Acronis True Image 2018-3 Computer Backup Software

Used this with the Nexstar TX recently. You can read my life story concerning my use of that hardware in the review I left. This software is tremendous in its scope and capacity. I didn't know about this kind of stuff until I wanted to donate my computers. I backed them up with images, I erased the originals, and still used it for some other functions it had. Super powerful stuff. Took me a while to get a hold of it but it worked out.

I am reviewing this product as local backup software. For that it does a very good job. That is in contrast with the Cloud backup product which Acronis offers, which has repeatedly proven itself to be problematic and unreliable. I won't detail my complaints about their Cloud backup here, because they are numerous and irrelevant if you're not planning on paying them extra for that service.As to the local product, it is extremely flexible creating backups to different types of media and in different styles (e.g. full, incremental, etc.). If you're not familiar with backup software, the type of backup will affect your restore, with a full backup being easiest to restore, but taking up more space. Both of those concerns though are less important now that backup drives are much larger. Over the years Acronis True Image has proven itself reliable.One feature I particularly like is that it can be setup to send you emails after the completion of each backup. That way if you have computers which you are responsible for, but do not personally use, you'll be kept informed of the backup status of that computer you might never actually touch. This is particularly nice if the users of the computers you are responsible for tend to ignore program warnings.The program does keep track of all of the backups made on the computer and shows a summary of each defined backup you create on the computer (and Cloud backups made from any computer on your account). By that I mean if you create a backup of all your photos called "Photos", it will show that backup by name, the date it was last backed up, the date of the next scheduled backup, whether the backup was verified, etc.Beyond backup the software does other functions, the most notable being disk cloning. My only caution there would be to not use the automatic settings if you're moving to a smaller device (e.g. a SSD) and that other disk being cloned has a recovery partition on it. The automatic settings might leave that recovery partition with so little space that Windows will give you low disc warnings you'll need to turn off. Other than that I've found the cloning function to work flawlessly.With their 2017 backup product they added some ransomware protection. Basically if a program starts to modify a large number of files it will give you a warning. I've had it trigger a couple of false positives when a legitimate program was doing something which I then allowed to continue, so I don't know what happens if you block a program. It may be that the first several dozen or hundreds of files modified would be encrypted by the ransomware. In any case, the best protection is probably periodically making a separate full backup of your computers and leaving those backup disconnected from any computers except when being updated.Finally, one new feature they added with 2018 is that the backup will analyze the files and give you a graphical representation of the space taken up by different types of files (e.g. pictures, video, OS, etc.). Somewhat useful.Anyway for local backup and disc cloning this is a very good product, and if just judging those features I'd give the product 5 stars. The one star reduction is due to the fact that their Cloud backup is so bad. It would be nice to have reliable local and Cloud backup in one product, but unfortunately that is not the case with this product.

I am fairly proficient technically and found setup of this program pretty easy... unfortunately, the backup failed after about 8 hours of grinding away, and the error messages / troubleshooting were extremely vague and poorly written.I repeatedly got this error "49478: Acronis True Image: Backup Fails with "The specified file does not exist" despite the fact the backup was on my network attached storage and I could see the files. The troubleshooting article was laughably bad, with no screenshots, no references to actual menus, and a reference to "click the angle symbol" repeatedly. Is that the dropdown? What in the world is the angle symbol?There has to be a better program out there, so the hunt continues. I need backup software that's reliable and doesn't require this level of troubleshooting.

Caused a major crash of my system during the writing procedure on my NCMe drive.

OK, but a little complicated for the average user I think....

If you want to make sure that all of your data is backed up and easily restored, this is the software you need. I use this personally and recommend it to customers that I service. Easy to set up, ability to connect directly to enterprise cloud services, FTP servers, NAS drives or external drives. Software comes included with multiple tools in order to help you restore your computer to where it was.

Installation can be tricky since some windows end up hidden and it's not always clear that something is actually happening, especially as the installation is starting up. Once installed, you can select options to make it a truly carefree backup. It will run quietly, automatically delete old backups based on your settings, and run fairly quickly. My only complaint is if the backup device is not available when backup starts, the backup just fails with no notice. It would be nice if a dialog was presented allowing you to attach the backup device and then try again.

I had to send my new Asus in for warranty repair. Purchased this along with a fresh 2Tb ext. HD. Did a Full backup AND cloned the drives.Then I wiped everything and did a military shred. Sent the laptop in.A month later I got it back. I ran the recover option. BINGO! Everything right back in place.Very good product. highly recommended. Win 10.