Running the imaging program from the bootup disk is slow -- up to an hour to make an image of a small Windows partition. I can make that disk image on this machine in 8 minutes (and verify it in the same amount of time) when running in Windows and doing other tasks at the same time. No difficulties -- not even once -- have ever cropped up from that, and if they ever do, I'll just make another image in 8 minutes to replace the one that busted.

When you restore the image to the hard drive sometime, you'll have no choice. You must do that from the bootup disk environment and let it do its thing for an hour. When that time comes, you'll be startled at the smoothness of the procedure and wonder why you were ever worried about it.


One other thing: The commercial Acronis allows you to select your level of compression. Using highest compression saves me about 20% in image size, which goes down from 10 gigs to 8 gigs -- and takes 12 minutes instead of 8 to prepare. If your version allows that, you may want to investigate it. Or perhaps it isn't worth the bother. My smallish backup drive benefits from higher compression.

Larry
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