.

Highly recommended.

 

[Ken Blake]

Unlike Newbie Coder, I've never used Norton Ghost. I've used Acronis
True Image for several years now and have had no problems with it. So,
we're 1 for Norton, 1 for Acronis.

I've used both. The score is now two for Acronis, one for Norton.

 

[XS11E]

I need to buy a good imaging program and also want one thats
intuitive and used widely in the work place etc.. Would Norton or
Acronis do the job and if so which is better more widely used by
techy pips?

I'm not a techy pips, don't even know what that is?

I use Acronis. I like it, it works. Just updated to version 10.

 

[Zilbandy]

Started with Acronis TI 8, and it's now at 10.

I started with version 7, then skipped straight to 10.

 

[C J.]

Three votes for Acronis now.

I've used a smaller version called EZ_GIG which is also made by Acronis
Trueimage - that was in a kit for cloning laptop harddrives.

I've used it several times since on other peoples PCs with larger capacity
drives - as well as my own laptop and desktop PC.
I plan to pick up Acronis 10 this week.

 

[Fred S *****]

Dave,

I realize you asked about Norton and Acronis only but the most powerful
and reliable program is BootIT NG or BING for short.

Look here:

http://terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html

Terabyte software has been used and recommended for years by numerous
MVPs, one of which was the late Alex Nichol.

In my opinion, BING is far superior to the others.

For what it's worth,

Fred

 

[Uncle Grumpy]

Terabyte software has been used and recommended for years by numerous
MVPs, one of which was the late Alex Nichol.

And by far the most times that it's been recommended here is because
it has a free trial period and folks are thus able to use it for a
one-time need for partitioning.

I used it for maybe a year (registered it) and didn't like it. The
endless updates started to piss me off, among other reasons.

 

[Vanguard]

in message

I need to buy a good imaging program and also want one thats intuitive
and
used widely in the work place etc.. Would Norton or Acronis do the job
and if
so which is better more widely used by techy pips?

Be aware that if you are thinking of the Home version of Acronis True
Image, it lacks several features which are considered mandatory even for
a single-workstation backup. It doesn't support Volume Shadow Copy.
Although the Volume Shadow Service (VSS) may be enabled or automatic, TI
Home won't use it. That means during the backup that inuse files cannot
be backed up because they are locked. It also means that during the
lengthy backup time that the files can change so what gets saved are
files that are out of sync with each other.

For a logical file backup program, Acronis is not a good choice. Even
the NT Backup program included in Windows supports VSS. Rather than
provide the customary grandfather-father-son expiration scheme for
backups (by using catalogs of the backups), TI Home instead relies on
defining a max disk space quota for the backup location (which the user
must configure separately); otherwise, TI Home will just keep adding
more backup files until all the disk space gets consumed. This use of
disk quota by its backup files means that incrementals and differentials
that are no longer applicable after a full backup will remain in the
backup location until that backup location gets bigger than what the
user configured for its maximum disk consumption. Also, disk quota
doesn't apply to their Secure Zone which will simply fill up and run out
of space until you delete the old and non-applicable backup files.

Supposedly TI Home has priority levels for the backups but I found that
anything other than Low results in a locked up system (or so slow that
it can take 10 to 15 minutes just to get Task Manager to show up). The
CPU usage is at 100% but the TrueImageService.exe process is at the
selected priority so it is supposed cooperate with other processes;
however, the program floods the data bus with backup traffic which
effectively locks up the host.

Back when I used Ghost (pre-DriveImage version), it defaulted to saving
logical partition images. That is, it read the files through the file
system and that's what it put in the image file. That means you really
don't end up restoring exactly what was there before. To get exactly
what you had before, you need to save a *phsyical* partition image and
that means reading the sectors. A feature may be the file system gets
used to determine which sectors are not currently allocated by the OS in
that partition to reduce the number of sectors in the physical image
file (to reduce the size of the image file). With Ghost, you had to
specify a command-line parameter to force it to perform a physical
image. DriveImage did physical images (with reading through a
recognized file system to exclude the unused sectors) so I suspect
that's what Ghost does now. With Acronis True Image Home, the only way
a physical image gets saved is if the file system is corrupted or it
can't recognize the file system to read the files through it. Acronis
will always do a logical image and there is no option to force it to
save a physical image. Also, any image program that doesn't force a
reboot of the OS to ensure the partition being imaged is in stasis might
end up with an image that isn't exactly what was there when the imaging
process started (since VSS can't be used for a static snapshot of the
files since sectors are being read, not files). Acronis TI Home doesn't
save physical images and it can't use VSS for logical file backups.

The only reason why I bother to leave TI Home installed is because it is
now my only partition imaging program as my old version of DriveImage
stopped working. DriveImage was made by Powerquest that got bought out
by Symantec who then replaced their old Ghost engine with the one in
DriveImage.

Before getting commercialware, you might want to visit their forums.
For Acronis True Image, visit
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=65. Just remember
that most posts will be negative since users are going there to get help
with the product, not to extol its virtues.

For the $30 that I paid for TI Home, I pretty much got a personal backup
program that only does logical backups (and only does logical imaging).
However, because it doesn't support VSS and because I'm not going to
waste even more money to buy their Workstation or Server versions that
do support VSS, I was thinking of reverting to NT Backup for the logical
file backups because I can configure it to overwrite the backup files in
a grandfather-father-son scheme, it supports VSS, and my host doesn't
lockup during the backups; however, the big flaw with NT Backup is that
it doesn't itself support compression. If the [tape] drive supports
hardware-based compression then it will enable that function but it will
not compress when writing the backup file to a hard drive. Actually I
had the Veritas Backup Exec Desktop program which is the uncrippled
version of NT Backup. Veritas sold it to StompInc which renamed it to
Backup MyPC which became Migos Software and is now called PC Backup.
That backup program supported everything in NT Backup supports but also
would compress to any destination media and supported more media types.
Alas, Backup Exec Desktop stopped working a year ago so I uninstalled it
and now I can't find the install CD to retry it.

Eventually I'll get Ghost and dump True Image Home to give me the
ability to save *physical* images. For logical file backups, I am
unimpressed with True Image Home (for more money, the Workstation
version is probably better if only because Acronis claims that it
supports VSS). Hell, Comodo Backup seems to have more options and is
free (but I haven't done an in-depth trial of it yet). For images, and
because TI Home only does logical imaging, I'll have to find something
else that saves physical images.

Learn and burn.

 

[Brian A.]

I use both ATI Enterprise Server and Ghost 9. Both ATI and Ghost have slightly
different learning curves depending on their use, I recommend either.

--

Brian A. Sesko { MS MVP_Shell/User }
Conflicts start where information lacks.
http://basconotw.mvps.org/

Suggested posting do's/don'ts: http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375

 

[Timothy Daniels]

I need to buy a good imaging program and also want one
thats intuitive and used widely in the work place etc..
Would Norton or Acronis do the job and if
so which is better more widely used by techy pips?

It depends on the usage. If you want to do cloning
(making byte-for-byte bootable HD copies of a partition),
as opposed to imaging (making a file, usually compressed,
onto arbitrary media, that can be uncompressed and
re-loaded onto a HD), and if that clone must be just
one partition among several on the source HD and it
is to be put among several on the destination HD, then
only Ghost and Casper can do it directly, i.e. without
the kloodge of going through an intermediate image stage.
Ghost is currently published by Symantec, and
Casper is published by Future Systems Solutions
(www.FSSdev.com/products/casper).

*TimDaniels*

 

[Zilbandy]

Be aware that if you are thinking of the Home version of Acronis True
Image, it lacks several features which are considered mandatory even for
a single-workstation backup. It doesn't support Volume Shadow Copy.
Although the Volume Shadow Service (VSS) may be enabled or automatic, TI
Home won't use it. That means during the backup that inuse files cannot
be backed up because they are locked. It also means that during the
lengthy backup time that the files can change so what gets saved are
files that are out of sync with each other.

I use Acronis Home v10 and it backs up everything just fine. It does
make a copy of files in use and backs them up. Whether it could do
better is not an issue for me. I just put a new hard drive in my wifes
laptop, booted from the Acronis Recovery CD, and restored her system
from the last image created. Rebooted computer and it booted just
fine... just like it was when the backup was made. What else would you
need?

 

[M.I.5¾]

in message



Be aware that if you are thinking of the Home version of Acronis True
Image, it lacks several features which are considered mandatory even for a
single-workstation backup. It doesn't support Volume Shadow Copy.
Although the Volume Shadow Service (VSS) may be enabled or automatic, TI
Home won't use it. That means during the backup that inuse files cannot
be backed up because they are locked. It also means that during the
lengthy backup time that the files can change so what gets saved are files
that are out of sync with each other.

[Snipped for Brevity]

It should be remebered that neither Ghost nor TrueImage are intended or
marketed as backup software. They are however perfectly capable of serving
that function for the majority of home users if due note is taken of their
limitations. I have restored TrueImage backups in anger so can atest that
it does work in this role.

You will generally find that any user will recommend the product with which
they are familiar (the vote being more or less evenly split). My suggestion
is that the OP looks at the features offered by both products and picks the
one that most closely meets what he expects.

I would not recommend either product for backup use in a more demanding
environment.

 

[XS11E]

Be aware that if you are thinking of the Home version of Acronis
True Image, it lacks several features which are considered
mandatory even for a single-workstation backup. It doesn't
support Volume Shadow Copy. Although the Volume Shadow Service
(VSS) may be enabled or automatic, TI Home won't use it. That
means during the backup that inuse files cannot be backed up
because they are locked. It also means that during the lengthy
backup time that the files can change so what gets saved are files
that are out of sync with each other.

The above is incorrect, apparently you haven't used a current version
of Acronis? There's been a bunch of improvements since version 7 to
which the above may apply, I do know version 7 is much slower than the
later versions....

BTW, the shadow copy issue should not be an issue, all images SHOULD be
made by booting from the Acronis CD or from the Rescue CD. There are a
bunch of advantages of doing so, particularly with an earlier version.

 

[Lil' Dave]

And by far the most times that it's been recommended here is because
it has a free trial period and folks are thus able to use it for a
one-time need for partitioning.

I used it for maybe a year (registered it) and didn't like it. The
endless updates started to piss me off, among other reasons.

Out of curiosity, what was it updating specifically all those millions of
updates?
Dave

 

[Lil' Dave]

It depends on the usage. If you want to do cloning
(making byte-for-byte bootable HD copies of a partition),
as opposed to imaging (making a file, usually compressed,
onto arbitrary media, that can be uncompressed and
re-loaded onto a HD), and if that clone must be just
one partition among several on the source HD and it
is to be put among several on the destination HD, then
only Ghost and Casper can do it directly, i.e. without
the kloodge of going through an intermediate image stage.
Ghost is currently published by Symantec, and
Casper is published by Future Systems Solutions
(www.FSSdev.com/products/casper).

*TimDaniels*

Believe Dave Candi was perfectly clear in stating he was inquiring about
buying an imaging program. Not cloning. Or, did I miss something?
Dave

 

[Lil' Dave]

I think Acronis is broken for my own purposes, if the freebie at Seagate
website is any indication provided by Acronis. The XP partition image
restores all resulted in inop boot partitions, I did more than one image on
more than one hard drive. Same results.

Hard drive copy drive to drive results were slightly different. The copied
XP partition didn't boot. The source XP partition results in failed hal.dll
after the copy. Go figure. Know you didn't inquire about cloning.
Nonetheless, those were the results. Used the boot CD for the application
BTW.

My intention was to make an identical hard drive a copy of the 1st. After
fixing the 1st hard drive XP, I ended up copying partitions from the first
to the second using Partition Commander. Successful.

My feeling is that the Acronis application provided to Seagate has trouble
with SATAs remapped to ide, as is my case. Both are SATAII Seagate 250GBs.

DriveImage 7.0 worked okay. I've had trouble with it as of late with
verification of the image. That's why I tried the Acronis product. Fixed
the DI 7.0 intermittent problem by stopping the Diskeeper thing with
ctrl-alt-del.

Dave

 

[Vanguard]

in message

I use Acronis Home v10 and it backs up everything just fine. It does
make a copy of files in use and backs them up.

If the file is locked, TI Home can't read it which means it cannot back
it up. Although not always the cause, database files may be locked and
is often the complaint that Acronis gets regarding this issue. Their
solution is to upgrade from the Home to Workstation version that does
support Volume Shadow Copy.

I just put a new hard drive in my wifes
laptop, booted from the Acronis Recovery CD, and restored her system
from the last image created. Rebooted computer and it booted just
fine... just like it was when the backup was made. What else would you
need?

A logical image is likely to restore a partition to a usable state but
the partition is not restored to exactly the SAME state. Sectors are
not in the same locations and the files will use different sectors.

Shaking a Cracker Jack box will still contain toy inside but it won't be
in the same position. A partition restore from a logical image is no
different than a file restore: the file's contents will be there but not
using the same sectors. Also, have you yet performed a partition
restore using TI Home when you are using EFS to encrypt your files?
During the logical file restore, the OS is not yet fully in place and
the EFS certificate may not yet have been restored so that the EFS
encrypted files can be read from the backup image file. That means you
lose your EFS-protected files. Same problem happens if you ran the old
Ghost version that defaulted to logical image saves.

A physical image that reads and writes by sectors doesn't give a gnat's
fart what operating system is used or if files are encrypted or by what
scheme they are encrypted. It just reads and writes sectors, so after
the restore from a physical image completes then the entire OS and all
files are exactly as they were before.

Because of the problem with restoring EFS files at the same time you are
trying to restore the OS along with the EFS certificate, I quit using
EFS. In addition, this eliminates me having to export the EFS
certificate to later import when a new instance of the OS gets installed
or a different instance is used on another computer. Instead I now use
TrueCrypt which simply creates a password-protected .tc file (which is
the volume in which files are saved and automatically encrypted). A
logical backup of a .tc file works without needing the OS to already
have an EFS certificate in place.

I've already discussed the shortcomings of True Image Home with Acronis
via their forums and tech e-mails and, in short, they require me to move
to their Workstation to have a decent backup and image solution.