switch backup program

Hello I currently have Acronis but have read at their site that there is some trouble with Win 7 and Acronis drivers and that Acronis is hard to uninstall. Whether true or not, I have 2 system backups with Acronis.. Can I try Macrium or Win native B+R and if good, remove all Acronis or will their be some trouble with either the usb drive or Win 7? Thank you Peter

Peter, I've been using Acronis with Windows 7 since September of 2009 without a single problem. I don't care if it won't uninstall cleanly as I have no intention of uninstalling it. You can play with the others and leave Acronis asis, but I guarantee you will find Macrium much less useful than Acronis. It's good for freeware but you get what you pay for. There is not built-in scheduler so you would have to setup a schedule for backups or do it manually as needed. I've been using it on my Web server for about a year and it works okay, I'm just to lazy to convert to Acronis. I found the built-in Backup restore in Windows 7 difficult to use and never got it to do what I really wanted. Try them and see what you think but don't remove Acronis until you have a good, working backup strategy in place.

I guarantee you will find Macrium much less useful than Acronis

Not if you buy the Pro version

"Peter, I've been using Acronis with Windows 7 since September of 2009 without a single problem. I don't care if it won't uninstall cleanly as I have no intention of uninstalling it." Z - You just saved me a lot of time. Acronis has always worked for me but I had trouble recovering with the other 2. I was reading about Acronis issues (Try and decide drivers specifically)which prompted me to look around. I will never bump into these areas so Acronis it is. It would have been nice to not involve a third party and use a native reliable program, but it is what it is as the youngsters say these days. Hypothetically, can one use 2 backup progarms, or will that cause issues with the usb drive etc?. I do not plan on doing it but was curious.

Would Returnil - free be adding too much to the mix?

Try it and see. I've never even heard of it and if I want to do something like this I use Acronis Try & Decide. I've done this three times so far that I can remember and in all cases it worked as it should..

Try it and see. I've never even heard of it and if I want to do something like this I use Acronis Try & Decide. I've done this three times so far that I can remember and in all cases it worked as it should..

>>Because this is the famiy pc and also because I have had no luck with VMs, I am reluctant to get too aggresive. I saw Rerturnil on a tutorial in Google and it seemd clear yet was not advosd for the average user.

Sure would hate to have to restore from a disaster.

I am glad you had success with Try and Decide because I remember you talking about it a long time ago..
It is good to know it works because I read, at the Acronis site, there was some issue about the Win 7 drivers over riding the Try and Decide ones. I don't even understand it.
How are you doing with the tweak reg back up -mine is working great.

Is it possible to burn an iso of Acronis if you have a license and instead of having the program on your pc, use the cd to bring the program up and recover a backup in your usb drive? Could you also crate a backup with it?

I boot the Acronis Rescue Disc I created to do restores. I don't think you can do a backup though , I think restore only. You can use to to clone a disk though. Did you create one? 📎Acronis_Rescue_Disc.jpg

I have the rescue disc, thank you. Coincidentally, I am told I can download an iso file for Macrium, burn it to cd and not need the program in my pc. I could use the disc to restore an existing image made by Macrium and use it on another pc. I think he said I could create an image too. Therefore, no need for the program in th pc. I will let you know what he says about creating the image as I just posted back to him. I will attach as a prntscrn which is a portion of the thread which will hopefully help illuminate this discussion.

Here is furhter documentation of Macrium 's iso for both backup and restore. If you couldmegt back to me with your opinion I would appreciate it. ———————- "When using Macrium for imaging it is highly recommended to burn the WinPE recovery CD. With the free Macrium version that involves the download of the 1.7GB WAIK (Windows Application Installation Kit). That can take several hours. For your convenience I have uploaded a ready made .iso of the WinPE recovery disc to my Fileswap site. That can be downloaded in appr. 8 minutes which clearly beats the WAIK download. Once you downloaded and unzipped the folder, you can burn it directly to a CD with e.g. ImgBurn. I draw your attention to the fact that this WinPE CD can also be used to make images. That may be convenient in case you do not want to install Macrium on your PC. Here is the link. Note that Fileswap makes a 15 second pause before you can download from their free service. I guess they want to sell me their Pro version. My Macrium tutorial was updated accordingly."

I downpoaded the iso file and using Ashampoo, burned it to disc. I booted and saw Windows loading so thought it was no good. Then the Macrium program appeared and it is imaging as I type on the laptop. When done I will see if I can recover. If so I will have this Macrium disc to use portably and in case Acronis fails. It took about 6 minutes to download the Macrium iso zip file as opposed to the 7 hours it would have taken otherwise.

Peter,

You might like to look at BartPE as well as WinPE. BartPE can include the Macrium Reflect create/restore tool as an add-on among many other tools already there.
They both do the same sort of thing and have been around for a similar amount of time, but I think BartPE has some distinct advantages, especially it's graphical user interface. A command line interface is definitely not the ideal for most computer users!

BartPE vs. Windows PE?

BartPE is not supported by Microsoft. Windows PE is an official Microsoft product.
BartPE has a graphical user interface. Windows PE has a command line interface.
The tools needed to make a BartPE installation are free software. Windows PE is available only to Microsoft OEM users.
BartPE allows unlimited custom plugins. Windows PE has a limited range of plugins options.

Cheers,
Lee