All hail Acronis!

WardenWolf · Dec 28, 2008, 12:25 AM

I had been running on an old Western Digital 74-gig Raptor for my boot drive for several years. It no longer had sufficient storage space for my needs (which necessitated having a mirrored storage drive) and was outperformed by newer disks such as the Western Digital 640-gig. Its age had also made me start to question its reliability. Because of this, it was clearly time to upgrade.

I purchased 2 new Western Digital 640's. I also discovered Acronis EasyMigrate offered a 15-day free trial, totally unrestricted. I used it to clone my partition to my new mirrored array. Then I booted up with my old disk one last time, used Vista to grow the partition to the disk's maximum size (I trust Vista's resizing a lot more than Acronis's, since Vista will take Vista-specific partition data into account), shut down, and pulled the old Raptor.

Success! I'm now running on my new 640-gig mirrored array. I hooked one of my old storage drives in, booted up, and am now copying the data to my new much-larger main drive. With a bit of Registry tweaking, I'll soon have everything migrated including my programs. I'll be down to 2 hard disks in my computer, and have better performance as well.

Honestly, I really have to commend Acronis for this one. And I'm definitely going to be buying their software package at the earliest convenience.

Tipstaff · Dec 28, 2008, 04:18 AM

Until recently Acronis hasn't been up to par with their products. They work great within Windows, but outside of that.. they suck. Why? Because their Recovery Manager runs on Linux, and they (Acronis) never bothered to update the drivers to properly support SATA/AHCI/RAID controllers, so it would never see hard drives connected to them unless the controller was in IDE/PATA mode. It will see them, however, ONLY if you ran the Recovery Manager in it's own Safe Mode, but then it was still useless cuz you couldn't install their boot manager which includes the Recovery Manager software. The only Acronis Recovery Manager that would work was the one installed on LG laptops.

This has all changed, however. Starting with Acronis True Image Home 2009 full support has been added for SATA controllers in whatever mode they may be in which means I'm back to doing a true recovery option for my clients computers. All they have to do is hit F11 during bootup, and they can do whatever recovery they want, from backing up their files to a hidden partition, to recovering from the image I created on that same hidden partition, to cloning the drive to another drive.

Bye bye Ghost. Bye bye Paragon. Hello again to Acronis.

WardenWolf · Dec 28, 2008, 06:09 AM

Well, Nvidia SATA RAID, as long as it is set to bootable, does not require drivers to see it, so I was covered that way. But I got my system totally migrated over and didn't even have to touch the Vista disc. Didn't even have to do a repair. I pulled 3 hard drives out of my system, consolidated into 2. And my system performs better.

MitchRapp · Dec 28, 2008, 05:14 PM

yesss I love Acronis as well

a little over a year ago I migrated from a 320gb 7200.10 to a 160gb raptor with Acronis ... I only had 50gb of data on the 320 so it did not cause any problems
I use acronis once a month now to run a backup of my OS image "in case" ... very useful little app.

WardenWolf · Dec 30, 2008, 07:45 AM

I was using Ghost in a corporate environment, using the Ghostcast server to sling down images to multiple boxes at once. These machines were old, and we were replacing drives left and right. About this time, Mistah Fab's "Ghost Ride It" came out. So being a tech, the joke went down,

"When you get a new drive (uh huh uh huh), and you need to make it live (okay, okay), whatcha gonna do? Ghostcast it! Ghostcast the disk!"

caveman-jim · Jan 1, 2009, 03:27 AM

I really like Acronis as well, both Disk Director Suite and True Image Echo. I use it at work, at home, it's an end-to-end solution to me - mount images as virtual drives, export images to vmware VM's, universal restore to move to new hardware, BartPE plugin... lots to get your teeth into.

One other thing I like is seagate offer a cut-down version for use with their HD's, for moving your existing windows install to your new Seagate drive. Sweet!

Dec 28, 2008, 12:25 AM	#1
WardenWolf DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 43 Rep Power: 0 System Specs	All hail Acronis! I had been running on an old Western Digital 74-gig Raptor for my boot drive for several years. It no longer had sufficient storage space for my needs (which necessitated having a mirrored storage drive) and was outperformed by newer disks such as the Western Digital 640-gig. Its age had also made me start to question its reliability. Because of this, it was clearly time to upgrade. I purchased 2 new Western Digital 640's. I also discovered Acronis EasyMigrate offered a 15-day free trial, totally unrestricted. I used it to clone my partition to my new mirrored array. Then I booted up with my old disk one last time, used Vista to grow the partition to the disk's maximum size (I trust Vista's resizing a lot more than Acronis's, since Vista will take Vista-specific partition data into account), shut down, and pulled the old Raptor. Success! I'm now running on my new 640-gig mirrored array. I hooked one of my old storage drives in, booted up, and am now copying the data to my new much-larger main drive. With a bit of Registry tweaking, I'll soon have everything migrated including my programs. I'll be down to 2 hard disks in my computer, and have better performance as well. Honestly, I really have to commend Acronis for this one. And I'm definitely going to be buying their software package at the earliest convenience.

Dec 28, 2008, 04:18 AM	#2
Tipstaff HardwareHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Real capital of Canada: Torauna Posts: 6,658 Rep Power: 187 System Specs	Re: All hail Acronis! Until recently Acronis hasn't been up to par with their products. They work great within Windows, but outside of that.. they suck. Why? Because their Recovery Manager runs on Linux, and they (Acronis) never bothered to update the drivers to properly support SATA/AHCI/RAID controllers, so it would never see hard drives connected to them unless the controller was in IDE/PATA mode. It will see them, however, ONLY if you ran the Recovery Manager in it's own Safe Mode, but then it was still useless cuz you couldn't install their boot manager which includes the Recovery Manager software. The only Acronis Recovery Manager that would work was the one installed on LG laptops. This has all changed, however. Starting with Acronis True Image Home 2009 full support has been added for SATA controllers in whatever mode they may be in which means I'm back to doing a true recovery option for my clients computers. All they have to do is hit F11 during bootup, and they can do whatever recovery they want, from backing up their files to a hidden partition, to recovering from the image I created on that same hidden partition, to cloning the drive to another drive. Bye bye Ghost. Bye bye Paragon. Hello again to Acronis. __________________ Portal: The Flash Version _________________________________ Brain: So, you sacked the cocky khaki Kicky Sack sock plucker? Mr. Sackett: The second cocky khaki Kicky Sack sock plucker I've sacked since the sixth sitting sheet slitter got sick.

Dec 28, 2008, 06:09 AM	Thread Starter #3
WardenWolf DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 43 Rep Power: 0 System Specs	Re: All hail Acronis! Well, Nvidia SATA RAID, as long as it is set to bootable, does not require drivers to see it, so I was covered that way. But I got my system totally migrated over and didn't even have to touch the Vista disc. Didn't even have to do a repair. I pulled 3 hard drives out of my system, consolidated into 2. And my system performs better.

Dec 28, 2008, 05:14 PM	#4
MitchRapp a.k.a. pepiman Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Montreal Posts: 998 Rep Power: 49 System Specs	Re: All hail Acronis! yesss I love Acronis as well a little over a year ago I migrated from a 320gb 7200.10 to a 160gb raptor with Acronis ... I only had 50gb of data on the 320 so it did not cause any problems I use acronis once a month now to run a backup of my OS image "in case" ... very useful little app.

Dec 30, 2008, 07:45 AM	Thread Starter #5
WardenWolf DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 43 Rep Power: 0 System Specs	Re: All hail Acronis! I was using Ghost in a corporate environment, using the Ghostcast server to sling down images to multiple boxes at once. These machines were old, and we were replacing drives left and right. About this time, Mistah Fab's "Ghost Ride It" came out. So being a tech, the joke went down, "When you get a new drive (uh huh uh huh), and you need to make it live (okay, okay), whatcha gonna do? Ghostcast it! Ghostcast the disk!"

Jan 1, 2009, 03:27 AM	#6
caveman-jim DriverHeaven Newbie Join Date: Nov 2003 Posts: 13 Rep Power: 0	Re: All hail Acronis! I really like Acronis as well, both Disk Director Suite and True Image Echo. I use it at work, at home, it's an end-to-end solution to me - mount images as virtual drives, export images to vmware VM's, universal restore to move to new hardware, BartPE plugin... lots to get your teeth into. One other thing I like is seagate offer a cut-down version for use with their HD's, for moving your existing windows install to your new Seagate drive. Sweet! __________________ ~~~~~ Caveman Make Fire!!! ~~~~~