No it could never work for recovery, how can recover or overwrite the the host i,e, C: when you are running your VMware or Virtual PC from the host. And all this for what to save you installing the imaging software on the host machine to save space so you install say vmware plus a virtual OS system just to image.
As I understand from your reply, I can use this solution to backup host C: but as you rightly said, not to recover ??? The question of installing recovery software on host machine is a matter of preference and not of hard disk space. I backup key points and they are backed up. After that, once in every 3-4 days is good enough and for that recovery environment CD suits me more. This gives me a full backup which is also independent and not incremental. Regarding VMware, that serves many purposes, one of which could be imaging the host OS.
You can try, but I do not think it works since when you backup, the software (such as norton ghost) also record you MBR and partition table so that when you recover, the OS works as before. If you backup from VM, I think it just regard your OS partition as a normal one.
I tried backing up my physical machine (C from Acronis TIH in VM, but it did not work (did not give an option to back up c: HOST at all, only C: of VM) Not much of a problem since I can anyway use the recovery CD.
I do not know why but on my own-built PC, I am having huge problems with Acronis (both 2010 and 2011). I had starting loader... errors with ATIH 2010 and vowed off it for close to 2 months. Finally on the weekend, I made an image with Ghost, ShadowProtect (SP), and ATIH just prior to installing ATIH 2011 (call it image 1). installed ATIH 2011 on the PC and backed up (call this image 2). Things went off fine for some time, but the problems I saw: 1. the entire disk on which ATIH made backups went blank and corrupted for some time (not just the partition of around 400 GB, but the entire 1 TB HDD). 2. one recovery from a subsequent image called image 3 (which had ATIH 2011 installed) to a image 2 (also with ATIH 2011) caused a boot error `Starting Acronis loader....'. Knowing what it meant, I reformatted C: and then restored Image 1 (no ATIH). Still the error persisted. 3. Finally had to reformat the entire I TB where the acronis backups resided. Then recovered again. Now no error. 4. ATIH boot CD also failed to recognise the images it had made saying they were corrupt. As I see it, ATIH loads stuff not only on the c: but also on partitions/disks where I made an image. Very hard to escape ATIH without formating. Anyway, no matter how many people vouch for it, I am not using ATIH except as a boot CD. I know Ghost and ShadowProtect are slower to load, but in my experience, they do not install hidden stuff. Plus, recovering to an image prior to install of Ghost/SP leaves no traces of them at all anywhere. Unlike ATIH. Frankly, I found all 3 recovering properly but not without the hangs/errors of ATIH. Ghost 15.0 is perhaps more complicated at the start and loads slowly but I found it more to my liking. I liked SP the most. SP has the cleanest interface but no working solutions beyond 30 days???
just switched over to Acronis True Image Home 2011...i must say it uses less hdd storage and is more efficient than backup and recovery 10.
I mostly use Acronis for the reliable backup and Ghost Solution Suite (not the PQI Ghost), for the easy of data extraction from backup.
After a lot of trials with various backup solutions and 100% problems with ATIH, confusing interface of Ghost, and hit-and miss of windows 7 image backup; have been using Paragon HDM Pro 2010 and so far it has been great. Very versatile, easy to use, and 100% success. In windows environment, it works well and has a lot more options, all of which work properly. The defaults are fine except for backups (untick image splitting). Defaults for recovery are great. Just right click on the C: recover, and apply. No confusing options at all. Great thing is that unlike ATIH, Ghost, or Shadowprotect; it recognises images made prior to its install (eg through boot CD). Go to archive and click to recover. Recovery is as fast as ATIH and backups of a 35 GB used C takes 7-10 mins. Only limitation is the recovery CD which loads slowly and tends to split image files. The bottomline is that I have finally found a backup software that works for me.
Yea HDM is great it works on B&R kernel. It never failed to recover my partition. The only drawback I see in terribly slow differential backup restoral.
For years my favorite backup program was Power Quest Drive Image. Unfortunately Symantec bought PQ and killed off Drive Image. For XP and earlier operating systems it is still an excellent choice but I have found it unreliable with Vista and Win 7. After trying many different programs, I now use Acronis True Image Home. I avoid the bloat / unnecessary process problem by using a boot CD and the Bart-PE plug-in. I have found that the Acronis Rescue Media (based on Linux) causes problems on my system when I restore a single partition. I have multiple hard drives / partitions and operating systems. For some reason the Rescue Media insists on adjusting the parameters of the other partitions making them unreadable. I do not have this problem with the Bart-PE plug-in.
Now that i do not understand you are still restoring the same image file whether from within windows using trueimage, from linux or pe boot cd.
Acronis sometimes has problem with the rescue media. However, the new version 11 seems good based on linux.
Not really, you can choose WinPE when making the boot media. But it's a little bit complicated for me.
I also use Acronis True Image Home 2011 for the rescue media feature... You don't need to install the software, but just have a rescue media and you can perform Backup and Recovery right from boot cd... So no extra services, programs, or startup entries.
Windows inbuilt as its pointless running other software and processes for something that's already running and works well and is free.
Windows inbuilt also has this problem of sometimes not recognising backup images. Recover from windows or from sys. repair disk and you may find that the image you want is not listed. If it recognises, then it works. Best is to make an image using acronis/paragon/shadow protect either through boot cd or in windows.
I haven't made an image of my OS in quite a long time, but the last time I made one I used BootIt NG. I don't use it for boot management. I only use it for partitioning and imaging. At the time I last used it, I booted it from a CD. But just recently using EasyBCD, I added the BootIT NG ISO to the Boot Manager so that I can boot directly from the ISO without using the CD. Since I recently began experimenting with Win7 native-boot VHDs, making an image of my OS doesn't seem to be important anymore. I can just make a file copy of the VHD, and that is my backup of the OS. Just takes a few minutes.
best yes ! Without any question of doubt for me Acronis True Image Home 2010 - is one only best online backup software Thanks To All !!!!!!!!!!!!