Acronis True Image Home

Comparison Macrium Reflect Free Edition 4.2 vs. Paragon Backup & Recovery 2011 Free (all 32+64 bit) vs. Acronis True Image Home Edition :

Application.....................................................Macrium Free 4.2...Paragon 2011 Free ...Acronis True Img. HE

Cleanup Backups automatically: ..............NO (1) .....................NO (1)............................YES

German User Interface: .............................NO ...........................YES.................................YES

Space Demand Hard Disk (32/64 bit)..... 25.7 MB ..................100/120 MB .................100 MB

Recovery failed system & Migration

on different hardware..................................YES?.........................YES.................................YES (3)

Real-to-virtual and virtual-to-real

Computer Migration ....................................NO.............................NO..................................YES (3)

Free for private use.....................................YES...........................YES..................................NO: 30€

Boot-CD recognizes

newer LAN-Cards (4)................................. NO.............................NO................................. YES

Boot CD DHCP Auto-IP-Config

with older LAN-Cards .................................YES ..........................NO................................. YES

1. For automatical cleaning up of old Backups created with Macrium Reflect or Paragon B6R 2011 Free . you need additional the free application http://alternativeto.net/desktop/delage32/

2. You cannot limit he maximum number of images or the maximum diskspace to store images

3. With add-on Plus Pack

4. Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Notebook (2011)

All 3 Applications have the features Volume Shadow copy Service (VSS), Backup with Compression, Windows 7 Backups. None of the 3 System-Backup-Apps has a Standard-Rescue-CD, which is able to recognize the WiFi-Network-Card from the new Lenovo X1 Notebook (2011).

Until now I knew only Paragon Backup & Recovery 2011 free, Macrium Reflect Free Edition and the System Image Backup of "Windows 7". With all these 3 applications I missed a configurable cleaning up of old backups in order to prevent the overloading of the backup disk. Only the Windows 7 backup ( from these 3 applications) can clean up old backups, if the backup hard disk is full to approx. 35%. Unfortunately, this percent value is not adjustable, e.g. to 90%. I was glad to see, that "Acronis True Image Home", Version 2011 can carry out the automatic deleting of old backup files very comfortably and freely configurable. You can specify a max. folder size or max number of backups. If the folder or max backup-number grows bigger, the oldest backups will be deleted automatically. Acronis True Image Home 2011 has an automatic cleanup philosophy, where you can set a max. folder size for the backup-file, as you can read on page 60 of the User Guide [1]:

"Acronis True Image Home 2011" offers comfortable automatic cleanup rules:

• Store no more than [n] recent versions (available for full method only) - Select this option to limit the maximum number of backup versions. When the number of versions exceeds the specified value, the oldest backup version will be automatically deleted.

• Keep size of the backup no more than [defined size]

[1] http://www.acronis.com/download/docs/atih2011/userguide .

The Ghost version 15 also is able to delete old backup files very comfortably and freely configurable.

The "Paragon Backup & Recovery 2011 free" similar as Macrium Reflect cannot cleanup old Backups automatically. You must use DelAge32 for this purpose, if you do not use a commercial backup solution.