Acronis True Image 2019

One of our hard drives crashed a few months ago. When it died, we had not backed up our data for two months. So we lost two months worth of data that was kind of important. Prior to that, we would back up every month or two by copying our complete DATA folder to an external drive. Not an ideal solution, but that's what we were doing. Cloud storage just isn't an option for us. I don't need all of our important data in the cloud where any amateur with Internet access can use a YouTube video to figure out how to steal it. I needed a better solution, so I purchased the Acronis True Image primarily because the ratings and reviews were so positive. The first thing I discovered when it arrived is that it is only licensed to work on one computer and apparently won't backup data from one computer to another computer on a home network - only to another attached or internal drive on the same computer. Setup was easy though if you have a little computer savvy. If not, read the instructions and use the wizards that come with the software. I set the software up to backup incrementally to an attached USB hard drive daily. The software is working as advertised and after a month or two, we'll try a "restore" of the data to see how that function works. The software has additional capabilities, but all we're really interested in is the routine data backups. One nice touch was that shortly after I registered the software with Acronis, I received an email offer to purchase a 3-computer license for a price that gave me little choice except to opt in. So now we have routine backup protection on three of our computers. No issues with the software and the "peace-of-mind" knowing the data gets backed up daily is worth the price of the software.

I had an earlier version of TrueImage which did not support cloning of SSD drives. This 2019 version does and it works great! I replaced most of my computer drives with Samsung's SSD drives which are not only affordable but very fast. They turn your old, slow Windows PC into a much faster PC that can rival many newer computers that have conventional hard drives. This backup program allows you to clone your internal drive to another internal drive or to a USB drive if you have a laptop that only has one internal drive. I've tested it so that after cloning the drive, I would install the copy into the PC and it boots up just fine (except much slower since the cloned drive is a conventional one, not SSD). The best part is, if you don't trust the Windows environment (which I don't) you can create a boot disc that will allow you to boot using the Linux system and it loads only the TrueImage program so you can make an exact copy of your internal drive. What's nice about using TrueImage is that unlike some other hardware-based or software cloning programs which require you to have the same size drives as source and destination, TI allows you to clone a 2TB drive to a 1TB target drive provided that the data on the 2TB drive does not exceed the capacity of 1TB drive. In other words, if you have 750GB of data & OS on the 2TB drive, you can use a 1TB drive as a target clone. Although it's only 1TB in size, it will accept the 750GB from the internal drive and after completing the copy process, if you took that 1TB drive and installed it in the PC, it will boot and run Windows; the only difference is you'll have 1TB less free space than the original drive you cloned. I've done this and it works! This is a wonderful program that gives you many options. The fact that it now supports SSD drives makes it an indispensable utility to have!

Once installed this is a fabulous product and really easy to use. Installation is slow, so don't get impatient - perhaps it was my computer, but just a word to the wise. Amazon apparently registered the product to my e-mail account so I couldn't establish an account with Acronis until AFTER I'd installed it. I tried to register it before I installed it and got into a continuous loop of trying to establish a password only to be told time and time again that I already had an account. When I was just about at the point of giving up and sending the whole thing back to Amazon it installed.

The last time I bought this software was in 2010. Thinking that much has changed since then (I used it successfully many times to clone Windows 7 laptops), I bought this updated version for an HP ZBook 15 G2 laptop that I picked up recently from TigerDirect. I wanted to switch out the small sized SSD for a 1 Terabyte one for room to grow. After receiving the new Acronis package, I popped the Acronis CD into the drive and it promptly refused to load. A message came up saying a "new version" of the software was available to download. OK, I thought -- that's weird. Next I tried to create Acronis's "Bootable Media" disk on a DVD-RW disk I had. Software said the ISO transfer was complete. On reboot, the disk whizzed around and around -- but refused to load. Then I tried to create the "bootable media" on a USB drive. Failed on two different USB drives with plenty of room. At this point I just gave up figuring I had wasted my money on a piece of junk software. Then I tried what was recommended on the web: EaseUS Todo Backup Free 11.5. Worked like a charm and was FREE! I now have the 1 terabyte SSD disk installed and the cloning process worked perfectly. Don't waste your money on this Acronis software -- it's junk. Use EaseUS Todo Backup Free 11.5 to clone your hard drive.

Acronis True Image 2019 - this edition is easy to install and use. I installed and made a back up of the entire PC hard drive as an image. I would highly recommend using this product. Recently I've received emails that are spyware in nature and they are providing personal information in the subject line and threatening and extorting text body. I take this seriously and make frequent backups in case malware is involved. There is no better feeling than to know you have multiple backups if our PC goes down do to malware. The world we live in is not predictable in all cases.