Acronis True Image Home 15.0.0

Acronis True Image Home Editor's Review

So much can go wrong with your computer, such as accidental file deletions, system viruses and total hard-disk failures. Having a complete PC-backup solution is critical. And this solution can come with Acronis True Image Home 2012.

This back-up utility stands out because of its simplicity for casual users and for its comprehensive collection of features that makes it a useful tool for any network or system engineer. Not only that it can recover your data, but it can also restore it as it was before any incident. All the software, shortcuts and all the emails and contacts, everything can be backed up and restored thanks to Acronis’ patented disk imaging and PC-cloning technology. For a more secure environment, use the Secure Zone function to create a secure disk partition on your internal drive. That way you can recover your system easily at any moment, even if your Operating System has failed.

The application includes wizards for backing up files, folders or entire partitions, recovery of hard disk contents or restoration of individual files, clone your hard disk drive by copying partitions to another hard disk or adding a new hard disk drive to your PC. With the featured tools you can plug images and assign drive letters so that you can browse them at your own will, check archives and view the application's logs. You can also choose between full, incremental or differential backup methods with password protection for your archives.

Besides the basic backup functions for the operating system you have the possibility to backup your music, video, and photos or the emails, contacts, signatures and any other information using the 'Application settings' backup feature. Another interesting and helpful feature is 'Explore backups' because you can easily search and recover particular files in archives just like in Windows Explorer.

Synchronization is another interesting feature that comes with Acronis True Image Home 2012. If you have two or more PCs and want them to mirror a selection of files or folders you just have to choose the File Synchronization option, which lets you replicate important data between multiple computers, files or devices. Sync files with friends, family or colleagues over the Web. Or sync with local folders, including USB sticks or external hard drives.

The special Plus Pack add-on gives the user advanced features, such as dynamic-disk support and Universal Restore, which lets you recover your entire system on a computer with a completely different architecture. Besides other additional functionalities, for the first time Acronis True Image Home 2012 can use the full capacity of drive bigger than 2TB, even if the operating system you are running doesn’t support it.

Pluses: Backup files can be stored on different partitions, network or you can create bootable media such as CDs, DVDs or USB Flash drives; in case of system crash you may restore backups from removable media or network. Tasks can be scheduled, so you needn't worry about manually updating your backups. There is the possibility to choose from four compression levels or split your archives so that they can fit on to CDs.

Drawbacks / flaws:  there some reports regarding a back-up issue on external drives that are mapped in Windows;

In conclusion: A reliable, full-featured imaging and data recovery application suitable for any type of backup job.