IBM Computer, Laptops and Servers

Traditional backup for the desktop, or backing up at the file level, still has many adherents, largely because the major players - Symantec's Backup Exec, EMC's Retrospect and NovaStor's NovaBackup - all offer support for the latest and greatest tape as well as hard drives and optical media. For backing up, you can't beat them, but disaster recovery is more complex and time-consuming than with imaging, though Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service has helped with the problem of backing up open files - a former bugaboo of the traditional approach to backup under Windows. laptop battery

Imaging entire partitions sector by sector is thought of as something you do at the time of deployment, but the simplicity of restoring images continues to win fans. The latest products, such as Symantec's Ghost 10 and Acronis Inc.'s True Image 9.1, address the old complaints about heavy space requirements and unwieldiness by providing both incremental backups and backups of individual files and folders. thinkpad

With huge amounts of data now living on desktops and laptops, you need a proactive attitude. Back them up; you'll be glad you did. Acronis Press Center Acronis Press Center Press Center Press Releases Reviewer's Guides Media Contacts Image Gallery Media Talk Asia microsoft

Five Recovery Apps Bring Your PC Back From The Dead Restoring from a full-system backup has a lot of other advantages over a traditional reinstall: You don't have to reinstall applications, restore user data or accounts, or perform tricky end-runs around the system to do things like recover protected data. Everything comes back in one fell swoop.

Bare-metal recovery is also one of the biggest features missing from Windows itself. There's no native way to make a system-wide backup and then restore it in one step if things go wrong. Granted, Windows has some nice incremental recovery options (System Restore comes to mind), and a decent file-and-directory backup tool, but no built-in way to restore everything at once. Sure, Microsoft has promised a full system-recovery function in Windows Vista, but upgrading to Vista is still a long way off for many people - and for some it's not an option at all. What can we do now about the problem laptop computers

To that end, a number of third-party software makers have stepped in and provided software solutions of their own. In this round-up, I review five of them - from Symantec's latest revision of Norton Ghost (now Norton Backup and Restore) to the light but useful Image for Windows. All of these applications have the basic ability to back up and restore an entire system disk without needing to boot to Windows, and can restore to and from a variety of backup media - usually attached hard drives or CD/DVD-Rs. laptop computer

Acronis makes a whole spate of really solid products for system backup and recovery. They don't just cover standalone desktop PCs, but servers and managed corporate workstations as well; there's something in the product lineup for just about everyone. The best choice from the company catalog for SOHO PCs is probably Acronis True Image 9.0 Home, which has everything you need and then some. Its friendly and highly consistent interface (it's even the same when booted from its rescue media) makes the whole process of creating and restoring backups a snap. desktop computer

Acronis True Image gives you all the info you need about your backups in one convenient place. Acronis True Image can back up either the entire contents of one or more hard drives, or selected files and folders. The target backup file can be saved to almost anywhere, such as across a network or onto a removable drive, including CDs and DVDs. Even better: Backups recorded to removable media can have their own bootable copy of the restore program included on them, so you can just boot the backup media itself to start the restore process. However, writing backups to DVD requires a separate application that can write UDF-format disks, such as Nero InCD. notebooks

Acronis supports full, incremental, and differential backups for both full-disk and individual file-and-folder backups. This makes it extremely easy to create and maintain an up-to-the-minute set of backups for a full system: You can create a full backup once every couple of weeks to a month (which can be done in the background), and then perform incremental backups each night. I was able to set up a schedule to do exactly that in less than one minute; any scheduled tasks (and their status) were shown in the program's main window. With the default options, I backed up a 15GB disc with 5GB of live data to a second drive in about six minutes. Scheduled backup operations ran unobtrusively and quietly in the background while I did other work. lenovo

Like many of the other programs here, Acronis True Image also includes a boot disk builder, but you have a choice of building one of two varieties of the boot CD: a "safe" variety with a minimal driver set (i.e., no USB/SCSI drivers) or a "full" flavor with a broad spectrum of hardware drivers. This lets you build and boot the disc that works best on your computer, since the drivers are provided by Acronis, not by your own computer, and the full set of drivers might not work on every machine. hard drive

Acronis True Image has a couple of unique features that I've seen (and liked) in previous versions of the program. You can create what's called the "Acronis Secure Zone, " a hidden partition to which data can be backed up on the same disc, but securely and away from interference by other programs. When the zone fills up, the oldest backup data is deleted, in much the same manner as Microsoft's own System Restore function. "Snap Restore, " which requires the Secure Zone, lets you boot the OS from a computer and resume work while it's still being restored from a backup. The process is remarkably seamless and resilient, but again, you need to have a system-directory backup in the Secure Zone for this to work. travelstar

Terabyte Unlimited is responsible for one of my favorite PC utilities of all time: BootIt Next Generation, a disk-, partition-, and boot-management tool that does more than many programs costing twice that much. For that reason, I've routinely given their other utilities a good hard look as well, and they have at least one tool that fits into this roundup: Image for Windows, which ships with its companion application Image for DOS. gateway

Image for Windows's no-nonsense interface doesn't get in the way when you just want to make a system-wide backup. Image for Windows lets you make full partition and disk backups from within Windows, including the currently-running system partition. The resulting backups can be written out to a local or network drive, or to CD or DVD, and can be spanned across multiple discs. If you make a backup set to CD or DVD, you can also set up the first disk in the set to be bootable. This way, if you want to restore everything without having a copy of Image for Windows handy, you can just boot the first of your backup discs and start the restore process there. The size of a backup set is automatically split into 2GB files - to avoid conflicts with, for instance, the file-size limitations of the FAT32 file system - but can also be split into other chunks, such as 648MB, for burning to CD. It isn't possible to back up files and folders selectively, though, just whole partitions. laptop parts

When you install the program in Windows, you're also prompted to install a tool called PHYLock. This allows you to back up files in use by the system by making a snapshot of them at a given moment in time, so any changes made to the system after that point are not reflected in the backup. (It's also possible to boot Image for DOS and make a full system image offline, but this way you can do the backup without disrupting other work.) I backed up a basic 15GB image with 5GB of actual data in about six minutes using the default options. software

Restoring an image from scratch can be done in a couple of different ways: You can restore within Windows to another partition or you can boot a CD or floppy built with the program to perform an offline restore. Backups can be restored from any media you've copied them to, including a hard drive mounted natively and available through BIOS or connected via a USB/FireWire connection. However, you can't restore across a network in DOS mode; you need to have the file available locally in some form before it can be restored. The image files created by Image for Windows are compatible with all other Terabyte products, including BootIt Next Generation. hard drives

The single biggest drawback is the lack of an incremental backup option. For instance, you can't make a snapshot of a partition one week and then back up only the changed files the next week; you have to back up everything at once. (There's also no way to do individual folder backups.) This makes it hard to use as a regular backup solution, unless you don't mind staking out the time required to do a full system backup. That said, Terabyte plans to include just such a feature in their next major upgrade to the product. electronics

Norton Save And Restore

Norton Save and Restore is actually the newest version of Norton Ghost; call it "Ghost 11.0, " if you want to. Ghost itself was originally a standalone program, booted from floppies, that was used to perform drive-to-drive and computer-to- computer imaging. Symantec bought the program, rebranded it Norton Ghost, and added features from PowerQuest's Drive Image product (also bought by them). Save and Restore keeps all the good things from Ghost, but it's essentially an incremental upgrade and not an entirely new product. canon

Backup and Restore protects entire drives but can also be used to back up specific folders on demand. Right after installation, S&R does several things to insure that it'll be able to properly back up and restore the whole system. The most important is a scan to determine whether a number of different hardware drivers - mass-storage, network, etc. - are available on the program's bootable recovery CD. This insures that if you back up to an external device (such as a USB-connected hard drive), you should still be able to access the backed-up data without needing Windows. Any device drivers not found on the recovery CD are listed in a report, so you can determine if they're crucial or not. desktop pc

Also at installation, the program tries to automatically create a set of backup policies - what to back up and where - based on, among other things, what drives are available and what user profiles are present. These can be changed at any time, but the default values are pretty good: a full system backup once a week, and a backup of the user's Documents and Settings directory once a day. Backups, which are called Recovery Points, can be set to happen on a schedule or whenever certain conditions arise: an application install, for instance, or whenever a user logs on or off. Any protected file or folder will also have a right-click context menu that lets you see any previously backed-up versions of that item; if you overwrite something, for instance, you can roll it back to a prior point in time. desktop computers

Whenever it's time for a scheduled backup cycle and the user is logged in, the program pops up a warning from the System Tray to ask you if you want to do the backup cycle now. If you say yes, the operation runs in the background, but you can always call up the progress dialog for the backup operation and move a slider that controls how aggressive S&R is at using system resources. When I tried it, a full system backup took almost exactly ten minutes; after that, backups took much less time since they were stored incrementally. If you have a Maxtor OneTouch external drive, S&R integrates directly with the push-button backup system on the drive. think pad

S&R has several ways you can do recovery. If your system's damaged but still partly functioning (for instance, if an application has gone south on you), you can do a point-in-time rollback, which is similar to the way Windows's own System Restore works except that it includes user data (System Restore doesn't). If you want to recover individual files or folders, you can explore individual Recovery Points as if they were a mounted file system, restore to a given Recovery Point, or search for a file or folder name. If everything's been torched, you can boot the program CD, connect the drive you have the backup on, and perform a full system recovery that way. repair

Two other problems I had with Save and Restore are mostly aesthetic and not really functional. One is the slow user interface; it takes seconds on end for the program's main menu to come up when it's invoked (a problem that I've identified as being pretty endemic across the current line of Symantec desktop products). The other is the annoying presence of the Norton Protection Center icon, which is installed along with S&R, and which you can't ever really seem to get rid of. But these are minor quibbles, and really don't detract from the program's ability to protect your system well. data recovery

Paragon Drive Backup 8 Personal

Paragon Drive Backup 8 Personal strongly resembles Acronis' product - not only in its interface layout but the way some of its features are implemented. The program's main screen even looks a lot like Acronis True Image - a task panel on the left side, a fully-annotated task list at top right, and below that a panel with information about the available disks in the system. From here you can kick off most of the program's basic functions: making backups, restoring a disk image, copying a whole disk, setting up a scheduled task, or exploring an existing image to selectively extract files. cisco

Aside from full partition/drive backups, Paragon Drive Backup can also create a differential backup against a given drive. Whenever you set up one or more actions to be carried out by the program, they're not actually put into effect until you click the Apply button. This way you can view the results of all the actions you've queued up in a preview window, and undo any changes before they're made - a nice feature for those of us who want to be doubly cautious about making potentially irreversible system changes. Aside from full partition/drive backups, you can also create a differential backup against a given drive and its last complete backup as a time- and space-saver. keyboard

The program runs down a detailed summary of all your settings before the backup is performed - the size of the backup files (which can be split across multiple discs if needed), additional backup options, and so on. The "Hot Processing" option (on by default) lets you back up partitions currently in use without disturbing anything, something supported by all the other programs here. One option I didn't see explicitly defined in any other program, also enabled by default, doesn't back up the system swap and hibernation files to reduce the size of the backup set. A full backup of the test system took just under eight minutes with all the default options enabled. Logs of all actions can be e-mailed to a given address. monitor

Acronis's Secure Zone feature is pretty closely emulated here in Paragon's "Backup Capsule" system. You can create a protected partition on a given drive where data can be backed up and restored as needed. Since space in Backup Capsules is typically at a premium, you can manually remove backups from the Capsules you create or adjust their sizes as needed. If you're restoring an individual partition as opposed to a full drive, you can optionally resize the partition during the restore process if there's room to do so. desktop

- Acronis, Inc., the technological leader in storage management software (http://www.acronis.com), announced that it is expanding its reach in the education market. The company, which already boasts a number of colleges, universities and public school systems as customers, said it has added several additional schools to its family of customers that purchased its disk imaging and partitioning software to simplify IT management. infosys

Among the newest members of the Acronis family are Greenville College and Brown University, both of which implemented Acronis True Image to ensure speedy recovery of their software systems. The Centennial School District in suburban Philadelphia has implemented Acronis Disk Director Server to maximize mission-critical server usage. refurbished laptops

Greenville College Streamlines Cloning System Process

Greenville College, a four-year accredited Christian liberal arts school with more than 1, 300 students in Greenville, IL, licensed Acronis True Image and recently purchased Acronis Snap Deploy to update and streamline its existing process for cloning systems. The college, which purchased 400 licenses, now can image and clone computer systems on campus without the need to worry about whether existing hardware, such as Ethernet network cards, are supported on the new systems. wipro

"We have been using Acronis True Image for over a year, and recently started using Acronis Snap Deploy, " said Dan S. Wolfe, support technician at the Greenville College IT Help Desk. "In researching imaging solutions, we did not find any as fast or easy to use as Acronis. It now takes just a couple minutes to backup or restore a system over our network, instead of an hour or more. Because it utilizes Linux, we don't have to worry about finding Ethernet drivers for our systems anymore." lap top

Brown University Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies

Brown University, based in Providence, RI, is a member of the Ivy League and the seventh oldest university in America. Recently Brown's Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies switched to the Acronis True Image family of backup and disaster recovery products after it determined that corporate needs were not being met by its existing Fortune 1000 vendor. The center had three key requirements for its Windows 2003 Servers: Improve the center's disaster recovery in terms of total cost of ownership; improve the return on investment; and improve the efficiency of restoration (EOR). refurbished

"Acronis software has been the easiest disaster recovery product to learn and use, and to teach to my staff, " said Rick Smith, network manager for the Center for Alcohol & Addiction Studies (CAAS). "We had tested a competitor's product for four months without success. I became an immediate fan of Acronis after installing it and running an image. It took just 20 minutes to install and my first image was successful! We use Acronis for our file and print servers, domain naming servers and for Windows Internet Naming Service servers." memory

School District Stretches Server Resources

Centennial School District in suburban Philadelphia, which educates 6, 400 children in grades K-12, had a number of mission-critical servers that were running out of hard disk space within the server partitions. The district licensed Acronis Disk Server 10.0 to repartition the hard drives on its five production servers quickly and easily. As a result, the servers are no longer at risk of crashing due to hard disk space issues. The server reconfiguration was completed quickly, saving IT staff many hours - or possibly days - of rebuilding the servers from scratch. intel

"Acronis Disk Director saved our department many man-hours of labor. We were able to reconfigure our servers to maximize performance in a couple of minutes as opposed to rebuilding the servers from scratch, " said Fran Watkins, IT administrator, Centennial School District. as400

Acronis True Image ensures quicker, more transparent system and desktop recovery. By taking a snapshot of the disk sectors of a running server or workstation, then storing that snapshot to a network share, external drive or even the Acronis Secure Zone, Acronis True Image lets users or IT managers recover data, be it an individual file or an entire hard disk, in minutes instead of hours or days. Complete system restoration can be performed to an existing system, to a new system with different hardware or to a virtual machine. averatec

Acronis Disk Director Server allows IT managers to create and manage partitions, as well as restore lost or deleted partitions, and, in some cases, all of the data from those lost partitions. hardware

Manpower is standardizing on Acronis Snap Deploy as part of its program to train temporary employees Anyone who has to deploy new computers on a regular basis knows the issues that such a task entails. Not only are there significant technical issues that must be addressed, but time commitments also can put a strain on a company's human IT assets. Acronis not only protects assets by protecting and securing corporate data, but it also allows companies to be more productive with their human assets. June 13, 2006, Burlington, MA

- Acronis, Inc. (www.acronis.com), the technological leader in storage management software, announced that the Manpower燬ervices offices in Calgary, Alberta, is standardizing on Acronis Snap燚eploy as part of its program to train temporary employees. dual xeon

Manpower Services, part of the worldwide Manpower Inc., is a world leader in the employment services industry. Manpower's global network of over?, 400爋ffices in?2燾ountries and territories allows the company to meet the needs of its clients in all industry segments, whether they are global, multi-national or local companies. storage

"At Acronis, we consider it our responsibility to provide not only world-class disaster recovery and deployment tools, but also to add to our clients' bottom line by eliminating excessive expenses, reducing labor costs and making their operations more efficient. Manpower Services is a great example of how a company is doing just that - improving its bottom line by becoming more efficient and productive. seagate

Manpower Inc. (NYSE: MAN) is a world leader in the employment services industry; creating and delivering services that enable its clients to win in the changing world of work. The?16燽illion company offers employers a range of services for the entire employment and business cycle including permanent, temporary and contract recruitment; employee assessment and selection; training; outplacement; outsourcing and consulting. Manpower's worldwide network of 4, 400爋ffices in?2燾ountries and territories enables the company to meet the needs of its 400, 000燾ustomers per year, including small and medium size enterprises in all industry sectors, as well as the world's largest multinational corporations. The focus of Manpower's work is on raising productivity through improved quality, efficiency and cost-reduction across their total workforce, enabling clients to concentrate on their core business activities. Manpower營nc. operates under five brands: Manpower, Manpower燩rofessional, Elan, Jefferson燱ells and Right燤anagement. More information on Manpower營nc. is available at www.manpower.com. computer sales

Automatic file backup and system recovery program is included in New Mexico Software Acronis, the technological leader in automatic file backup and system recovery software, announced that New Mexico Software, Inc. has signed an OEM agreement to include Acronis True Image in its recently announced TORC product line.

TORC is a software appliance and web service backup solution designed to enable the installation, scheduling, storage, retrieval, and restoration of either full partition or partial file backups of almost any computer or server via any standard web browser to insure against disaster. The system, which uses Acronis True Image as its disaster recovery cornerstone, can be used by virtually any company or enterprise. It automatically schedules full, differential or incremental backups via a browser interface for a single system or thousands of computers. computer hardware

TORC stores the backup images on a hosted or central appliance and enables restoring full partitions or selecting files from each image in case of disaster. Using this interface, the product provides access anytime and anywhere there is an Internet browser and connection, allowing users to instantly return their computers and their business to full operating condition should a system suffer a logical or physical failure. printers

"We love the capabilities and power of the Acronis technology, and that the simplicity of the software developers kit enabled us to rapidly develop a unique model for automatic backup and offsite storage and retrieval of images, " said Troy C. Lapsys, president of the server division at New Mexico Software. "Acronis gives us the flexibility to craft a managed service that provides all of the mission-critical capabilities a company needs, regardless of if they have one server or workstation or a thousand servers and workstations. Acronis met and exceeded our expectations for quality, ease of use and support." technology

"The number of small to mid-size companies is expanding exponentially, as is the amount of data they produce, " said Walter Scott, CEO of Acronis. "We are pleased to work with such a forward-thinking company as New Mexico Software that is providing crucial disaster recovery managed services. Such relationships expand the reach of Acronis technology and provide essential services to a broad-based user community." mainframe

Acronis Names John Murgo as Chief Financial Officier Acronis announced the appointment of John R. Murgo as executive vice president and chief financial officer. Murgo reports to CEO Walter Scott.

Murgo joins Acronis from OpenServices Inc., a leading software vendor in the security information and event management market, where he served as executive vice president and chief financial officer. Earlier he served in various positions at Process Software Corp., eventually becoming president and chief executive officer. He also was the chief financial officer of web applications vendor Dirig Software Inc. and HPSC Inc. samsung

In addition to his financial duties at HPSC, Murgo served as the acting chief operating officer where he was responsible for all SEC filings, investor relations and other financial responsibilities. He drove a $50 million recapitalization of the publicly held firm in order to reduce the company's cost of capital and better secure its financial base. As a result, the company regained sound financial footing as well as the confidence of its shareholders and shortly thereafter was sold to GE Capital. computer repair

Murgo also served at one of the Big Five accounting firms, serving as a manager in the Boston office of the international accounting firm Coopers & Lybrand (now PriceWaterhouse Coopers), where he worked with a number of public companies and reviewed Securities and Exchange Commission filings. used computers

"John is a seasoned chief financial officer with 20 years experience in all facets of financial management, having served as CFO for a range of growth-oriented companies, " said Acronis CEO Walter Scott. "His background in building high-quality finance teams, along with experience with financings, mergers and acquisitions, financial reporting and controls, make him an ideal executive for the next phase of Acronis' growth." network

"Bringing on a seasoned financial professional further solidifies an outstanding senior management team, " said Scott Maxwell, managing director of Insight Partners, a major investor in Acronis. "We see this as a huge plus for Acronis, a company that has seen meteoric growth over the past few years. This is a new position at Acronis and demonstrates the company's evolution from feisty start-up to an established player in the market for the long run." digital cameras

Acronis opens Paris and Brussels offices Acronis announced today that it is opening its third and fourth European sales offices in Paris and Brussels to meet growing European demand for its recovery and disk partitioning and management products. Acronis has appointed Laurent Dedenis, managing director, to run the new operations. Laurent Dedenis appointed managing director

Prior to this appointment, Dedenis opened Acronis' Singapore sales office in 2004, its first in the Asia-Pacific region, where he served as general manager. He previously was general manager of Solomon燬oftware燬EA燩te燣td. in Singapore. desktops

Before joining Solomon Software, he was general manager and a founding partner of Direct Marketing Strategy, a San燜rancisco-based consulting firm that developed and implemented a new type of advertising model for the golf industry. Earlier, he served as a U.S. market analyst and consultant for French companies with the French Trade Commission in San Francisco. cognos

Dedenis, a French native, holds a Ph. D. in International Business Administration from the International燯niversity爋f燗merica in San Francisco and a Master's Degree in Economics燼nd燤anagement爁rom爐he燯niversity爋f燩aris燲I in Paris, France. hosting

The Acronis Paris and Brussels offices complement existing European offices in Germany and the United燢ingdom and enhance the ability of Acronis to support both customers native to those countries as well as the overseas operations of its multinational customers. netfinity

"French is the second best-selling language for our products in Europe, " said Walter Scott, CEO of Acronis. "With more than 40 percent of Acronis sales coming from non-English-language products, this is the perfect way for Acronis to service its growing customer base." internet

At the same time that Acronis has been expanding its presence in Europe, its Pacific Rim operations have grown too. Acronis has a sales office in Singapore and is experiencing strong demand for its products in Japan, South Korea and Malaysia. cheap computer

Acronis, Inc.'s Stephen Lawton Returns to the Radio to Discuss Restoration

Lawton to Make Return Appearance on Nationally Syndicated "Let's Talk Computers" Radio Program to Discuss Restore Versus Backup. July 24, 2006, Burlington, MA - Acronis, Inc. (www.acronis.com), the technological leader in storage management software, today announced that Director of Marketing Stephen Lawton will return as a featured guest on Let's燭alk燙omputers, one of the longest running radio computer talk shows in the country, on July 15th. digital camera

Lawton, a knowledgeable expert and industry veteran, will discuss the importance of restoring different types of hardware as opposed to simply backing them up. Lawton and host Alan Ashendorf spoke about backup issues and the fast, efficient and cost-effective Acronis True營mage solution during the July 1st show, but Ashendorf was left wanting to know more about restore issues. "Backup has been around for a very long time, and is not new, " said Lawton "What's critical today is the recovery, and I think that at some point every IT manager out there will sigh and say, "Ah, yes, I had a backup and I couldn't recover it"." printer

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