What can and can't Acronis do?

I use Acronis.  I don't fully use all the features.  But, I have several hard drives - my main Windows 7 drive, a second drive that has Windows 7 and Sonar installed and what I use when I record and a 3rd hard drive that I still have Vista 32 bit on (which will be gone shortly).  I only do full hard drive backups (no incrementals as it can get messy) and I back up to one of two other hard drives - one internal and one a USB connected drive.  One time I backup to the internal 1.5TB hard drive and the next time I'll backup to the external drive.  Thus I always have the "two latest" backups from both of the Win 7 drives and having both helps to circumvent "Murphy's Law" (If one of the backup drives failed I still have the other).  If data on a drive becomes corrupted, I can just copy whatever backed up data I need to replace the corrupted files.  If the entire drive is corrupted or fails I can do a restore from Acronis (it reboots and rebuilds the drive) in a little over an hour (time depends on how much data is in the backup).  There is no "reauthorizing", etc when you do this as it rebuilds the disc exactly as it was when you did the backup.  There can be some data loss, depending on how frequently you do backups.  When I do a recordings session, as soon as the session is over, I back up (copy) all the session data to my other Windows 7 disc.  Thus I have an immediate backup of what I just did.  When I mixdown ("somewhat master") and create the first mix or final for a session I do the same thing.  I can then do the full hard drive backup with Acronis as needed.

Acronis can be setup on a schedule to automatically backup.  I know those that do automatic backups every night (they leave the PC on and do the backup overnight).

Back to the "incremental" backups.  I was a LAN/WAN Network Manger (and hardware help desk manager) until I retired.  When we first went to LAN's and file servers we did a full backup on Monday night, and incremental backups (what was changed or added since the last backup) the rest of the week (Tuesday through Friday).  If a file server went down and had to be rebuilt, care had to be taken so as to not get the incrementals out of order and mess things up.  In addition it took longer to restore, with having to restore the full backup and then the incrementals (how many depended on when the server went down).  We finally decided to do full backups each night and that #1 allowed for a faster restore since only one tape (we used a SCSI Tape backup system) was needed and #2 avoided any potential confusion with the incrementals.

craig.. I'll try to answer I use v11 home, there is a newer version since that you have to authorise or soemthing.

I highly doubt you would have to re-authorise it to do the restore BUT to do backup etc sure.. or if so they would tell you to put that file on a pen drive etc?

you can backup 3 drives to 1, assuming you have enough drive space on the other drive.. it'll image the drive.

if your on about authorising say plugins etc.. most should be ok.. errm as they do it via hardware etc. BUT if you restored to a different HD then maybe it would cause issue.. it all depends on the vendor of them, I can't say 100%

I do have a really old copy of paragon backup that I got with a magazine that has come in useful for older machines.

Thanks for the feedback fellas. This is really helpful.

I'm intrigued by the new option that is meant to make it easier to back up to new hardware...seems like it might be worth spring for the extra options that might bring.

You're right...for the sake of $50, it's silly not to have it. Next pay day will bring a new drive and a new piece of software!

"Starise"
As I understand it, Acronis files have a smaller footprint and the software is more intuitive for some people to use. Other than that I'm not really sure what the advantages are over the built in system backup program. With the win7 backup you can completely loose a hard drive and if you have a boot disk and an image you can be back up and running again after you replace the drive.

Acronis has the online angle covered very well with its "Online Backup" and "Online File Synchro" services. For some, this can be a life saver on the road.