IBM Computer, Laptops and Servers

"(The scenarios) ranged from your 9/11 type of disaster where the office could lose the entire server farm and all the bodies associated with maintaining it, down to a patch release blue-screening a server." laptop battery

Of all the possibilities, FMC determined that patch management was the activity most likely to cause a server to go down. On average, FMC's IT staff installed between four and 11 Microsoft security patches every month. "We know we have to make fundamental changes to our servers with patches, which makes (server downtime) a common risk." Patching-related risks escalated when IT staff found they could not remove some patches via the regular Windows uninstall process, Dawson said. Manually removal was possible in some cases, but it took too long to determine exactly what to uninstall. thinkpad

FMC decided to image its servers on a monthly basis through a ghosting process, whereby the IT team would spend 12 hours on a Thursday evening taking down the servers, imaging them, deploying the patches and testing the systems to make sure everything worked before the next day. But as FMC added servers to its infrastructure, ghosting became too time-consuming; the imaging process took up almost the entire maintenance window, leaving little time for patching. " Ghosting was great when we had a dozen servers, " Dawson said. "But when you get beyond that, it becomes a nightmare." microsoft

searching for a product, that could image its servers in a shorter time frame, FMC discovered Acronis True Image Server about 18 months ago when the software was still at version 6. According to Dawson, Acronis True Image Server gave network staff more flexibility during the imaging process than did ghosting. laptop computers

"This product allowed us to take a snapshot of the server on a Thursday night and we were able to do that when the server was in production, so people wouldn't notice that we were doing an image." Every time IT staff needed to make a critical change to the server, Acronis True Image Server let them take the image, make the changes and if they did not like the mortifications, they could roll the servers back to their previous status. laptop computer

Version 8 adds the ability to do incremental or differential backups of only the changes that have occurred in the last 24 hours since the last backup, rather than doing a full image of the server every night. According to Dawson, incremental backups take only five minutes and 50 MH of storage space, as compared with one hour and 500 MB to 2, 000 MB of storage for a full server image. desktop computer

Before choosing Acronis True Image Server, FMC tested three other-products, including Symantec's LiveState Recovery Advanced Server (previously Vai Protector), which at the time offered similar features. FMC chose Acronis' product after the vendor added a central server management console to version 8 of Acronis True Image Server - a feature that had also been available in Symantec's product. notebooks

We know we have to make fundamental changes to our servers with patches, which makes (server downtime) a common risk. Dawson Total testing time lasted about nine months because FMC tried out multiple products in several offices and re-tested products when they came out with new features. "It was a process of deliberately break ing things, doing restores and seeing that everything was seamless, " Dawson said. "Then we were able to move to less mission-critical devices and test some of those." lenovo

Three of FMC's six Canadian offices have implemented Acronis True Image Server. Of the remain ing offices, one had planned to implement the product hut never picked up a copy; another extended its backup suite; and the last one went with a completely different solution. hard drive

At the Calgary office, the Acronis True Image Server installation was "wonderful and idiot-proof, " Dawson said. Network staff only had to "slap in the CD, click, sit back and watch it work... The most difficult thing was typing in the license key." travelstar

The implementation at the Calgary office took about two weeks because it was done in stages, starting with some redundant servers during the week and moving on to others afterward. Now FMC does a full system backup every Thursday night and a differential backup on other weeknights. That way, if a server dies three Tuesdays after a patch rollout, FMC can roll it back to a previous Friday's image, or as far back as the image taken right after the last patch deployment. gateway

Since installing Acronis True Image Server, FMC has reduced its maintenance window by at least 25 per cent. "We changed our entire strategy on how we do patching every month based on our ability to recover the server, " Dawson said. Instead of installing one patch, rebooting the server, checking the logs and the applications and repeating the process for subsequent patches, IT staff can now take an image, bundle all of the patches and push them out at the same time. laptop parts

The firm has also reduced its server recovery time. About five months ago, one of FMC's servers died during a power shutdown mandated by the City of Calgary. The server in question facilitated the document scanning process at the company. According to Dawson, it took about five minutes to recover the server, whereas before it would have taken at least an hour to install Windows, then add all the applications and configure the system. software

Infopackets Windows Newsletter, discussing question, which disk imaging backup software is best, was unambiguous in its favorite recommendation Acronis True Image is ranked as the best program, providing best overall feature set and the least amount of bugs and incompatibilities reported.

Responses have been strong, with about 60 opinions to date. Based on those opinions, the consensus is that Acronis True Image is ranked as the favorite recommendation, providing best overall feature set and the least amount of bugs and incompatibilities reported. One other strong points brought to my attention was Acronis' sound technical support via email and user support via an online web forum. hard drives

Click here to read the full review

, along with comments from more than a dozen readers of the InfoPackets newsletter. Acronis Press Center Acronis Press Center Press Center Press Releases Reviewer's Guides Media Contacts Image Gallery Media Talk Asia electronics

Acronis True Image 8.0 Review: Infopackets Windows Newsletter reviews backup software that backups files from hard drive to DVD, CD or another HDD under Windows XP and Linux Acronis True Image 8.0 Review. Here you can find information about the award-winning backup and software program. It may back up hdd to dvd.

March 23, 2005 by Dennis Faas Original article on Infopackets Windows Newsletter Infopackets Windows Recommended canon

Acronis True Image 8.0 Review RE: Disk Imaging software versus Regular File Backup Rating: 5/5

Regular file backup programs such as Genie Backup Manager are fantastic for backing up personal files such as downloads, documents, emails, pictures, bookmarks, and the like. And as we learned previously, Regular file backup is also a great way to archive files onto a more permanent location (such as CD-Recordable) in order to save space on the hard drive. desktop pc

The flipside of the coin is that regular file backup is not capable of backing up the Operating System. In other words, if your hard drive crashed or if Windows suddenly became inoperable, the only way to resolve the issue would be to: desktop computers

• format [erase] the hard drive think pad

• reinstall Windows and download all the updates repair

• reinstall all your programs data recovery

• reinstall the backup software cisco

• restore your data that you backed up keyboard

In all, that might take 6 to 8 hours to complete (at best) - not fun. I personally use regular file backup to archive my most critical files on a regular basis; but, for those truly disastrous situations [often as a result of a Spyware infection, Virus, or something that I downloaded recently that didn't install / uninstall properly], I also use a Disk Imaging software to backup and revert my entire system to a previous healthy state... often within minutes. monitor

Introducing Acronis True Image 8.0: True Disaster Recovery Introducing Acronis True Image 8.0: True Disaster Recovery

Recently voted best disk imaging solution by our Readers, some of the features provided by Acronis True Image 8.0 include: An Easy to Use Interface: Simply click "create image" and Acronis' built in Backup Wizard will guide you through 8 Simple Steps to begin backing up your entire system. Works within Windows: Unlike inferior MS DOS-based disk imagers, Acronis True Image never requires you to restart your computer in order to complete an imaging backup operation. desktop

Split Image Files: Image files can be stored on permanent media (such as another hard drive), or on removable medium (such as ZIP disks, CD/DVD-R, etc). If the image is too large to fit on the destination medium, Acronis True Image can split the image across multiple volumes. infosys

Store Images Remotely: Image files are typically quite large in size; in addition to storing the backup on a local computer, Acronis True Image also provides the option to save the image backups on a remote PC - perfect for laptops and older PCs that are short on storage space or don't have a CD burner to store the backup! refurbished laptops

Explore Image and Restore Single Files

Explore Image and Restore Single Files: In addition to restoring an entire volume, users may choose to extract single [or multiple] files by exploring an image file. Full and Incremental Backups: Acronis True Image is one of the few disk imaging solutions to offer both Full Image backup as well as Incremental Imaging, which only backs up new or changed data from a previous backup set. wipro

Side note: If you choose to save all your image backups to CD or DVD media, incremental backups can save a substantial amount of time, medium, and money in the long run. Scheduler: Automate your backups using Acronis' built in scheduling mechanism - also a great feature for making regular incremental backups! Test Backup Medium: Backing up your data is completely pointless if you can't restore it; Acronis True Image uses bit-level verification to ensure 100% data integrity and restorability of your images - even after you burn them to CD or DVD. lap top

Create Image mode

Built-in CD and DVD Burning: Image files can be archived directly to CD or DVD. Note that DVD burning requires additional packet writing software (which comes standard with many applications such as Nero Burning ROM, Easy CD Creator, etc). Side note: If you don't own Packet Writing software, you can save your image files to another location and then burn to DVD using any CD Mastering application. refurbished

Bootable Rescue Media: In case Windows is inoperable or your hard drive is no longer startable, Acronis True Image offers bootable Rescue Media that allows you to revert a previous image backup in a stable environment. memory

Great for Seamless Hard Drive Upgrades: Transfer Windows and all installed programs from an old (smaller) hard drive, to a new (larger) hard drive: a perfect solution if you're looking to upgrade your hard drive and don't want to reinstall Windows and all your applications on the new drive. intel

Acronis True Image 8.0: Using it on My Machine

Installation went relatively smooth, except for the fact that Acronis True Image gave me an error message when I tried to create a bootable CD Rescue Disc. I later found out it was because my particular brand of DVD burner [Sony DW-D56A] uses a "non-standard driver, " which conflicts with the CD creation process. But not to worry - After searching the official Acronis True Image web forums, I found a simple workaround which involved booting Windows XP into Safe Mode, launching Acronis True Image, and then choosing to create the rescue disc from the main menu. as400

With my Rescue Media now burned to a CD-Rewriteable, I decided to test the boot disc by rebooting my computer. Sure enough, the disc started and the Rescue Media screen appeared. Satisfied that the bootable Rescue Media was working as it should, I rebooted my system once more and created my first image backup. There were 8 steps in creating my image: averatec

1. Choose Hard Drive to Backup hardware

2. Choose Save Location dual xeon

3. Choose Full or Incremental Backup storage

4. Choose Automatic or Fixed Image File size seagate

5. Choose Compression Level computer sales

6. Password Protect your Backup computer hardware

7. Enter optional user Comments printers

8. Proceed with Backup technology

9. The interface was very straight-forward and easy to use. In all, Acronis True Image took roughly 25 minutes to image my 10 gigabyte C drive [Windows] partition, write it to DVD Recordable, and test the integrity of the backup. mainframe

Acronis True Image 8.0 recognizes all hard disks connected to the PC, along with a wide variety of removable media drives with P-ATA (IDE), S-ATA, SCSI, USB, IEEE1394 (Firewire) and PCMCIA interfaces including: CD-ROM/DVD-ROM and CD-R/W recorders and burners, magneto-optical drives, Zip and Jazz devices, and many others. samsung

Acronis True Image 8.0 works with Windows XP, Windows Me, Windows 2000 Professional, Windows NT 4.0 Workstation Service Pack 6, Windows 98, and supports FAT16/32, NTFS, Linux Ext2, Ext3, ReiserFS, and Linux SWAP file systems. computer repair

If we lived in a perfect world: Windows would never crash, Spyware wouldn't be nearly impossible to remove, and there wouldn't be any need to worry if a recent download has caused irreversible damage to the integrity of our systems. used computers

With a 5-star rating from the editor's at download.com, and an overwhelming percentage of Gazette Readers in favor of the program, Acronis True Image offers premium PC protection that absolutely no computer user should be without. Hopefully, this disk and file backup software review is another reminder that backing up your data is more than important and Acronis True Image is a backup and recovery tool that will satisfy demands of both novice and professional users. network

Acronis True Image 8.0 is a bargain at only $49.99 and can be downloaded immediately from the RegNow website. To find out more about Acronis True Image, click the link below; and remember, a portion of proceeds go directly to fund our web site - so please show your support by purchasing this incredibly useful utility today! digital cameras

TBO.com Technology: Doug Stanley uses Ghost imaging and still likes it, but after 1st time of use of Acronis True Image he gives it slight edge for speed and ease of use On this page you can find an article about using Ghost, Acronis True Image to back up the hard drive.

PDF Datasheet (0.1 MB) Video Press Release TBO.com Technology March 28, 2005 by Doug Stanley desktops

Use Ghost, Acronis True Image To Back Up Hard Drive Review

I've recommended Ghost here before, and I still like it. I recently used Acronis True Image for the first time, however, and I'd give it a slight edge for speed and ease of use. If you're in the market for a disk-imaging solution, give the lesser-known Acronis True Image some serious consideration. cognos

Digital Video Editing gives highest recommendation and 10 out of 10 stars to Acronis True Image baskup program Acronis was rated as the best backup and imaging tool. In addition, its ease-of-use was highly appreciated.

PDF Datasheet (0.1 MB) Video Press Release Digital Video Editing March, 2005 by Charlie White Original on Digital Video Editing website hosting

Acronis True Image 8.0 Backup, imaging plus a lot more, and it's easy to use, too Rating: 10/10

This is by far the best disk imaging and backup software I've ever seen. Its ease of use has evolved to such a point that it's almost Mac-like. I couldn't find anything wrong with it. In fact, I've now uninstalled all backup software I was using previously on all our workstations here and converted them all to True Image. If you care at all about your data, and don't want to have to study rocket science just to have that assurance that it's backed up in case of a mishap, you can't go wrong with Acronis True Image 8.0. Highest recommendation. 10 out of 10 stars. netfinity

Read Digital Video Editing's full product review at: http://www.digitalvideoediting.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp id=31119 Also published in: Digital Post Production Digital Post Production http://www. .com/articles/viewarticle.jsp id=31119 Animation Artist Animation Artist http://www.solonegocios.com/documentos.asp op=documento&id=6149&c=25 internet

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Consumer Electronic Net

Consumer Electronic Net Oceania Oceania http://oceania.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp id=31119 Digital Producer Digital Producer http://www.digitalproducer.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp id=31119 Acronis Press Center Acronis Press Center Press Center digital camera

What Laptop: mobile PC site wrote that by combining strength and stability with a near flawless usability, Acronis True Image brings the power of drive-imaging to even the most basic laptop users Acronis True Image 8.0 brings the power of drive-imaging even to common laptop users.

PDF Datasheet (0.1 MB) Video Press Release What Laptop March, 2005 printer

Acronis True Image 8.0 Rating: 9/10

By combining strength and stability with a near flawless usability, Acronis True Image 8.0 brings the power of drive-imaging to even the most basic laptop users. With an affordable price tag to boot, the security of drive-imaging technology is now truly open. xseries

Skeletons on your hard drive: wipe and erase your hard drives clean! An article about deleting data from hard disk drives. Software used to wipe hard drives clean is discussed. * Home

> Acronis In The News > CNET News.com April 20, 2005 by Matt Hines maxtor

Skeletons on your hard drive Tax records, resumes, photo albums - the modern hard drive can keep increasingly larger volumes of information at the ready. But that can turn into a problem when it comes to effectively erasing the devices.

There are a number of options for cleansing the drives of unwanted computers, from special wiping software to destruction services to manufacturers' recycling programs. But what many PC owners don't realize, experts say, is that these methods are often not enough. data storage

"For people who want to sell or donate a computer, who are trying to protect their checkbook or medical info, you can expect to protect yourself against all but the most sophisticated attacks with wiping, " said Stephen Lawton, the director of marketing at Acronis, a maker of wiping tools, backup and recovery software. "But you have to use the software the right way." hitachi

"Even the people who destroy disks will tell you (that) unless you do that correctly, there are always people who can get the data off, " he added. That means that passwords, logins and other personal information could still be lurking on machines that have supposedly been cleaned - a risk that strikes a chord amid reports of laptop thefts exposing sensitive information on thousands of Americans. Two weeks ago, the National Association for Information Destruction announced that it could not endorse the use of wiping applications alone for deleting data from hard drives. Bob Johnson, executive director at NAID, said the data-destruction industry group would like to be able to recommend the tools, but that tests had left reason to doubt the wiping products. rational

"Our position, ultimately, was that we will only give our approval to physical destruction of the hard drive, " Johnson said. "We know that unless that is done a certain way, even that can be an ineffective approach." websphere

Johnson also distrusts the ability of companies offering mass computer wiping services to have sufficient methods of testing to see if data exists on the drives even after their processes have been run. battery

Remains of the data

There are signs that people are not aware of the risk from discarded drives. Last year, German encryption technology specialist Pointsec tested hard drives bought on eBay to see if they still carried data and discovered that seven out of every 10 devices it tested still bore readable information. it support

That study followed similar research published in 2003 by graduate students Simson Garfinkel and Abhi Shelat, who found that only 12 of the 129 working computer hard drives they bought in secondhand stores and on auction site eBay had been adequately cleansed of sensitive data from their previous owners. western digital

"You have all kinds of data being stored in the hard drive, in the Web browser and in application files, and these are all affected by the same problem - you delete something on the computer, but it doesn't really ever get deleted completely, " said Garfinkel, a doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. music

"You have to distinguish between deleting occasional files and truly wiping a machine clean, " he added. "There's really a significant difference." The first step for many people would be a low-level reformatting of the operating system on their PC, even though doing that with Microsoft's Windows or Apple Computer's Mac OS operating systems won't destroy data completely, experts said. "What we've seen with a lot of clients is that they think that reformatting a drive gets rid of the data, and that's just not true, " said Kathy Ferguson, a business unit manager with IBM's Asset Recovery Solutions Group. "In a typical scenario, that only overwrites partitions, or sectors of data. At the end of the day, you can recover that data readily if you have the right tools." networks

Wiping software is the obvious next choice. Everyone from security giants such as Symantec to freeware vendors such as MXC Software offers applications meant to help people hide the data they once wanted stored on their computers. Most of these technologies revolve around software meant to overwrite the information on the devices with a random series of numerals. toner

The difference between people who use wiping software correctly to erase their hard drives and those who do not is most often a matter of attentiveness, Acronis' Lawton said. By using multiple overwrites featuring different character sets, he said, consumers can approach the same level of protection required by the U.S. Department of Defense. The department requires a minimum of at least four passes with wiping tools, in cases where it does not mandate that a drive is destroyed. cheap laptops

Lawton believes that taking such a meticulous approach with the software, which could take as long as several hours, often takes more time than most consumers are willing to wait. "For a consumer who is going to be getting rid of a disk, giving it away or passing it along, if you overwrite seven times, chances are that you're doing pretty well. While a company might look at running a wiping application 35 times, " Lawton said. "On the other hand, a fast wipe is pretty insufficient." wholesale

The need to keep at it means those people who go to the trouble of employing outside technology to erase their sensitive data could still be doing too little. In general, experts agreed, the best approach in trying to completely erase information is to use a combination of data removal software and material destruction. brother

"If you've got truly classified info, then you're going to crush or degauss the drive somehow, " Lawton said. Degaussing is a form of magnetic storage device cleansing used primarily on large groups of machines by businesses. netvista

All of the major PC makers and most hard-drive makers offer recycling programs where, for a fee of between $20 and $30, they will professionally destroy used devices. Though these programs have traditionally attracted primarily business customers, executives running the programs at Dell and IBM said consumers are increasingly taking advantage of them. camera

"PCs and hard drives are ripe with information that is sensitive or confidential, so we go to great lengths to make sure everything is destroyed as part of our asset recovery programs, " said IBM's Ferguson. networking

Garfinkel, whose thesis focuses on computer security, chiefly blames companies making operating system software for failing to build in adequate tools to help clear data from every corner of their products' memories. sharp

But some hardware makers said they can understand why software vendors don't make it easy for customers to delete every trace of their information. John Frey, an environmental strategies and solutions manager at PC giant Hewlett-Packard, pointed out that when drives were easily wiped during the DOS era, people saw it as a liability rather than a benefit. Frey said hardware and software makers have made data hard to eradicate because customers have demanded that they do so. cheap

"You have to consider: What is the benefit to ease of use versus what is the chance that users will do it by mistake " Frey said. "We've taken the approach that we value our customers' privacy so much, why give anyone reason to doubt If the disk drive gets to us, we shred it." windows

The IT market continues to hunger for everything from operating system software that somehow allows end users to completely delete their information, to more powerful wiping tools that do a better job in less time than the current products on the market. In the meantime, consumers will be forced to consider their best alternatives when faced with the decision to save, sell or recycle old hardware. monitors

For Charles Smith, the founder of EDR Solutions, the problem isn't going away anytime soon. The company has developed the Hard Drive Crusher, a refrigerator-size contraption that punches holes in disk drives to make them harder to read. Though the Hard Drive Crusher isn't designed for sale to consumers, Smith believes people may want to take such drastic measures into consideration before parting with their old hardware. linux

"With the technology that's out there, who knows what people will be able to do in the future I can punch a hole in the drive for now, but someday someone could still be able to read it, " he said. "I think people want proof that the device won't be coming back online with the same data on it, and this is the best I can do." computer support

Press: Backup utilities for server 2003 and many other backup software reviews Easy-to-use disk imaging solution tops an old favorite. Creating a smaller, more efficient image significantly increase the speed of creating the image, and eliminating temporary data will significantly decrease the size of the image.

PDF Datasheet (0.1 MB) Video Press Release WWLTV.COM May 15, 2005 Jerry Seregni Original article at WWLTV.COM used laptops

Acronis True Image 8.0 Easy-to-use disk imaging solution tops an old favorite

If you're already familiar with a program called "Ghost, " I don't have to tell you how great disk imaging is when you have to replace a hard disk or roll out a bunch of new PCs in a corporate or classroom environment. cameras

Recently, however, disk imaging has also become popular for backing up and recovering data, because it eliminates the tedius process of individually copying files. Instead, you store a snapshot of the disk, called a "disk image, " on another disk partition or on a remote storage device, such as a USB hard drive or a network file server. Longtime PC enthusiasts were introduced to disk imaging by Ghost, a program introduced in the 1990's by Binary Research, headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand. scanners

Ghost was written by Murray Haszard and was designed to run in PC-DOS or MS-DOS. According to sources, the name "Ghost" was an acronym for "General Hardware-Oriented Software Transfer." panasonic

It was an instant hit with IT pros and soon became one of those products whose name becomes a verb (" ghosting your hard drive.") Ghost became so popular that Symantec purchased it in 1998, reportedly for $52 million, and reintroduced it as "Norton Ghost." workstation

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