Acronis True Image 10.0 Home Review

While most software-based backup tools offers compromised solution between partial (File and folder) or full-image backup in different packages, Acronis True Image 10 Home offers both despite the name of the software.

Supporting the normal partial backup/restore capability, with a virtual drive, user can browse and restore any files from anywhere just like a normal partition. The lack of direct image content modification ability is for now acceptable as most other software do not even introduce this feature. The full image backup also support differential and incremental backup (Read in help for further info). User can also insert a description for each image created. All in a hardly matched simplified easy-to-use user interface.

Some user might noticed is how it uses a dedicated service for the scheduling feature to work instead of letting it running secretly without GUI or keeping it in system tray at all times which may be useful for normal user but very annoying for power-user who wants to have full control of what's running on their computer.

But beware as without this service, even a normal backup and restore operation will not be initiated, so always keep the service status as Manual instead of Disabled (But of course the scheduled operations will not work). This service also serve batch operation and realtime backup so user can backup the partition where the OS is installed, inside the OS itself.

The real killer from the software is the Bootable Rescue Media, which support (besides the standard File Systems) NTFS, ISO 9660(CD-ROM File System), Ext2 (Other Linux's File Systems unconfirmed but since the boot media itself is based on Linux...), and even partitions on USB, PC Card (found on laptops), and SCSI media, all with read/write capability.

All without extra knowledge or configuration as all partitions are given a drive letter in the same manner as Windows Explorer do. Network partitions are also easily reached by first configuring the IP Address and Subnet Mask in the option menu, piece of cake for anyone experienced using manual IP Address in their PCs.

In short, every feature the program installed in GUI have is also here, minus the Scheduling Task and Image Explore. One cons is having to have two optical disc drive to restore image from a CD or DVD as replacing the CD or DVD is possible but the program still read the files from the memory having the ripped files from the bootable CD instead of updating the drive information. Other is the large number of media required when creating the Bootable Rescue Media on floppy disks (3 for the safe version and 7 for the full version with support for USB, PC Card, and SCSI harddrives).

One thing I personally see as a cons is the GUI for the Bootable Rescue Media which is made to replicate the Microsoft Windows XP default GUI. It looks unappealing, unprofessional, and in a windowed unmaximized state as default, although it’s good for the purpose of GUI environment consistency.

I will not describe the speed and compression level as it may significantly varies between systems. As stated in the title, many features rarely used in personal single-PC backup (such as the lack of multiple real-time image restore capability or the downtime when installing) will also be left out as this was not meant for personal PC use.

Several features not essential for the purpose of image backup (such as Secure Zone etc) will also be left out for user to decide whether they are neccesary or just bulky.