[tomoc]

I'm a firm believer in clean installs of operating systems, but I wonder if that belief should be extended to upgrades in versions of operating systems???

I have upgraded all of our pc's to new ones with Vista. All have Home Premium except one. I'm thinking of upgrading the others to Ultimate (mainly for the backup program) so they will all be the same and I don't run into some glitch that puzzles me due to differences.

any advice or thoughts on this appreciated.

thanks,

tom

[Orumph]

If the only reason you are going to upgrade to ultimate is for the back up. Buy a different backup sollution. While Ms backup is good and works, it is not the best. There are better solutions. Acronis True Image is better.

The only other reason for you to upgrade (because you already have Media Center) is for Bitlocker, if you want to use it, and Ultimate Extras (which have been few and far between and it's future has been undetermined for a while). But, they say they will release more after the final language packs are released, which has already happened or will be soon.

[Noyb]

Just another vote for Acronis .... http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing...cts/trueimage/

The trial DL is fully functional for 15 days.

[Rich-M]

You do realize that home premium has a file backup program on it right? Start,programs, Accessories, System Tools,Backup Status and Configuration. Backup files and data to a second drive would give you great protection for day to day files and data.The complete backup program is in Business and Ultimate. that's correct.

[tomoc]

thanks, guys. I may well buy Acronis. Everyone has good things to say about it.

I'm not using bitlocker on the machine that has ultimate, so the back up seems like the only feature I would use right now.

Is it really true then, that there is no other difference. I want to be sure that all the PCs work just the same... especially my wife's so it she has any problem, I can know my setup is exactly the same as hers.

I still wonder, though, if there is any reluctance to upgrade versions of windows rather than clean installs...certainly this would be less risky than, say, an upgrade from XP to vista, but do you think there is still risk from and upgrade rather than totally clean install?

thx

tom

[Noyb]

After you do an upgrade install .. and get it updated and loaded with your favorite programs ..
You can make an Acronis backup .. Then it will be just like a clean install.
You won't have to install XP and upgrade it ... Just put the Acronis recovery back in.

Acronis can work on all your computers .. not just Vista.

[katabby]

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=65 here is the "official" Acronis forum. I've got mixed feelings about it. Sometimes it works great, others well..

[Rich-M]

I've been a beta tester for Acronis for years and while occasionally I have seen some drives not recognized, I have never had any real issues with any version and rely on it totally for image backups and have for the last 6 years on 5 pc's.

[Noyb]

It's worked for me every time I've needed it ... on more than 5 Puters
Got the new V11 update #8053 ??

[DaveA]

Acronis for years for me also.

[katabby]

i was getting an error from Acronis saying the backup failed because the disk is full. Out of my 500 gb hard drive i allocated 100gb for the Acronis secure zone. My used space on "C" is only about 24gb after deleting old restore points. When I got the error I had 1 full backup and about 6 or 7 incremental backups. That happened twice in the last 2 months or so but not in about 3 weeks.

[Rich-M]

Originally Posted by katabby

i was getting an error from Acronis saying the backup failed because the disk is full. Out of my 500 gb hard drive i allocated 100gb for the Acronis secure zone. My used space on "C" is only about 24gb after deleting old restore points. When I got the error I had 1 full backup and about 6 or 7 incremental backups. That happened twice in the last 2 months or so but not in about 3 weeks.

Look at the size of the incremental backups, in may cases they arethe size of original and I have been wondering about just that lately.

[katabby]

i think thats what was happening but thought it was just me. Anyway, their support is easily confused. I have ATI 11, which they acknowledge, went with their Report when I sent an email to their tech support. The following is in response to tech support for ATI 11
then they jump to ATI 10.



First of all we recommend you to download and install the latest build (8053) of Acronis True Image 11 Home available at http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/my/updates/

Acronis True Image 10.0 Home uses the following scheme to clean up Acronis Secure Zone:

- If there is not enough free space in the zone to create a backup, the program deletes the oldest full backup with all subsequent incremental/differential backups.
- If there is only one full backup (with subsequent incremental/differential backups) left and a full backup is in progress, then the old full backup and incremental/differential backups are deleted.
- Otherwise, (only one full backup left, and an incremental/differential backup is in progress) you will get a message about space error. In that case you will have to either re-create the full backup or increase Acronis Secure Zone.

We are always at your service should you have any further questions.

Thank you.

Note that you can quickly find the answers to your questions in Acronis Support
Knowledge Base at http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/support/kb/
--

[Noyb]

Secure Zone worries me ... I save my Acronis backups as Data files in another HD (external)

Vista worries me ... I've seen reports that it can fill up with junk for no reason.
Just played with a new HP Vista puter .. that had been Geek Squad'ed.
It only had a couple hundred MB of pictures loaded and the C: drive was over 50 Gig occupied.

I was too busy cleaning up the mess .. Didn't have a chance to try to find the junk ... invisible ??
This will sure make the Acronis recovery files Huge for no reason.

Also .. I don't do incrementals .. why back up a problem you don't know you have yet..
or save all the junk that Windows can collect.

[Rich-M]

I do incrementals during the month and then a fresh new image file every month, but I also run hourly data and file backups all the time as well to the extra internal hard drive.
Incrementals make sense because they are smaller yet to install with them, the also return the original image file as well, and by using them, you can also have more image files stored on a drive. With Vista these files are huge, you are right, that's the other reason to use incrementals.