Rating: 
Summary: would not say a great product, may be worth for it's price
Review: I purchased Acronis True Image 7.0 from acronis web site, installed it on my Laptop running Windows XP, created Acronis Bootable CD during the installation.
- created an image of C drive, image files created back on C drive itself, I am just taking it for test drive, selected 650 MB for the size of image file
- creating image worked just fine, it created an image split into multiple Volumes of 650 MB each
- tried to Verify the Image by mounting it as a virtual drive, there was no option to select all Volumes of the image, it took only Volume 1 and mounted a virtual drive with incomplete list of folders and files, I was expecting it would create a virtual drive with complete image
- burned all Volumes on CD-R
- booted the machine using Acronis Bootable CD, tried to restore the image, started with the last Volume as stated in instructions for restore. I was expecting it would ask to insert one Volume of after the other, but the message I got was "Error opening the file. A possible reason may be poor media quality. Please press Retry to continue with Volume 1 or press Cancel to cancel the operation and stop backup.", continiued with Volume 1, restore seems to be worked fine despite of the error message
- I don't know if there is anything wrong with the steps I followed, but it seems to be working fine despite of misleading error message
Rating: 
Summary: It just plain didn't work
Review: I purchased TrueImage 7 in January. Tried to do a backup and got the error "General operation error on partition C: code 33 'Unable to create volume snapshot'" each and every time I tried.After two months of communications with Acronis tech support, during which I sent them a complete System.nfo dump of my system details and they escalated the problem to the development team, I finally asked for a refund since they could not come up with a solution to the problem. They wanted to Netmeeting or Carbon Copy me next in order to take control of my machine to determine the problem, but I figured that if it takes the developers two months of research and they still can't figure out my problem, then I've pretty much lost confidence in the product anyway, even IF they were to finally get it to function. I don't want to have any surprises happen when I'm using something drastic like a disk utility program, and the initial errors I experienced and the tech support team's inability to fix those errors after a long period of time, just completely destroyed my confidence in the product. Too bad, because Ghost is absolute crap (the expensive corporate edition is fine, but the personal edition is nearly worthless), and I've heard that even the latest version of DriveImage has some problems with XP Service Pack 1 too. So TrueImage sounded like just the ticket. Maybe I'll revisit this product when 8.0 comes out...
Rating:
Summary: It just plain didn't work
Review: I purchased TrueImage 7 in January. Tried to do a backup and got the error "General operation error on partition C: code 33 'Unable to create volume snapshot'" each and every time I tried. After two months of communications with Acronis tech support, during which I sent them a complete System.nfo dump of my system details and they escalated the problem to the development team, I finally asked for a refund since they could not come up with a solution to the problem. They wanted to Netmeeting or Carbon Copy me next in order to take control of my machine to determine the problem, but I figured that if it takes the developers two months of research and they still can't figure out my problem, then I've pretty much lost confidence in the product anyway, even IF they were to finally get it to function. I don't want to have any surprises happen when I'm using something drastic like a disk utility program, and the initial errors I experienced and the tech support team's inability to fix those errors after a long period of time, just completely destroyed my confidence in the product. Too bad, because Ghost is absolute crap (the expensive corporate edition is fine, but the personal edition is nearly worthless), and I've heard that even the latest version of DriveImage has some problems with XP Service Pack 1 too. So TrueImage sounded like just the ticket. Maybe I'll revisit this product when 8.0 comes out...
Rating: 
Summary: Very good but have a few wishes
Review: I've used True Image 7 on several machines.
I like the user interface and the universal boot recovery disk. Support for networking is also very nice. It's special form of incremental backups is also very handy.
I have used it to restore a few systems. I've also used the server version to restore a Dell server - worked wonderfully. It was really a lifesaver.
The only problems I've had with the restore is that the recovery CD would sometimes not boot on some machines. You should make sure it boots on your system. Once the recovery CD boots, pretend you are going to do a restore. Do all the restore steps right up to the point of where the restore would begin. That will verify that it is able to talk to your hard drive and restore media.
If the recovery cd doesn't boot, you can always plug the hard drive in a different system and perform the restore there, then move the hard drive back to the target system.
Other problems I've had: Some types of mice seem to give it problems with the recovery CD. Someone else mentioned that when restoring from multiple CDs it gives a bogus error message when it reaches the end of a CD. I too have seen that. It really scares you when it happens and you are relieved to find out the message was inaccurate. They really need to fix that.
I also wish they would add the following:
- automated verify after the backup.
- Ability to create customized boot disk so that you simply boot from a CD and it automatically restores the system.
- remote control/setup of the software and scheduling.
Rating: 
Summary: True Image 7 rocks on my machine
Review: Installed True Image 7.0 on machine with Windows XP - all updates as of 4/27/04. This software performs flawlessly and saves the active partion to USB Drive, Firewire drive and to both DVD +RW and DVD -RW without any problems. I have it setup to save to USB and Firewire each night via the schedule task feature. I have brought the image back from all sources without any problem and the ability to "mount" the image as a drive and bring back an individual file is powerfull. I cannot recommend this software enough.
Rating:
Summary: Zero tech support and Poor Documentation
Review: The only available method for technical support contact is email. I sent a request for help and received an automated reply. Now it has been more than a week and still no human reply. Click on help and it slowly launches a PDF file. I personally would much prefer an HTML help file to a PDF. My main complaint is that the documentation is very light weight. For example, it does not cover how to connect to a computer via networking using the boot disk. If Acronis does not want to hire any tech support personal they should spend some money making better documentation. Also, support for writing to an external Plextor USB drive does not work; restoration failed as well. Next time I will be more skeptical of glowing reviews in computer magazines and I will go back to PowerQuest products. Their help and documentation was better.
Rating:
Summary: Zero tech support and Poor Documentation
Review: The only available method for technical support contact is email. I sent a request for help and received an automated reply. Now it has been more than a week and still no human reply. Click on help and it slowly launches a PDF file. I personally would much prefer an HTML help file to a PDF. My main complaint is that the documentation is very light weight. For example, it does not cover how to connect to a computer via networking using the boot disk. If Acronis does not want to hire any tech support personal they should spend some money making better documentation. Also, support for writing to an external Plextor USB drive does not work; restoration failed as well. Next time I will be more skeptical of glowing reviews in computer magazines and I will go back to PowerQuest products. Their help and documentation was better.
Rating:
Summary: Great product, work well with two systems
Review: This is the best backup solution. I was a Ghost user before, back in the win98 days. I used Drive Image 2002 briefly and had all kinds of problems booting from DOS. This software backup my desktop and laptop without any issue, I verified both images. Reconized my USB2 HD. Backup in window environment and fast. Scheduled auto backup weekly. So far I do not have a need to recovery any image yet. It is a great program.
Rating:
Summary: No customer support
Review: This one doesn't let you transfer the image directly onto DVD Rom. I called a left a message and even sent them dozen emails to support, but they never respond. I wanted to know if this one supports and SATA and away to transfer to the image directly onto DVD ROM as they advertised. No reply. This is like you buy the product at your own risk!
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