Acronis TrueImage Home 9.0 and a dead RAID Array

[Quakindude]

So one of my WD2500KS drives bit it an hour ago. I had two of them in Raid 0. So I check SMART DATA and ID the failed drive, pull it out, turn off RAID and format the remaining drive.

I ran the Acronis recovery CD after reboot, imaged my one drive and lost absolutely nothing as Acronis did my scheduled back up to my internal drive last night.

Total time from failure to back on the forums, 45 minutes.

Get Acronis TrueImage from NewEgg for $29. You spend big $$$ on your house and car insurance. This is cheap ass headache insurance.





Here's my review of Acronis TrueImage 9.0 Home Edition.

I bought it as an instant download from NewEgg for $29. NewEgg is great, but their notifications of how to download instant software sucks. I had to search for an unreasonable amount of time before I discovered how to download it. I finally found the info at (this path is while logged into your NewEgg account):

Home > My Account > Order Info > Order Status > View Order > View Correspondence.

Once I found this info, all I had to do was copy and paste the addy to my browser window. It also contains your serial number for registration.

No where during the purchasing experience was I informed that I would need to take that particular path to view the addy for downloading and the assigned S/N. I never recieved an Email, has been +45 days since purchase, informing me of the steps needed to download.

The software itself installs easily and only adds 2 system processes totalling 9 megs. And that's only for the scheduler and the monitor for critical system changes. There have been zero pop ups, info BS or anything of that nature since install. Since registering this product, I have not received a single SPAM mail from Acronis.

The steps to create backups are **** friendly and easily figured out without ever referring to the software help files. I've made backups to an external HDD, and internal HDD and to DVD(with some slight problems...see Notes at the end of this post). I've used this software to image my drive twice now. Once after installing the newest and suckiest version of IE7 and then tonight.

Setting up services to do automatic backups was extremely easy to do. I recommend you set it up to do an incremental back up once per week to a physically seperate iinternal drive. Not to the second partition on your primary drive. If that drive fails, you will lose your OS, all your info AND the backup image on the 2nd partition. This way, if you install something that borks your system a couple days down the road, you will not have included that in your most current back up.

I also, being the meticulous sort, do a full system backup to my external drive whenever I feel the need. On that drive, I catagorize it in two different folders. One is a full system backup right after installing my OS and all updates and utilities. I don't touch that one and it is called "Clean OS Install." The second folder is called Incremental Backups. I start off with a full system backup, then each backup after that goes as an incremental backup into that folder. Acronis also allows password protected backups and has provisions that allow you to make extensive, reviewable notes of why you made that backup. These notes are reviewable prior to your utilizing that file as your image.

Here's where the review goes a tad south. Re-imaging a working system from an internal drive was easy after the IE 7 fiasco. However, after I popped my Acronis recovery CD in and rebooted, Re-imaging my drive from my external FW800 drive turned into a 10 minute troubleshooting annoyance. I'm not entirely sure if the fact that my RAID array was no longer present played a part in this, but I assume it was and that TrueImage was looking for a volume of roughly 480 Mb in size. I couldn't get the drive letters to come up correctly when trying to restore the image from my External Drive to my internal drive. It was listing my C: drive, named Local Drive, as drive letter D: and my internal IDE drive, normally drive D:(named Tom's Stuff), as drive C: The solution? I shut down my puter, disconnected the power plug and IDE cable from the IDE drive, rebooted from the recovery CD and there it was. My SATA primary drive, now a single WD2500KS, was listed as the C: Drive.

From this point, the re-imaging over a FW800 port took less than 12 minutes. I removed the recovery CD, rebooted and my system was restored like I had never lost the RAID array. Every setting was intact and the system is performing flawlessly.

Notes:

Making a back up to DVD's took some figuring out.

I tired everything under the sun. Updated every driver that could possibly impact my system when DVD writing. After each attempt to back up to DVD, My Computer re-tagged my DVD drive as a CD-Rom under My Computer. I would have to reboot to get it back to DVD-RW. I couldn't use Nero to burn a Music DVD while it was like that, but after rebooting, and thinking my DVD drive was borked, I did use Nero and was successful when writing my Music DVD.

So I scanned the Internet for hours, looked through forums for hours.

Then I said to heck with it and went to bed.

Next morning, with a clear head, I decided to try something different. I fired up TrueImage and went through all of the steps to create a full backup to DVD. Now here's what I did different from the times before. I didn't put a DVD in the drive. As soon as I clicked on Proceed, I got a 30 second pause. Then, an information box popped up asking for me to put a DVD in the drive and the drive door opened. So I placed a DVD in the drive, closed the door and Bam! It started doing the back up.

Not worth all these words if I don't post some back up times right?

Since I use a partition on my primary drive of 70 Gb, my backup file is just 8Gb in size. I install my games onto a secondary partition.

Internal HDD. Took all of 6m14s to complete. Impressive!

I had no problems writing a back up to my Lacie Bigger Disk Extreme 1Tb FW800 drive. Total time, 6m 48s. Again, impressive!

The total time to DVD backup was 26m 32s.

My secondary partition was 410Gb and had 330Gb of actual files on it that once turned into a back up file, was just 220Gb. This I stored on my external FW800 drive as well. It took 52m 58s to complete.

Forgot to add the re-image time! From external drive to internal re-image was 15m2s for the OS partition. Once I get my other WD2500KS RMA'ed and installed, I'll let you know how long it takes for the second partition.

So there you have it. If anyone decides to purchase this software, feel free to PM me if you require assistance!

Except for a couple of stumbling blocks, this software has been quite easy to use. Backup times vs amount of data compressed were impressive. I give it an 8 out of 10.

[Quakindude]

By the way. When my new WD2500KS comes in, I'm done with Raid 0 or 1. I'll just use the two drives seperately. RAID 0 gives me zero advantages performance wise and with a good backup utility like Acronis 9.0, there's no need for me to use raid 1.

Oh, and Acronis also comes with Drive cloning capabilities.

[gvblake22]

Great ideas there. I can never seem to stress the importance of backups to most people. They never know what they have until tey loose it all! My mom is a perfect example. She takes TONS of trips and loves her music, so (as you would imagine) she has A LOT of picures and music stored on her laptop. Well, all of a sudden her laptop HDD failed and they had to replace the drive. And yep, you guessed it, she lost ALL of her picures and music. But she was lucky and was able to get a good portion of her picures back from friends she had shared them with and she actually OWNS her music on CD's, so she could just re-rip all the stuff. But that takes a lot of time and effort to get all that stuff restored. Setting up an automated backup system like the one Quakindude just described can save you more time and headaches than you would imagine.

[Quakindude]

Blake,

Thanks a ton for the story with your Mom. It continues to blow my mind how folks will spend upteen thousands of dollars on their hardware, yet balk at $50 or there abouts for a good backup program. The headaches -reimaging can avoid as opposed to a complete system reinstall, doing all the updates and so on and so forth cannot have a value placed on it. Until you go through this situation that is.

I'm about to post a whole lot of pictures in this thread for my review of Acronis. So dial-uppers, beware!

[Quakindude]

First off, I've had time to think of the implications of this software vs. the experienced computer user vs the n00bish user. I had my wife, knows where the power button and what the big blue E on the desktop does, that's about it, sit down and do a back up. From start to finish. I walked away with the only instructions being, click on *that* icon and then use the program. She did wonderfully. However, after I deleted the OS partition and presented her with a recovery disk and an unformatted HDD, she stumbled. You will see why as I go through and post these pics and caption them.

For future reference, it's important to see what My Computer contains:



After installing the software and starting up Acronis TI, you get this screen



Selecting Backup gives you this screen:



Being that I'm reviewing this as a first time usage, I've selected the entire disk contents. This leads to the next screen:



Notice that I have selected my primary partition, the NTFS C: drive. The image also indicates that for this disk, Disk 2, it is the primary partition. Even though Disk one shows as Mass Storage, the C: drive is properly identified under Disk Two, so that's the one I highlighted. Disk two is a WD2500KS drive with two partitions on it. One, the C: drive, is the OS install partition and Tom's Stuff is drive letter D: which is where I install programs and have my swap file. Notice the used space figure of 16.9Gb. This will come into play later on when we look at compression settings.

Anyway, after clicking next, I am presented with this screen:



This screen is asking me where I would like to write the backup archive to. Navigating to my external disk, I highlight and identify toe folder I want the backup to go into. Please note, the program will allow you to create new folders as you desire.




As you can see, I selected my external Lacie FireWire drive as the back up location. The folder name is "Incremetal OS Backup." You have to make an initial full back up of your drive prior to making incremental ones. As you can see in the screen shot, I have an image of a clean OS install. After installing a lot of games, utilities, Windowblinds, new drivers etc...I made the new folder and am now doing a full back up to that folder so I can make incremental backups in the future. After clicking next, I am presented with this screen:



This is where I choose what type of back up to do. Since I've already stated I'm doing a full backup, that is the radio button I've selected here. Clicking next, this screen comes up:



Here, you can choose to run the backup using default options or to set them manual. I chose Manually set options, clicked next and the following screen appeared:



I can password protect my backup. The next options are in the pics below:



Set pre/post commands to be executed during the back up procedure (I haven't explored these at this time). Help screens for each step of the way are abundant and fairly extensive.



Now this next screen is where it gets amore interesting. Here, you can set the compression level of the back up you make. Going from low to normal is significant as it going from Normal to high. Notice at the Normal setting, the compressed backup file will be 10.11Gb.



In this next screen shot, notice that I've now gone to High Compression and the backup file size is now 8.842Gb in size:



Finally, we come to the Maximum compression setting and the file size has now gone down to 8.622. Also, notice the red line I've drawn under the estimated time to back up. This estimated time changes with the compression setting you use. The higher the compression setting, the longer it will take. Regardless, I've found that the estimated time is grossly over exaggerated. Thinking this may have something to do with my X2 4800 AMD CPU, I ran Nero6 Ultra ripping a CD, Folding@Home and three other apps while conducting this backup. It still completed within a couple seconds of the stated times in my first post. The gain from high to maximum is, in my opinion, of little value. So I used High compression.



In this next screen shot, you can choose the priority with which your system gives the backup process. I set it to normal, then clicked next.



In this next shot, you can see the extensive notes I've made for this full backup. I should point out that when you are setting up drives to back up, you can select a different drive, drill down through multiple folders and select one folder to add to the total backup. I added my family pics to this backup just in case I lose my 120Gb mass storage drive.



You then get a summary screen of the items and drives you're backing up. Click on Proceed to begin the process.



A scant two minutes into the back up, you can see from the following screen shot the length of time I've got left until the operation is complete.



And the final screen, completetion.




Now I mentioned above that re-imaging a drive can become complicated. I will ist my major problem, and its work around, here.

Let's say your C: drive has become corrupted due to overclocking or a virus. You can't even boot your computer. All you have to do is put the bootable CD in your optical drive, hit F11 during startup and then schoose your optical drive as the boot device. Acronis will then load a basic operating environment, this process took over 6 minutes on my machine, and then present you with this screen:



I chose the Full Version not being sure what the safe version would do.I wanted all of my data restored any way. You are then presented with this familiar screen:



Choosing Recovery, the following screen appears:



I've highlighted my kids computer even though the backup file is on the Lacie disk. I displayed the KidsComputer to show you that yes, you can even restore from an image on your netowrk if you've got a NAS or other computer you've made a copy on your restore file to.

In this next screen shot, I want you to take notice of what drive Acronis has listed as C:



It has Mass storage, which is not my C: drive normally. You can do one of two things. Either choose D: Local Disk, which I can do because I know the name of my C: Drive, or, as a physical fix, I disconnected the IDE drive inside my computer which forced the Acronis recovery console to see only Local Disk and Tom's Stuff. It then properly assigned Local Disk as the C: Drive.

From here on out, you're just a couple of mouse clicks away from restoring your imaged drive. You simply choose which drive to write the image to, choose the location of your saved back up file, and then click proceed. In about twice the time it takes to backup your drive, your drive will be re-imaged into its exact state at the time of your last backup. See my thoughts above on why you should create multiple paths to different back up files.

Capper, please let me know if you need anything else for this review and I will get it to you. Also, feel free to abridge, alter, append my commentary as you see fit. Just don't say I'm making an image of sexually active men. My chain don't swing that way. :bolt:

If anyone has any questions, feel free to PM me and I'll get them answered for you.

After I got the IDE drive off the computer, my wife was easily able to finish the restore process.

So, I'm going to give it two ratings:

Experienced users, 8 of 10.

n00bs, 6 of 10 due only to the confusion factor for the restore. The flexibility of this program is notable and should be taken into consideration.

[gvblake22]

Awesome work Quakindude. Thanks for all the great info!!

[Capper]

actually, this was an extremely well written and informative User Guide/Review.....we need many more of these...

[onebxr]

I have just put together my external harddrive and used this program, the 15 day free trial. I must say it is pretty easy to navigate through. I dont know if I did it right.
Quakin, how do you set it up to where you update the external weekly? I dont want to recopy the whole drive everytime, I just want whats been added to the C drive since the last backup.
-1

p.s. my how to and review of my external is coming soon.

[drew and not u]

Good stuff Tom!! Very informative and well done!

[yurimxpxman]

Those screenshots look really nice. Can that app run as a full OS? It'd save $70 on Windows if it can lol.