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Bert2005Flag for United States of America

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Freeware image software versus Acronis

Someone was telling a friend of mine to use Drive Image XML for his PCs at work. I have always used Acronis. Corporate Edition for the server, and I have a home edition for my, well, home computer. I have always used Acronis, and it has been rock solid.

I downloaded Drive Image XML and tried it multiple times in multiple ways, and it kept crashing. The only time it worked was when I backed up a flash drive with 70Mbs of data on it. Otherwise, when trying to image my C: drive or D: drive, it could not. It's default is the My Documents folder which already seems a bit strange given that you can only image an entire drive.

Of course, there was a time when Acronis could only do whole drives, but it can back up folders and files now.

Anyone have any experience with DI XML? Maybe I am doing something wrong. I just don't want my friend to trust his data to freeware that is not supported and may not work.

Thanks.

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PUNKY
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I have use DI XML and known that this software is limited and can not compare with paid version such as Acronis, Nortons, or else. If the data and time are important, a paid version always good selection. You might not do any wrong though. Can you list steps that you tried with DI XML?
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Thanks.

Opened DI
Selected backup
Highlighted C: drive
Clicked next twice which brought me to the choosing the path for the backup
I tried it with all of the options on the left, but I run it with none of them checked
I used Volume Locking first, even though I have VSS
Since my second hard drive (an entirely different drive is much larger than the area in My Documents
      folder on the C: drive, I made a folder on the D: drive and browsed to that folder.
Clicked next to start the backup
Watched it crash over and over again
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PUNKY
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Punky,

Yes, I saw that you could not do incremental or differential backups and that some restores had to be done with a BartPE disk. I have several and could build another. I was looking for some expert help for a friend who had someone recommend DI XML to him. The person who recommended it, though, probably has more experience, though.

In the end, I think my recommendation to him would be to go with a commercial product, specifically Acronis. I just think it can do a lot more things and the internal scheduler is easier to work with than Windows' task scheduler (IMO).

Thanks for the help.

--Bert