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My friend is going to mirror my current WD 120GB hard drive over to a Seagate 500GB drive. He has both Ghost 10 and Acronis 2009. From what he has read, Ghost 10 is not as good as Acronis. I am looking for opinions on what you have had better luck with.
I have Windows XP Home SP3
My current 120GB drive is about half full so when it gets to the 500GB drive I will have plenty of space.
Thanks for your help.
Coach17--I had an earlier version of Ghost (I think 8). It had several idiosyncrasies that needed some high powered help (Radified Community Forums) to fix/explain. I switched to Acronis True Image 11 Home and now to Acronis 2009. I have had few problems. And the Acronis Users Guide is very comprehensive.
Thanks for the reply Jim. So Acronis appears to have one vote of confidence. Let's see what others have to say.
Acronis. Used it for a few years with no problems. Has more and better features than ghost and is generally quicker to do it's job as well.
Acronis allows backups of files and folders, you can append to existing images and you can(should) create a boot disk that allows restorations and backups from a non-bootable PC. Acronis will also allow you to boot into a pre windows DOS-like environment by pressing an "F" key when windows is totally hosed to run a restore. It also has a sandbox feature that allows you to test software in a totally safe, isolated invironment. No contest, really.
Ghost 8 and 10 are two completely different animals. Ghost 9 and up are mutations of DriveImage by PowerQuest.
Acronis TI is a better product that Ghost IMO. Ghost requires .NET. It feels slower than TI when doing backups and restores. Even booting the rescue disc seems to take longer in Ghost.
Paragon has a decent freeware backup, but it doesn't have all the bells and whistles that Acronis TI does. But it's free. Seagate Discwizard is based on an older version of Acronis TI, so that's worth a look too.
http://www.drive-backup.com/
Thanks for the reply and it is another vote for Acronis. Just want to check on this. After we mirror my entire hard drive to the new one everything should work with the new drive. Am I correct? We are mirroring the whole drive, Windows and all Programs.
The term would be "cloning" not "mirroring", but I understand what you are getting at. Mirroring would indicate RAID1. You might also see the term "imaging" since you can take snapshot images of your drive, OS/Apps/Data.
You would clone the old drive to the new drive, then you'd have to set the new drive as your primary.
So it appears that everything should be fine after the swtch over. We have another vote for Acronis.
I've done this a half dozen times with no issues at all (so long as it's the same computer of course).Quote:
You would clone the old drive to the new drive, then you'd have to set the new drive as your primary
And yet another vote for Acronis--much easier and quicker to use, runs right from Windows.and is very reliable. Been running it for a long time with no problems at all--would never go back to Ghost.
Thanks for all the replies. Acronis will be the one. Hopefully there will be other replies.
Any idea on how long it should take to transfer a 120gb drive that has 63 gb used up?
After the weekend when this is done I will reply with the results.
The transfer will be somewhat dependent on the DMA capability of your drives. One of my drives runs at DMA 6 and the other at DMA 5 and I transfer 60gb in about 23 minutes.
At least gives me an idea of how long it should take. I am not familiar with DMA. I assume my friend does.
If you're curioous about the DMA of your drives Google the drive PN and it will be listed in the Specs.
Thanks, I will get my book out for the drive to see if I can find the PN.
Aren't they both SATA drives?
If you have the book for the drive the DMA is probably listed in the Specs. for the drive which should be there.
The current drive is a Western Digital IDE. The new one is a Seagate SATA. my motherboard supports SATA.
Just because - my vote for Ghost. :)
Only since I haven't ever had issues with a backup or restore in any of the Ghost versions used over the years.
I run it at night, so time isn't an issue and I haven't had a need for the bells and whistles mentioned above.
With that said, I have no doubt Acronis is better, believing my fellow doctors here, and maybe some day I try it too.
Cheers
KGG
I have the book and the only thing I see for DMA is this. Supports PIO mode 0-4, Block Mode and Ultra DMA 33/66/100/133 BUS MASTER MODE.
My board # is CRU51-M9
That is potentially a problem since the controllers may be different. If your system bluescreens, you'll have to at least do a repair install.Quote:
The current drive is a Western Digital IDE. The new one is a Seagate SATA. my motherboard supports SATA.
KGG, you should definitely try AcronisTI. I was a skeptic at first, but I'll never go back to Ghost. I even use Acronis TI Echo Server on my Win2003 boxes.
Like I said, we wait until the transfer is complete and see what needs to be done. I appreciate all the replys.
Another YES for Acronis. Tried Ghost some years back along with Acronis and Acronis (vers. 6??) won hands down!
Have Acronis Home 2009 now and quite happy with it. Have it on flash drive and no problems (BartPE) at all.
Bob:D
We completed the imaging with Acronis 2009 and all went well. It only took about 30 minutes to complete going from a 120gb drive to a 500gb drive. We actually used a Western Digitlal IDE drive instead of the Seagate SATA. The reason being the Seagate had to be formatted and we missed the end of the format and it started to load windows so we stopped it there and went with the Western Digital.
I know am using my 120gb drive as a back up which we put in a external case. Also have a 250gb Western Digital My Book, so I have plenty of back up space for now.
My friend asked me to tell all of you altough the Acronis software is excellent there customer service is not. He emailed them back in January to ask a question and just received an answer this past week. A two month wait.
I do have one other question. Earlier (about 6 weeks ago) I had a virus and had posted the information on this forum. In the end everything came out clean. I was advised to un-install MacAfee Anti Virus and do with Avantis Home 4.8, which I did. The only issue I am having with that is that it will not complete a full thourogh scan. I ran it yesterday and it only got up to 51% complete and then stopped. I did see the little bar oving like it was running and let it go for another few hours and it did not complete. Can anyone advise me. Actually the same thing was happening when I had MacAfee.
I have noticed that it stops when it gets to Pinacle Studio 11.
Thanks for everyones help through all of this.
Try doing a scan of pinnacle only and see if you can tell which file/folder it hangs up on. Maybe a large compressed or encrypted file that you could make an exception for.
I scanned the Pinnacle folder and it did not hang up. It went up to 100%. I was looking at the help file and it calls it Exclusions. It is suppose to be in settings. I have the free version if that matters. I do not see where I can set Pinnacle as a exclusion so i could do a thorough scan on my C drive and have it skip Pinnacle and see if it will get to 100%.
Please let me know.
right click the Avast icon in systray, select program settings and click "exclusions" and navigate to the problem folder.
I believe you can do that with the free version.
You can also create realtime exclusions here.. (click "customize")
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/2339/mwsnap205.jpg
Ok, I went in to exclusions and I checked off the Pinnacle file and also Adobe Help which was another spot I saw it hanging up. I ran it yesterday and it still would not do a 100% SCAN. I am running it again now to see if it will complete.
I also have Avast on a laptop. I am going to run it there also and see what happens.