If you read my previous article, you might remember me making an inquiry as to which application would be the best for helping to make my move to a new hard drive as smooth as possible. And here are the responses:
Ian writes-
I have used Acronis V8 successfully for a year or two now and am very happy. They recently brought out V9 and basically it wasn’t ready. They upset large numbers of users and have appeared to rewrite a section of it and re-branded. It would appear from the forums (at Wilders) that things have settled down and if you buy it you can request a download of the old V8 version while they sort out V9 teething troubles.
Tom writes-
I’ve been using bootit-ng for a couple of years.
First make your bootable cd or floppy from the download. Then I skip the offer to install the boot loader and it will take you right to the maintenance portion. Click the source drive and then Image, Click the destination and paste!
Restoring is also done with the image button.
You can also use it to resize partitions.
John writes-
Well, this will be a bit of overkill for you, but for the price and performance, I don’t think it can be beat. I have become quite enamored of BootIt Next Generation from Terabyte Unlimited.
It handles partition copying, resizing, moving, and all those goodies, as well as being one heckuva boot manager. All for around $35!!!
And to top it off, the installation file fits on a floppy disc. How often does that happen. And for what you’re doing, you don’t even really need to install it, as the partition manipulation functions are available as part of the installation procedure. I really can’t recommend BING enough.
Doug writes-
Check into BootIt NG. I don’t personally use it but Fred Langa (the writer of the LangaList newsletter) highly recommends it.
John writes-
I highly recommend (and use) Acronis True Image. It has save my bacon several times. I wouldn’t operate a computer without it now. I have a USB 2.0 drive to which I portioned off space for my Drive C. Twice I seen the BSOD, slipped my Acronis disk into my CD drive and resuscitated my system right back to where it was. Well at least as of the last back up, but in my case it was only two days prior so I didn’t loose much, if anything.
Larry writes-
I used Acronis True Image to migrate the image of my old 12 GB hard drive to the new 40 GB hard drive with absolutely no problem whatsoever. I initially created an image backup of the old drive to CD and then used that image to create the new one. I have been using the resulting larger drive as my C drive for years now with absolutely no problem. It was all easy and straightforward. I just had to tell Acronis how big the new drive was and off it went. Simple.
Gress writes –
While Partition Magic is a great product, its current incarnation requires .net service and is large and unwieldy. I used the earlier versions for many years, but have since switched.
Acronis True Image is a very good product, but I found that BootitNG, which is found at terabyteunlimited.com, is a more complete product. What you get for the price is a very good Boot Manager, Partition Manager, Imaging for Windows and Imaging for DOS. I have been using it for about 3 years now and am very satisfied.
Just my 2 cents worth of experience.
Paul writes-
Have you had a look at QTparted, included on the Knoppix Live CD’s? A friend of mine with his own PC repair business, uses it a lot for doing backups. The main reason for doing this is that Windows cannot lock any files, if it is not running. QT will copy a full partition and restore it to another drive. Since the file system is immaterial at this point, it works with NTFS. He’s even gone the next step and setup an external 250GB drive with USB and Firewire interfaces. He then boots Knoppix and backs up the Windows partition, before doing any work on the Windows data to remove virii and malware.
Bob writes-
I would use Acronis because;
1) It is much easier to use than the latest version of Norton Ghost ” PQ Drives Image “.
2) It does NOT use as much system resources as does Ghost.
3) In my opinion, it is much faster than Ghost.
4) It does files or folders, and also has user configurable filters, to customize file/folder rejection.
The ability to “Mount” images to act like virtual drives is a nice option that both have.
Otherwise Acronis has the same options and features that Ghost has but for one point, IE: that it does not make a bootable recovery CD/DVD like Ghost does.
This the only reason that I still use Norton’s Ghost 2003 “Version 8.0” to image hard drives to make a “self-booting” recovery CD/DVD.. Plus the fact that Ghost still fits on a floppy.
They both have their strengths and weaknesses, it depends on what your situation is..
[tags]upgrade,hard drive,acronis,large numbers[/tags]