Preface

Consistent backups are a task everyone knows they should do, but surprisingly hardly anyone gets around to actually doing it. The fact is, your hard drive is the device on your computer most likely to fail and houses all of your data. What if your hard drive crashed or you got infected with the latest trendy virus? Do you have a good backup? What would you lose? Your business files? E-mail? Term papers? Let’s face it, hard drives are an inevitable disaster which we think only happens to other people, however it is a disaster which can be easily recovered from… if you are prepared.

The product I will be reviewing today, Acronis True Image 9.1, is one possible solution to make sure you are prepared in the event of a disaster. While True Image boasts a lot of features, I will be evaluating this for the scope of a user on their personal computer backing up their data.

Installation

The installation screen greets you with a welcome screen which gives you the option to install all of the True Image components. For the purposes of this review, I will be testing on a single machine, hence only be looking at the True Image Workstation.

Overall, the installation was pretty easy and standard. I just had to accept the obligatory license agreement then select either typical, custom, or full install. The fact that the management utility installations are offered in the same install file as the True Image Workstation is a plus. Everything can be installed without downloading individual packages making more complex implementations easier.

Acronis True Image 9.1 Workstation Installer

Primary Interface

Acronis True Image’s interface is very much in harmony with the Windows XP theme. The blue color scheme and “cartoonish” icons should be very familiar to any Windows user. Featuring a standard menu, toolbar, common task sidebar, a primary “icon” menu and finally, a “toolbox” menu from which True Image’s functions are easy to invoke.

By default, I believe the interface is pointlessly over-cluttered with all of the menu bars enabled, so through the View menu I disabled the toolbar and sidebar as all of their items are available through the icon menu and toolbox. This is strictly my opinion, but overall the interface is very nice and makes the program look very user friendly.

Acronis True Image 9.1 Workstation