True Image Vs. Ghost for home use

dynamik

I have Acronis True Image 10 at home. I see they are up to version 11 now, and I am debating whether to upgrade or switch over to Norton Ghost (or any possibly some other product). I will probably just upgrade since it will cost much less, and they both seem to be solid products. I am just curious what you all use and what your preferences are.

RTmarc

I prefer Acronis to Ghost.

royal

RTmarc wrote:

I prefer Acronis to Ghost.

+1

snadam

royal wrote:

RTmarc wrote:

I prefer Acronis to Ghost.

+1

+2 I switched over to acronis from ghost at work, and I like it MUCH more.

isint there a limited feature free version of Acronis?

Daniel333

I love Acronis 10.

Never liked Ghost, but I have not used the latest versions.

dynamik

Thanks for the replies everyone. I liked Acronis better as well (obviously), but I didn't delve too deep into either. I just wanted to see if there was anything I was missing.

gojericho0

I dont need an imaging server or anything, but I use DriveImage XML for personal use. Its freeware and is XML based so its compatible with just about anything

http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

dynamik

It supports VSS on XP/2003 and BartPE. Not bad for freeware.

I'll probably stick with Acronis since I already own version 10, but that's definitely something to keep in my arsenal.

Thanks for sharing.

JDMurray

I'm using Ghost 12 for backing up my personal workstations. It's fast, quiet, unobtrusive, and has a very nice GUI. What don't you guys like about it?

HeroPsycho

Backup Exec System Recovery Desktop Edition FTW!

Awesome product line!

hypnotoad

Acronis any day of the week. We are stuck on ghost here at work because of cost

itdaddy

+2

HeroPsycho

The reason I recommend BESR over Ghost and Acronis is it can restore to dissimilar hardware. So freakin' cool! Also fully supports P2V and V2P!

http://www.symantec.com/business/products/overview.jsp?pcid=2254&pvid=1601_1

I don't see any point using Ghost anymore. Ghost is like BESR's retarded cousin.

FYI, I saw someone take the Server edition of the product and restore an ISA server backup from server hardware on to a multihomed laptop hardware, and it worked! If that doesn't impress you, nothing will. Simply a killer product!

Kasor

I'm still using Ghost at work, but BESC is OK. However, nobody want spend more IT budget.. U know that mgmt that don't know about IT, they want to see production, not prevention...

RTmarc

HeroPsycho wrote:

The reason I recommend BESR over Ghost and Acronis is it can restore to dissimilar hardware. So freakin' cool! Also fully supports P2V and V2P!

http://www.symantec.com/business/products/overview.jsp?pcid=2254&pvid=1601_1

I don't see any point using Ghost anymore. Ghost is like BESR's retarded cousin.

FYI, I saw someone take the Server edition of the product and restore an ISA server backup from server hardware on to a multihomed laptop hardware, and it worked! If that doesn't impress you, nothing will. Simply a killer product!

Acronis also supports hardware independent restores now.

HeroPsycho

How well does it work? Anyone tried it?

RTmarc

We've got it but haven't actually created a new image with the new version. We are going to start doing that next week so I may post an update at that time.

snadam

RTmarc wrote:

We've got it but haven't actually created a new image with the new version. We are going to start doing that next week so I may post an update at that time.

is this different from universal restore?

RTmarc

Nope. It's the same. It's the latest version of it. True Image Echo Workstation + UR or something like that.

snadam

RTmarc wrote:

Nope. It's the same. It's the latest version of it. True Image Echo Workstation + UR or something like that.

Cool. Universal restore is quite a time saver! Thats what sold me on it.

royal

So my cousin has been over the last several days visiting and using the computer so I decided I'm going to format the system to be safe. I spent so many hours today and it sucked. So I finally purchased Acronis today and a new 2-year subscription of nod32. Now when I need to restore, just choose my image, restore, do some updates, and I should be up and fully updates in about 30 minutes. Sure beats spending so many hours re-formatting, etc...

dynamik

royal wrote:

So my cousin has been over the last several days visiting and using the computer so I decided I'm going to format the system to be safe. I spent so many hours today and it sucked. So I finally purchased Acronis today and a new 2-year subscription of nod32. Now when I need to restore, just choose my image, restore, do some updates, and I should be up and fully updates in about 30 minutes. Sure beats spending so many hours re-formatting, etc...

Tell me about it. I decided to "do things right" this time around with my new laptops. Now I occasionally do Acronis images, etc. Well, my wife's crashed hard. It was a blue screen I couldn't get around. Not in safe mode, last known good config, restore points, etc. I have no clue what she did, but she killed it. Anyway, I was able to get into a command console from the setup DVD (this is Vista). It recognized a USB drive I attached, and I was able to robocopy her new files to the external drive. That was slick!

Anyway, Acronis restored her machine within a half hour, and it was as good as new. She only had to reinstall WoW and another app or two since the image was taken. That paid for itself right then and there.

TechJunky

Every corporate company I have worked for uses Ghost so I just stick to that suite. I really liked Acronis with the limited experience I had with it. I love how it would allow me to backup to a local disk/rev drive for small businesses, ghost v11 didn't do that. Plus the system restore type feature that Acronis has is sweet.

Most companies we just setup a default image with ghost. If anything goes wrong we just copy the users profile and revert them back to the base image. Literally takes 30 minutes, maybe less. That's atleast what I have heard from the helpdesk guys.

They even have it broken down by laptop model, and office suite. Pretty good model IMO.