Review: Acronis True Image vs Symantec Ghost
A regular Ghost user tries out True Image V9 and concludes that Ghost V10 has met its match
Foreword from Gizmo
A drive imaging program is a utility that creates a backup snapshot or image of your disk drives, most commonly your system drive.
Imaging programs differ from data backup programs in that they can backup the Windows Operating system itself.
You can use that backup image to recover from system failures, spyware infections, installations gone wrong or any of the dozens of other things that can seriously mess up your PC.
Imaging programs can be used to backup data as well as your operating system but are not ideal for that task. Recent versions of imaging programs have improved in this area but many folks, myself included, prefer to use imaging programs to back up Windows and data backup programs like Genie, to backup regularly changing data.
Every PC I own has a drive imaging utility installed and I use these regularly to make image backups of the C: drives. I simply can't tell you just how many times I've been able to use these backup images to restore a non-working PC to perfect health. Restoring from an image only takes me minutes while a full Windows re-install can take many hours or even days when you take into account re-installing application programs. That's why I recommend the system drive of every PC should be imaged regularly using a reliable imaging program.
Now let me tell you the harsh truth: when it comes to the best imaging program it's a two horse race between the commercial products Acronis True Image and Norton Ghost with the freeware contenders trailing by a couple of miles. Not that there aren't some usable freeware products; it's just they aren't in the same league when it comes to function, features and reliability.
Choosing between True Image and Ghost is tough because they are both quality programs. That's why I asked regular Support Alert contributor J.W. to review the latest versions of these products.
Acronis True Image vs. Norton Ghost
When Gizmo asked me to review Acronis True Image V9, I was delighted. I had been using Norton Ghost V9 and wasn't happy with the product due to on-going problems with corrupted images. Additionally I had never used True Image so the review provided me with an opportunity to look at the how Ghost compared to its main competitor in a live system, doing real work. Installation Woes Right from the start I had problems with both Norton Ghost and Acronis True Image on my PC. The problems as it turned out were partly caused by Process Guard, a security application that runs on my PC. However this problem proved to be a blessing in disguise as it allowed me to test out the support provided by Symantec and Acronis. Symantec support for Ghost was abysmal; an odyssey of condescending replies, canned responses and the apparent inability of the Indian support staff to understand the English language. Eventually, I wrote a personal letter to the Chairman & CEO of Symantec, John W. Thompson, asking for his help and assistance. My plea worked and I was put in contact with an “Executive Support” group. They seemed much more anxious to help and started off well by sending me the latest version of Ghost 10. I was optimistic that with the receipt this new version that the problems I had been experiencing with corrupted Ghost image backups would disappear. Sadly, that was not to be. Even with the latest V10 release I had more invalid backup’s, completely baffling the “Executive Support” group. After a number of emails back and forth, they adamantly pronounce that not one but BOTH of my U320 SCSI hard drives were broken and needed to be immediately replaced! After expressing my incredulity with this diagnosis, they decided to try blaming the problem on my CPU processor. Anything it seemed other than their product. Their last email to me was pure bathos: “Do not bother responding to this email as there is nothing else I can help you with and it will not be responded to.” So much for Symantec "executive" level support. I was clearly on my own. The experience with Acronis support was much better. Their support team was also baffled, but at least they maintained their composure, didn’t make any nonsensical recommendations such as replacing my hard drives and were civil. Eventually I solved the problem myself; another application, Process Guard, was interfering with the operation of the programs. Once Process Guard was uninstalled, the immediate difficulties were resolved allowing me to move forward with my comparative review. But a vital lesson about support was learned and not to be forgotten. Furthermore some serious problems with Ghost remained. Even after removing Process Guard from my PC, I continued to have on-going problems with Ghost V10 with corrupted image files. Not all images had the problem, only some. I only discovered this when I attempted to recover from an image file only to find the image was unusable. Subsequently I started studying the image creation log files only to find that corrupt images were not uncommon. Worse still you get no warning or notification of the problem other than entries in the log files. Here's a typical entry. EVENT # : 5108 This problem may be unique to my PC but I suspect not. I suggest all Ghost users start monitoring their log files and test the integrity of existing, high value backups. And of you are experiencing problems, don't expect too much help from Symantec. 1) True Image will run on any Windows version from Windows 98 forward. Ghost 9/10 requires Win2000 SP4 minimum and Microsoft .Net Framework 1.1. True Image does not require .Net Framework. 2) Both products offer the ability to do full or incremental backups. Since I have plenty of free hard drive storage, I always do a full backup for all drives. I feel more comfortable with full backups abstractly rather than having to deal with partial backups if I should need to do a restore. 3) Ghost has changed the nomenclature for their backups in Ghost 10 to “Recovery Points”. Additionally, it appears that Ghost 9 backups are not compatible with Ghost 10. At least, I was unable to find a way to access my old Ghost 9 backups using Ghost 10. Furthermore, Ghost 9 & Ghost 10 cannot exist on the same machine. If accurate, this would be a serious deficiency in Ghost. Perhaps I could access the Ghost 9 backups using Ghost 2003 from DOS but I haven’t had time to try this. Why is this important? The Ghost backups I have kept are early stage Windows backups with the basic OS build and about 50% of my regular software installed. If I have to or choose to rebuild my OS, then starting from one of these backups significantly shortens the time to get a fully configured system up and running. 4) True Image can backup individual files or folders. Ghost does not offer this level of granularity and can only backup full drives or partitions. 5) Both products offer the ability to list and restore individual files or folders from an image backup. From the user viewpoint, Ghost is a bit more straightforward on this process. You just find the image archive you want and click the Explore button. Ghost mounts the image on a spare drive letter. True Image does the same but uses separate Wizards labeled PLUG & UNPLUG (mount & unmount a virtual drive). 6) Ghost has a useful feature that allows you to run a backup when one of these events occurs: a) Any application is installed b) Any user logs on to the computer c) Any user logs off from the computer d) The data added to a drive exceeds an amount (in megabytes) you specify e) The Maxtor OneTouch (an external hard drive) button has been pushed. 7) While True Image does not offer the ability to start a backup on the pre-configured events like Ghost does, it does offer a feature called Pre/Post Commands that allows you to do just about any task before and/or after a particular backup runs. Ghost does not offer a similar feature. I’d like to see the functionality in point #5 implemented in True Image. 8) Examining the UI’s for both applications, they are reasonably similar Windows driven interfaces both designed to show pretty “eye candy”. 9) There was a significant change in the UI from Ghost 9 to Ghost 10. Ghost 10 seems to me to have “dumbed” down the interface, which I did not appreciate. While all the functionality that was previously in Ghost 9 appears to be in Ghost 10, individual functions are spread out across multiple screens and are harder to get to. To me, True Image’s UI is clearer, more robust and I like it better. 10) This is the main UI for Norton Ghost 10: This is the main UI for Acronis True Image:
11) True Image has extra functions such as being able to turn off Windows System Restore and preparing and adding a new hard disk to your system, which Norton Ghost 10 does not offer. 12) True Image allows you to setup a secure and private partition called the Acronis Secure Zone to store backups in. Norton Ghost does not offer similar functionality. Used in conjunction with the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager, you can boot into a Linux version of True Image directly without using a boot CD. This functionality is useful where you might have totally hosed your boot partition. Note that when the Startup Recovery Manager is activated, the normal MBR record will be overwritten. 13) Norton Ghost 10’s help file is more robust and easier to locate information in than the True Image implementation: a) Clicking on the help button in True Image always takes you to the main help window, not to the section applicable to the area that you were in and are looking for help with. So you then have to waste time wandering through help file looking for the right item. The help file is non-standard and there aren’t any functions for searching or printing. b) Norton Ghost 10’s help file is standard Windows fare and includes index and search functionality. It is easy to use. 14) Unlike Ghost, True Image doesn’t include a menu drop down link to check for new updates (Live Update). a) Both products require activation/registration of the product first. b) The True Image update check is a manual process. You have to click Help-Web Support, which takes you to http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/support/. Then you have to click the "Get a product update" link. This takes you to a page with a list of the latest builds for ALL Acronis products. Then go back to the Help menu and check the About entry for what build you have. Return to the product update page and check your build against what is the latest build. This is a waste of clicks and user time. 15) True Image does not have the ability to limit the number of backups for a specific drive/partition as Ghost does. a) With Ghost, you can set a limit of say two backups for whatever backup job you have defined. Ghost appends a sequential number to each backup so that the file name is different from the previous backup. When the number of backups (for a particular job) is exceeded, Ghost automatically deletes the oldest one. b) True Image cannot do this and you would have to create a script or manually rename the backups if you want to maintain more than one version. Be aware that if you do not rename the previous backup that you want to save, True Image will overwrite it without issuing a confirmation message or warning. I have been told that duplicating this Ghost functionality to let the user set a backup job limit and adding a sequential number to the file name is near the top of the to-do list for True Image and will be implemented soon. I hope so! 16) I run a freeware program called Spy-The-Spy, which lets me monitor changes to files in certain folders on my C: drive in real time. Unlike Ghost 9, at periodic points throughout the day, Ghost 10 regularly updates a file called SYMLCRST.DLL (below). There are as many as 10 updates daily and they come at odd and varying intervals. I was unable to determine what triggers an update. Symantec Executive Support was also unable to provide an explanation as to WHY this file was bring regularly updated. Mr. Levi Smith claimed this was “proprietary” information!
17) Doing a comparison of the backups of Ghost vs. True Image, I found that on equal backups, True Image had an 8-10% smaller backup footprint size. Performance wise, both products took nearly the same amount of time to backup selected logical hard drives. 18) Looking at the image restore capabilities of both products a) The Ghost DOS interface is driven by the original install CD. Just insert the product CD and reboot. You do not have to create a separate boot CD, as you must do with True Image if you are not using their Startup Recovery Manager. True Image’s primary restore environment is Linux but there is also a more limited DOS environment if the Linux version doesn’t work. b) The Ghost 9 & 10 DOS interfaces are much slower to boot up than the True Image version and all Ghost operations were slower than with True Image on my system. 19) Both programs can backup to a hard disk. a) True Image also installs their own ASPI layer, allowing them to backup an image directly to a CD (or DVD if you have packet-writing software installed). b) Ghost can backup to a hard drive and other device types. But note that backing up to removable media is a manual operation and cannot be scheduled, as additional media may have to be inserted to contain the full backup. 20) Ghost 9 & 10 provides the user the ability to select destinations for error messages from the system event log, the Ghost internal log or SMTP email. I prefer the event log option since I run a program called Event Sentry that emails event errors to my POP3 email account. This eliminates me having to remember to look at the event log or the programs internal log to see if everything ran successfully.
21) True Image only provides a Windows log with an option to export this log to a file. Support for True Image has informed me that writing to the Windows Event Log is on their list of future enhancements for TI 9.x. 22) The Ghost log viewer for a completed backup provides only minimal information that the backup succeeded or failed. No information is provided on the start time in the viewer. You’d have to go look up the scheduled start time to determine that information, making computing the total time for a backup a manual and annoying two-step process. 23) The True Image log provides more information but gets a bit messy because of including distracting prep messages related to analyzing all drives before getting started on the backup job. TI support was not able to explain why they need to analyze other drives during a backup for a specific drive. Furthermore, in the message column of the viewer, even though the column is “stretchable”, they end those “Analyzing partition” messages with a “...” which usually means that there is too much information to fit in the space provided. However, according to support - not in this case. They could not explain WHY they use the “...” or what this was supposed to represent.
24) True Image can export status to a text log file, which Ghost can’t do. However, even though the export is in text format with a default “.log” extension, for some reason, it is littered with HTML tags (like below) making it very difficult to read. Acronis support did not know why this was occurring. Additionally, it is impossible to easily interpret the time stamps. Editor's note: This report is actually in XML and can be easily read in an XML viewer or editor. a) <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <log build="2337" product="Acronis True Image" uuid="C23BC3C1-D098-4828-8C6F-37DE1B2813CB" version="9.0"> i) <event code="2" id="1" message="The "I_Backup" operation started" module="100" time="1140241688" type="2" /> ii) <event code="503" id="2" message="Analyzing partition 0-0..." module="1" time="1140241688" type="2" /> xix) <event code="504" id="19" message="Pending operation 116 started: "Creating partition image"" module="1" time="1140241692" type="2" /> xx) <event code="504" id="20" message="Pending operation 3 started: "Verifying backup archive"" module="1" time="1140241983" type="2" /> xxi) <event code="6" id="21" message="Operation has succeeded." module="100" time="1140242176" type="2" /> </log> b) However, True Image’s log detail is substantially better than Ghost. You see all the detail from start to finish of the operation and at least in the standard display window, it is easy to see the total amount of time consumed for the backup operation. Finally, it has been my experience over the years that few people verify their image backups or experimentally try to boot up the image restore DOS program before they need it. This is a serious mistake! I cannot stress strongly enough that it is CRITICAL that you VERIFY image backups. Being caught with a backup that you think is good but really isn’t, is a recipe for disaster. Second, you MUST test that you can boot into the DOS recovery program BEFORE you actually need it. Third, if you want to go the full mile, then you should also create a copy of your hard drive (or a logical disk) first using a process that you have confidence in and know works. Then try to do a test restore from an image backup outside of Windows, checking that everything works and becoming familiar with the process before a real error occurs (and rest assured, one eventually will occur). It’s far too easy to make serious mistakes while frustrated and under the stress of trying to restore a bad drive from DOS/Linux if you haven’t had any prior experience doing so or working with the driving program. While each program has certain unique features, the core functionality of both programs is essentially equal. However, True Image’s overall functionality, reliability and UI are more robust and more understandable than Symantec Norton Ghost versions 9 or 10. Most importantly, in my experience, Symantec’s Ghost versions 9 & 10 have proven to be unreliable and my experience with Ghost (really, all of Symantec) technical support has consistently been dreadful. I would still choose Acronis True Image over Ghost on functionality and presentation alone; however, on quality of support alone, I cannot and will not recommend any Symantec program. Furthermore, Symantec has a long & sordid history of acquiring products or complete companies and then discontinuing the products. I would not be surprised if Ghost were treated similarly in the not-distant future. Partition Magic, which they also acquired from PowerQuest a couple of years back in release 8 has yet to be updated by Symantec. The fact that Symantec tech support/development has been unable to isolate the regular random corruption problems I have been experiencing across two releases of the product does not bode well for the future of the Ghost product, in my mind. I have removed Symantec Ghost from my system. My recommendation and personal choice going forward for a disk-imaging program is Acronis True Image. (1) Norton Ghost V10, $69.99 No trial available, Windows XP Home Edition/Professional, Windows 2000 Professional ONLY http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/backup_recovery/ghost10/index.html (2) Acronis True Image V9, $49.99 14 day trial, Windows 98 and later, 37.1MB. Support this site: If you buy from either of the sites listed above then this site will receive a small contribution from the vendor as a result of your purchase. This doesn't add to your cost but it helps with the running expenses of our site. If you don't feel comfortable with this then go directly to the vendor's site.
EVENT LOG : Application
EVENT TYPE : Error
SOURCE : Norton Ghost
CATEGORY : High Priority
EVENT ID : 100
COMPUTER : MYCOMP1
TIME : 2/10/2006 7:40:33 AM
MESSAGE : Description: Error EC8F17B7: Cannot create recovery points for job: Recovery point of I:\. Error EA39070A: The internal structure of the image file is invalid or unsupported.
Details: 0xEA39070A
Source: Norton Ghost 
Includes Norton Ghost 2003 for Windows Me & 98 users
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What about Clonezilla?
Somebody else has already expressed my view. Why do you keep this review online? It is completely outdated and misleading.
I've kept trying these two for about 8 years(?). Ghost was good when it was simply a DOS version. Then it struggled for years. Ghost 14 has been out for probably a year now(?). They appear to have finally got out a very reliable version. It has worked perfectly for at least a year. I've recovered from it atleast 30 times, and never had a problem.
As for Acronis, I've probably tried about 5 versions, attempting to recover 5 times over a period of 5 years. I've never managed to recover from one of its backups. Every one has been corrupt in some way.
Yeah, and it only took them 14 tries to get it so it might recover!
just want to say man thank you :) thank you :) thank you:)
your post/article is invaluable
Shamim from Bangladesh.
Well, I THINK I have finally got the answer. At least, common sense tells me it should be. I thoroughly tried and tested the trial version of Terabyte's Image for Windows. With it comes Image for Dos (and a few other utilities). I decided it was for me and bought it. It cost about 35 English pounds in total. I had a few questions which I submitted to support by email. I had replies to all four of them within minutes of sending them - and this was on a Saturday evening!! (Thanks David F). Without going into every detail of it's operation, the safest option to use is Image for Dos (you create and use a boot disk and use that to backup or restore) and do a backup with byte-by-byte validation. You can do it to a USB external drive. It takes a while (about 4 hours) but, because it validates each byte, 100% accuracy is guaranteed. You can also validate normally whilst backing up, or after backing up, and there is a version for Windows which means you can back up whilst using the Windows partition if you prefer. Obviously, the guarantee of accuracy goes down with each of those in order. There is also a utility to "read" each file from the backup archive so you can not only read any information you might want but can see it's accuracy.
Seems the best to me.
I just tried Acronis TI 2009 Home. I had problems from the start. I was unable to use the windows version at all to create a backup in the secure zone. Repeated attempts failed. TI installed a windows setup environment (linux?) that was available as a startup partition. After MANY repeated attempts in that environment, I was able to create an image in the secure zone. However, when I booted back into Windows, sometimes the backup I just made would disappear - literally in front of my eyes. Then I'd go back into the startup environment, make ANOTHER image, and then hope that it stuck. Eventually, the backup stuck. I never got to try to restore from a backup. I just don't trust that it's valid.
However, it was another feature of TI that eventually hosed my MBR. I used the "Try and Decide" feature, then tried to use its "Deny changes" feature that was supposed to roll back changes. Instead, after I was told to reboot, the machine went into an infinite loop of reboot - hand on the MBR - reboot. I eventually had to use the Windows Recovery Console to rewrite the MBR.
I have uninstalled TrueImage and will look for another solution.
hello, i bought Acrnois Ture image 2009
it ****ed my NEW Vista laptop (3500 AUD) real good
i couldnt even start it up after creating a "secure crap"
thank u acronis for ur wonderful senseless and full of BS support.
" Are you sure your drive is not psychially damaged?"
NO!!!! its a Solid State drive and i havent dropped my laptop even thoguh its drop proof.
"Are you sure you do not have a virus?"
NO!!!! i scanned my PC using a linux boot disk!!!!
i am now using Ghost 14.0 on my laptop after support did a factory install.
stay away from acrnois
I take it all back!! Today tried to back up with Paragon but (except for an image of the Master Boot Record) just could not validate any copy whatsoever. am exploring other (paid for) options instead. TeraByte looking good so far.
What is the point of keeping such an outdated review on-line ? This page belongs to the Internet Archive, it is useful if you want to go back in history.
I like TI 11. I hope the next version has automatic verification feature on it, instead of having to do it manually
I likewise am having numerous CRC errors when validating my backup with Ghost 12. I also tried Ghost 14 with the same results. Time to download and try Acronis to see if it works better as others have seen.
WARNING: Ghost users must validate their backups, or they may be completely unusable. I found that out the hard way one time when I tried to restore a crashed hard disk and my Ghost image was corrupt!
Tom
Both products have their own advantages, as for me I preferred Acronis only for one reason - support. Tech support guys really do their job. By the way did you know that they are located in Moscow? That's right. Norton support located in India, what I can say... it's terrible. I have contacted them once, just to check their knowledge about their own product and I really was upset. They hold me on after every question I asked, they couldn't compare Acronis and Norton products and their English... very unprofessional.
Recently I came across web site www.allacronis.com
All web site is devoted to Acronis software + most frequent errors with solutions + coupon discount + support. Really good site.
Just had the disaster happen and needed to restore! I have a Seagate external drive usb attached to my desktop machine and my laptop is networked through my router. I had images from Acronis and Paragon via the router, through the desktop pc on to Seagate. The laptop needed the restore. Booted the laptop with the Acronis disk and tried but it didn't like any of the 3 backups I had. (They had all been validated as OK). Tried again with the Seagate plugged directly into the laptop. Still no good. Did the same with the Paragon disk. Paragon wouldn't recognise the networked Seagate but when I plugged it directly into the laptop it worked fine. Perfect restore with everything working 100%. From now on I will be imaging with Paragon weekly and Acronis will be consigned to the bin.
All of nortons products are worthless garbageware.
They have the worst customer service on the planet.
I just actually did a restore using acronis version 10 and it failed! I was really ticked off. Backup was on an external drive and verfied.
Acronis TI 9.1 and Echo have the optional Universal Restore add-on (extra $) that will allow you to restore and image backup to dis-similar hardware. The biggest trick to having that be successful is having a copy of the target computers disk driver available to the Acronis restore program.
The restore process works fine on a blank hard drive. Contrary to an earlier post, it does have the capability to restore an MBR. What the poster might be having difficulty with is if they are restoring to a drive of different geometry. If the disk drive is not identical to the original image, you should restore the active partition only (no MBR) and then restart the computer. Then you can restore additional partitions if you have any.
ADVICE: YOU MUST MAKE SURE your computer will boot and run the recovery media successfully. By successfully I mean that it will boot, load the application AND it will display the same number and partition sizes of your connected hard drives as your OS shows. We've experienced problems with some of the ATI chipsets, and numerous SATA RAID controllers and a few USB hard drives.
We have used the Acronis products to recover Windows servers and workstations alike. It is a very good tool with a few quirks (as mentioned above).
Support is good. Sometimes they are slow to respond to the difficult issues, but they will keep with it as long as you do.
Read the review w/great interest and am trying both progs. However i see no mention of the fact that I couldn't designate a folder in the xternal drive in which to send the c:\drive clone in Ghost(System Works 2006), while Acronis provides for this provision. Further more, in this vein,Ghost says it will overwrite my external drive when I designated the new location!!!!! Yikes, that's where I aborted the process.
Am now finding that Ghost in a prevous install stood alone in the add/remove section of program the control panel that is not the case w/the version bundled in System Works 2006. Still trying to decide which way to go????????
Cheers-Herb.
I got a reduced price (19 pounds sterling) copy of Acronis when I bought a 500gb Seagate Freeagent external hard drive from Amazon. I use it regularly to image my drive and, when I got round initial problems which caused validation problems, (suspend Threatfire and turn off screen savers/power options), I found it seems to work well. I did a restore once which worked fine but I didn't know about ATI not copying the MBR so I don't know what would have happened with a different hard drive than my original. However, I have just downloaded and installed Paragon Drive Express (free version). This DOES copy the MBR and seems to do just about everything else that ATI does with a few exceptions - it doesn't do incremental backups and validation is a separate process which has to be selected separately from the backup process. I still had a problem with Threatfire (which is easily resolved by suspending it) but it seemed quicker all round than ATI. Like the poster below I don't have the technical knowledge to do a test restore without overwriting my current system. Can I do it to my external hard drive and boot from it and, if I buy another internal one, can I do it to that and use it?
Oh, and Acronis gave me quite good customer support but I found out my problems were due to Threatfire by myself.
I use both Acronis and Ghost. One question I never could get an answer to from Acronis. When I tried to restore an OS to the same PC from which I made the image. I could not get the new HD to boot. However, I successfully cloned the OS using their Clone Disk option. Which opens up a question for me. What if my HD quits and I replace it and try to restore the OS? So far I have been unsuccessful. It almost suggests I need to buy a HD NOW and clone to it so I won't get stuck. I never got anything back from Acronis except usless emails
"When I tried to restore an OS to the same PC from which I made the image, I could not get the new HD to boot ... I never got anything back from Acronis except useless emails."
This broadly corresponds to my own experience, which has been very frustrating. Several years after buying Acronis, it's never helped me restore a crashed system. When I wrote for support, the response was prompt, courteous and detailed, but entailed too much investigation for the limited time I had available. They ignored my key question as to whether I could back up to an external Seagate drive (instead of the system drive, which wouldn't work for me, nohow). I did so anyway, leading to a false sense of security. Similar problems emerged on my brand new computer. So now I've given up. I would have been better off without Acronis: I would have saved myself time and money, and avoided that false sense of security.
Maybe Paragon could be a better (and cheaper!) option -- certainly, I've never had any issues when partitioning.
Based on your great review, I'm off to buy Acronis... But I your link to get a contribution from them (referral fee?) is missing!
Which one offers the option of encrypting the backed up data on a SEPARATE disk such as a seagate backup drive. I am just worried about losing my deagate drive or having it stolen. My computer is password protected and I also want my external drive data to be password protected.
Thanks for any answer
hey guys very good review
but i have a small question and i need your help. I need to clone a HDD to several HDs that will work in different machine's hardware specifications, can I do it with Acronis or Ghost?
thank you a lot
Acronis won't do this and I very much doubt that Ghost will either.
The point of cloning is to transfer all settings, registry, everything so that the new HDD is identical with the old one and will slot straight into your existing computer. A direct swap!
I'm not aware of any software that will do what you ask. IF its just that you want an easy way to set up new machines have a look at software such a nlite that creates configured Windows installation CDs.
Regards
David
Acronis does not include the MBR/boot sector in its images.
Cloning one HD to a new blank HD will copy all data/system files, but Windows won't boot from the new HD because the MBR is missing.
With Ghost this works just fine.
This is nonsense!
I've just cloned my old hard drive onto a new hard drive and it worked perfectly. Swapped the drives and the new one booted without any problems. This was with True Image Home v11 but I performed the same task a couple of years ago with v8 again without problems.
If I understand the issue correctly True Image won't clone the MBR because it is unique to each hard drive. The MBR for the new disk is generated automatically during the format.
I am a longtime user of Acronis (v9, 10 and 11...). I usually use this in both "installed on a system" and "boot the install CD" modes. It creates the images just fine in either case. I do try to be careful to shutdown antivirus/spyware/etc software before doing the image work (applies only to the installed copy of course).
You can specify a pre- and post-execute command/script which can be used to do things before/after the backup executes (for example: shutdown/restart those antivirus/spyware tools that can muck up the works).
I also heartily recommend the exclusion lists as it lets you backup just the important stuff (I often exclude */temporary files/* and */temp/* for obvious reasons. skip vids and such *.mpg, *.avi *.vob, etc.). I also split the image into 4.0gb chunks so I can actually burn copies to DVD and carry them around.
A fully formatted/refreshed Toshiba laptop might take 5-6gb of image room. 2DVD's for the recovery isn't too bad. And it's WAY faster than a fresh install (on the order of 20min or less for that 5-6gb image I mentioned before).
What do's the *.~ mean in the Exclude list of true Image.
Hi all
My name is Manny
I had Norton Ghost-12 on my notebook. And I was only able to make one image of my HDD’s what a
Rip-off. After reading these post 09-05-08 True Image 11 home
True Image works like a dream
No problems burning an Image, or restoring from that image :)
Thank You
HI TO ALL !!
A human think tank is not a Robot. It is influenced by some factor whether financial or factual.
The fact is when one makes a 'a comparison on a product or products ' there is no reason to chose a couple when there a lot more. So why choose 'Norton Ghost & Acronis True Image ' when there are many others to compare with. Write an open letter to ALL and tell them you wish to make a comparison/analysis . Surely they will be more than pleased to assist you in doing so. They may even send free copies and probably reimburse something.
So let us please be factual and precise.No Commercials .Let us be open minded please.
All the same thanks for taking time to do the testing/comparison.
Thanks,
SK
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