Summary: Acronis TrueImage Home is a cost-effective, easy to use, reliable backup software solution.
As long time readers know, I frequently mention backing up as one of the biggest and most important missed opportunities that too many people are overlooking to protect themselves. And I get reports every day of people who've lost important data, sometimes everything, that a simple backup solution would have protected them against.
If you're still without a backup solution I recommend Acronis True Image Home as an easy to use solution for anyone who should be backing up but isn't. Acronis is easy to set up, can back up files and folders, or your entire machine, and can similarly restore individual files and folders, or your an entire machine image, quickly and easily.
When used with an external hard drive, Acronis True Image can be a nearly "set it and forget it" backup solution.
In fact, it's what's running on the very machine I'm using as I write this.
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My recommendation for backup software has always been, much like a physical exercise program, "anything you will actually do". Almost any backup solution is better than no backup solution.
But in reality, some backup solutions are definitely better than others. While there are many good backup programs out there, after having used Acronis TrueImage for a couple of years myself now, I feel confident recommending it as a solution you should consider.
In my particular case, I have it configured to perform a full backup of my primary machine once a month, and an incremental backup (copying only things that changed since the previous backup) once a night. That allows me to do two very important things:
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I can revert my entire machine to the exact state it was in on any given day a backup was taken. This is real system restore - not just a few things, but everything is backed up including files, settings and anything I didn't think to save in some other special way. Everything. Acronis allows you to burn a boot CD, from which you can then restore your entire hard disk from the backups you've made.
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I can retrieve one or more files from any of those backups as well. As long as a file was captured by one of those backups (and everything is captured) I can always find it. Acronis actually lets you mount the backups you've taken, and with a Windows Explorer interface search and then copy files directly out of the backups back to your machine.
Like I said, I get reports of data loss in one form or another every day: emails gone, family pictures lost, important documents irrecoverable. And all that loss could have been prevented with a backup solution in place.
The sad truth is that most people don't learn this lesson until it's too late. Most people decide that they need a backup solution only after they've suffered some kind of loss. And that loss is often significantly more expensive than the backup solution would have been.
And Acronis TrueImage is not expensive. I'll bet that it's significantly less expensive than losing your important or irreplaceable files.
The setup that I use works very well with an external USB hard drive. I happen to have an external 250 gigabyte drive on my desktop machine, to which these nightly backups happen without any thought on my part. Again, external drives have come down dramatically in price, and the capacity just seems to be going up and up.
It's worth it.
Try Acronis TrueImage today.
I recommend it.
Article C3387 - May 17, 2008
This is awesome advise. I have been for years not backing up my computer not knowing that there are different ways to do just that. I have not tried the software but, trusting that Acronis is a good choice, things will be much easier. Thank you!
Posted by: Adolfo Picado at September 26, 2009 12:25 PMLeo,
I enjoyed your video series on using Acronis backup & recovery software. I used it as a tutorial. However, your "How to backup" series reflects on Acronis True Image Home 2009. Last weekend I purchased Acronis True Image Home 2010. My O.S. is Windows XP Home, SP3. I'm using my external USB drive with a Western Digital 500GB external drive. I tried to follow your examples in the video tutorial, but the Acronis 2010 version has a much different interface. The new interface doesn't appear to be user friendly as shown in your video for the 2009 version! I somehow managed to create a bootable rescue media (CD) and tested it. I've backed-up my C: drive on my external Western Digital Passport hard drive. Now, when I open Acronis from my C: drive it states, "Your system is not fully protected". Perfrom the following operations: (Backup My System)" Lastly, I can't schedule incremental backups, as my external hard drive is not continuously connected to my USB port. Should I ignore the incremental backups and only do them manually? Now, my question is, would you be willing to update your video series to reflect on the NEW Acronis 2010 version?
Please advise.
Thank you,
Lawrence Brown
Posted by: Lawrence Brown at October 6, 2009 11:09 AMhello, i used acronis true image and disk director suite and successfully cloned and backup disks many times. recently i installed pgp enterprise to secure the disk. as fate would have it i decided to increase the secure zone partition. the operating system on boot prompted for pgp password to decrypt the drive and then acronis loaded and i used the partition management option. the partition limit of secure zone was enhanced from 55 gb to 61 gb (limit being shown as 69gb). the three steps that appeared were C drive size being fixed from 55 gb to 45 gb, D drive (which was pgp secured) was shown to be going NO change and the third step was the Secure Zone expanding from 45 GB to 51 gb or so. when all the steps were done, the system booted. as always the first prompt was PGP secure disk, i entered the password but the second prompt for Acronis halted and Displayed a fatal error and asked to press enter to attempt to boot the OS. On pressing Enter the system booted and the OS was normal EXCEPT that the D drive was being shown as Raw (i.e. needed to formatted). On inspecting the D drive with Acronis disk manager the three partitions were visible the C and Secure zone with the newly allocated disk space but the D was being shown as RAW Although the D disk size was being shown as before, i.e. 45 GB. All assets are resided in the D drive. Please advise how to recover or restore the partitions
Posted by: tiko at December 31, 2009 11:41 PMI have tried several times to install Acronis True Image Home 2009 on VISTA Home, without success. I have googled, binged, and various other search engines to find the problem. Even tried the "support" function, not much support there.
I bought this software on the strong recommadation of LEO. Now what?!?!?! How much are they paying you to sell their junk?
17-Feb-2010
Posted by: David Guinn at February 16, 2010 4:17 PM
I have Vista Home Premium, SP2 (or whatever they call it!)
Can Acronis be used with DVD's, obviously taking only "snapshots" every so often ?
And, please Leo, how many reports have you had of easy and straightforward installations of Acronis. I'm obviously nervous after feading the above comment.
Thanks
David
Posted by: David Chapman at March 15, 2010 12:34 PM