Acronis True Image Home 2010 Review

- Create full hard drive backup (the same as image of the system) of entire PC and restore it in case system crashes. E.g. You create full hard drive backup and save it on external drive, then your computer refuse to boot at all. What to do next? You boot from Acronis bootable disc (you can create it within the program using Media Builder Option, see Acronis True Image Home 2010 manual) -> Choose Restore option -> Select backup of the system you previously created (it’s a single large file with .tib extension) -> and that’s all, just wait till restore process is finished. Your system with all applications, settings, e-mails and data will be brought to the time backup was created.
- Create file/folder backup, apart from full hard drive backup you can backup separate files and folders, the advantage between simple copy/paste is compression level within backup archive. The size of normal compression is about 50%
- Clone disk option allows transfer all data from source hard disk to destination hard disk. E.g. you want to use bigger drive, you attach new drive to computer -> choose Clone Disk option -> wait till process is finished. The destination hard disk drive will be bootable and become an exact copy of the source drive. All you have to do is to change source drive with destination drive. Note that source drive will not be erased, so you can keep using it. Vendor, model and size of new hard disk can differ from source one.
- Backup application settings, e-mails and system state. Application settings backup allows you back up settings of certain application and incase it malfunction restore them in seconds. E-mail backup protect your e-mail address book, accounts and settings. System state backup save current Windows settings.

Acronis True Image Home 2010 Features:

Acronis True Image Home 2010 is the first backup tool compatible with Windows 7.

True Image remains one of the most user-friendly and powerful applications in its class offering backup and recovery functionality and support for Microsoft Windows 7.

The tool enables you to back up all your important data including images, music, documents and applications and make sure they are well protected and can easily be recovered in the event of any disaster.

Some features of the software:

- Easy and Fast Backup and Recovery
- Acronis True Image Home 2010 provides home users reliable and timeless backup and recovery of their operating system, applications, settings and personal files.
- Friendly, Windows -style User Interface
- From an intuitive graphical interface, you can easily define where, locally or online, and how often to backup a PC based on your needs.
- Acronis Online Backup to a secure location
- Optional Acronis online storage services are available to automatically backup valuable data or files over the internet to a secure location.
- Continuous data protection

In addition, Acronis Nonstop Backup provides continuous system and data protection, preventing data loss

Unlike most other disk-image utilities, you can perform all the tasks without exiting Windows. However, if your system can't boot, Acronis True Image can be launched from a CD or a disk.

A scheduler and an incremental method (saving only ectors changed since the last backup) minimize the fuss of backing up your system so you can perform it every day.

Another great feature, Secure Storage, lets you make images inaccessible from Windows so they can't be damaged.

The program works at a decent speed (1GB in five minutes), and doesn't considerably affect system speed.

Acronis True Image supports all features necessary to a home user: compression, password protection, the ability to split an image into several volumes, and the ability to move you system to another hard drive.

This new version offers an option that lets you specify which files and folders you'd like to archive. You can browse images as if they were usual hard drives and extract only necessary files.

The program's wizard-based instructive interface suits inexperienced users.

Acronis True Image doesn't offer professional features, such as installing an image on multiple PCs at once, but it's considered a must-have for home users who want to safeguard their systems.

Supported OS:
- Windows 7
- Windows Vista (all versions and including x64 edition)
- Windows XP SP1, SP2, SP3
- Windows XP Professional x64 edition.

Note: Using Acronis bootable disc you can backup and restore Linux partitions (Linux Ext2, Ext3, ReiserFS, and Linux SWAP) as well as Windows FAT16/32, NTFS.

Minimum system requirements:
- Pentium processor or higher
- 256 MB RAM
- CD-RW or DVD-RW drive for bootable media creation

Supported backup storage:
- Internal and external hard disks,
- Networked storage devices (NAS devices)
- CD-R(W), DVD+R, DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, BD-R (Blu-ray)
- ZIP Jazz and other removable media (flash drives)
- P-ATA (IDE), S-ATA, SCSI, IEEE1394 (Firewire) and USB 1.0 / 2.0 drives, PC card storage devices

See also:

Acronis Disk Director Suite - Disk Partition Software Review and 25% Coupon
Backup and Recovery 10 - Next Generation of True Image