Acronis True Image - Any one used?

dibbers

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Chaps, got it installed on my computers/laptops etc at home and I'm just wondering is it really as easy as it says?

Reason I'm asking for is that i have bought 3 new PC's for work and I'm using this old dinosaur here and i want to if i can use Acronis and do a complete back up of this machine and plop it on one of the brand new ones.

Things that worry me is mapped drives (not the end of the world but have loads) also have chip and pin card readers installed so i can do BACS runs, SQL server running on my machine, and all the other things that are installed for business use....

Is it really as simple as it says ? and will do a complete back up, like e-mails saved docs etc etc.....

When i get around to it I'm thinking of building a new PC for home and was hoping that I'd just be able to do the same with that.....

Cheers
 
I haven't managed to get the 'Universal Restore' option working yet. Just taking a normal copy of one machine'd drive and putting it on another wouldn't work unless the hardware was the same. Then you wouldn't be able to have more than one on teh same network as they would have the same SID. You could use sysprep if the hardware was the same. Why is my new line not working!!!
 
ah of course.......doh.! hardware, and SID etc....doh....slaps self in face with heavy meat cleaver!
 
The Universal Restore option is supposed to do it I think but I think it just runs Sysprep. The wording is probably a bit dodgy to make you think it can image it to any hardware.
 
you can sysprep it to reset the SID's and everything - however if it's different hardware/processor achitecture once you try and boot it, it'll blue screen all over the shop.

Once it's on however you then might be able to perform a Windows XP repair which might correct it all.

it would be a long process mind....
 
I've always wanted an unattended install of my own for this. I can never get around to it but NLite seems straightforward if you have some time to spend on it.
 
I've always wanted an unattended install of my own for this. I can never get around to it but NLite seems straightforward if you have some time to spend on it.

XP unattended installs have some limitations, mainly around HAL issues. You basically have two options,
- do an unattended install of XP in which case HAL is not an issue but you have to install all your extra apps afterwards (most can be automated)
- Install all your apps and then use sysprep to depersonalise the image. Then backup the disk image. When you do restore there are a utilsthat can set new machine name, install extra drivers, etc. This method has limits on the hardware you can restore to.

With Windows, there is a new imaging method AIK (advanced installation kit) which can restore to pretty much any hardware but then you will need a license server to activate it.
 
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