GearBits

Acronis True Image

Backups have always been a necessary evil and I have messed with just about everything throughout the years. The most reliable way so far has been drive imaging, but I never did groove on having to boot to DOS to do an image. The other day I was perusing the Home Theater Computers section of the AVS Forums and learned about Acronis True Image. It sounded like the perfect solution to capture the pristine state of my new HTPC.

Some really cool features of True Image are:

* Works inside the Windows environment
* Allows you to mount drive images and retrieve individual files
* Can set up a "secure zone" on your hard disk to store an image in case you really hose things up.
* Can easily clone an entire drive for moving to a bigger or faster disk.

True to its claims, inside ten minutes I had a rescue CD burned, a 10GB secure zone created on my hard disk and a perfect image of the drive spirited away on the disk. I was very impressed.