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Author Topic: Good new Acronis TrueImage vs. Norton Ghost review  (Read 17944 times)

oBFusC8r

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Good new Acronis TrueImage vs. Norton Ghost review
« on: March 20, 2006, 11:13 AM »

I believe there has been some threads in this forum in the past regarding imaging apps such as Norton Ghost and Acronis TrueImage..and a donationcoder review of course. Here is a brand new review that compares the two.

http://www.techsuppo...-imaging-reviews.htm

Check out the part where the author is in contact with both Acronis support and Symantec..it is quite interesting.

To summarize the review: TrueImage beats Ghost. It is cheaper and better. Acronis support is better. Ghost still seems to suffer from corrupt images.


mouser

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Re: Good new Acronis TrueImage vs. Norton Ghost review
« Reply #1 on: March 20, 2006, 11:46 AM »
excellent find.

Carol Haynes

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Re: Good new Acronis TrueImage vs. Norton Ghost review
« Reply #2 on: March 21, 2006, 04:32 AM »
I have to say my experience of Symantec support has been at least as bad as described in that review (and at times completely non-existant). One of the reasons I no longer use any Symantec products.

They seem impressed with Acronis support - all I can say is they do seem to get there in the end but email response time can be up to a week and they are unlikely to find a solution on the first attempt. They have forums but if you post problems you are instantly asked to contact tech support - OK if you are in the US but not practical by phone if you live elsewhere. The biggest problem though is that support get the practice because they are hampered by the premature release of seriously flawed software. My advice is if you buy Acronis software make sure you leave it until at least 6 months have elapsed from the release date, and if you are tempted to get an upgrade on a special offer perhaps buy it but then wait until the kinks are ironed out before you try to use it. A good example of this was TrueImage 9. I purchased version 8 and they immediately brought out version 9 and gave me a free upgrade. Version 8 worked fine but version 9 had SO many problems as to be virtually unuseable. None of the new features worked at all (my backup scripts were reported corrupted repeatedly, archives would verify on completion but not mount because it said they were corrupt, pre/post scripts didn't work at all, file level backup sort of worked but was completely useless - and still is as far as I can see - it certainly doesn't come near even basic file backup methods like the free Backup Wizard in Win2k/XP). Most glitches have been ironed out but customers got a really raw deal doing free work as alpha testers (it was nowhere near beta release standard). Similar problems plagued DiskDirector 10 from the forums - again I got a free upgrade but couldn't face installing, esp. as DD9 had corrupted my partition map.

urlwolf

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Re: Good new Acronis TrueImage vs. Norton Ghost review
« Reply #3 on: May 16, 2006, 09:52 AM »
So Carol, would you say Acronis 9 is ready for normal use now?
Even though the catalog is not working oK? Or is it?
Thanks a lot

Carol Haynes

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Re: Good new Acronis TrueImage vs. Norton Ghost review
« Reply #4 on: May 16, 2006, 10:02 AM »
I use it for disc imaging and it works fine - certainly better than Norton Ghost (IMHO). For file backups I use Genie.

urlwolf

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Re: Good new Acronis TrueImage vs. Norton Ghost review
« Reply #5 on: May 16, 2006, 06:35 PM »
Carol,

Why do you use the two in combination? It's also recommended in the review, but I don't see why this is.
I just tested this. I created a backup partition for my data, mounted it, deleted some of it, and then unmounted it. Creating the full partition took 38 mins, while genie backup took >2hrs for the initial backup, and a few mins for incremental backups.
Assuming that incremental backups in acronis suck (which they do: 2gb per day is ridiculous), just recreating the entire partition fresh everynight is doable. and I find it faster and easier to find a file after mounting an acronis partition than to use the catalog in genie backup... so one application could be enough.

Unless you want to have several days of history (which is not feasible in acronis, since incremental backups are 2gb and entire partitions bigger). hmm
I see your point.
Yep, you need both.

I'm just bitter because genie is buggy and making a big mess of my HD. I wish I could drop it. I tested backup4all, but it seems to have a memory leek (oh boy, can you trust these backup applications?), or at least it consumes 400mb of ram and crashes everytime I open it...

Carol Haynes

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Re: Good new Acronis TrueImage vs. Norton Ghost review
« Reply #6 on: May 16, 2006, 07:24 PM »
The reason I use both is because I can backup small individual sets of data with Genie on a scheduled basis. The plugins are also a godsend because you can automatically grab stuff that application writers decide to scatter to the four winds when saving settings, caches etc.

If I want to backup everything on a partition  I do either an incremental or differential image of the partition using TrueImage (which is quicker and easier to restore, esp. if if it is an active partition that needs special handling to restore properly).

For backing up a few folders TrueImage is pretty useless.

I hadn't noticed particular bugs in Genie. What have you found? Have you notified them on their forum? I would have thought they would respond quickly as buggy backup software quickly loses credibility.