Acronis Migrate Easy Review, Free Disk Cloner, Data migration, Backup

Acronis Migrate Easy Review

Data migration software, Migrate Safely, Migrate Quickly, Migrate Easy!

Objective: Transfer everything (system and data) from one hard disk image to a new larger clone hard drive (clone the old drive) using Acronis migrate easy.

Quote from Acronis:

Acronis Migrate Easy is the very solution you need if you are planning to upgrade to a larger hard disk! Now during the migration procedure there is no need to worry about your priceless data – be sure that it will stay safe and secure. Plus your OS, programs and settings will remain unchanged as well. In addition, Migrate Easy creates, copies and even resizes the transferred partitions so that they could fit the new hard disk size.

Key Features

• Copy an old hard disk drive to a new one, (hard drive image);
• Has automatic and manual hard disk backup and upgrade modes;
• Installs a new harddrive as a boot disk or as an additional storage device;
• Allows you to re-deploy old harddrive as disk backup, data backup or data recovery.
• Has an extremely easy to use Windows XP-like wizard-driven interface;
• Supports large disks (over 180GB).
• As well as using the hard drive recovery software for data restore the disk image backup can be used for data retrieval such as retrieve deleted files.
• Recover crashed hard disk with the hdd recovery software.
• Can be used as backup software.

Partition Management

• Resizes transferred partitions to match new hard disk size or disk image;
• Creates, copies, moves, and deletes partitions;
• Includes special sector-by-sector support for other partitions and corrupted file systems.

Security And Safety

• Pending operations: a hard disk installation scenario is first created, and only then implemented;
• An old disk could be securely wiped;
• When partitions are copied the original Hard disk Drive remains unchanged.
• Hard drive retrieval or hard drive restore with hard disk partition recovery implementation.

Supported Operating Systems

• Operating System: Windows 98/ME, Windows NT 4.0 Workstation/Server, Windows 2000 Professional/Server/Advanced server, Windows XP, Windows 2003 Server, Windows Vista.

Supported File Systems

• FAT 16/32, NTFS, Ext2/3, ReiserFS, Linux Swap and sector-based support for other operating systems.

Acronis Migrate Easy Disk Cloner Review

Like most people, I rarely made backups of my data and even more rarely considered upgrading my hard drive because of all the problems involved. I’ve tried doing it manually in the past and it’s always taken most of the day. Even then the clone drive didn’t always work as expected. So I’ve always thought cloning hard drives and backing up hard drives took too long and the restored partitions, system files and data always seemed to be different to the original setup. That was before I discovered Acronis Migrate Easy.

• You can download the demo version of Acronis Migrate Easy directly from Acronis’s web site and they are so sure you will love the software and pay the small registration fee that they don’t even ask you to register your personal details to receive their software. That’s confidence for you.
• If you want to read the user manual before buying the software that can be downloaded from: http://download.acronis.com/pdf/migrateeasy7.0_ug.en.pdf.

My Objectives

The objective I had for Migrate Easy:

• Transfer everything on my 500MB hard drive, which was getting more than a little full, to a new drive. The drive was split into two partitions, one partition for the system (Drive C: WinXP SP2) and one partition for my data (Drive D:).
• Restore the partitions (resized), system and data to a new 1GB hard drive.

Installation

The installation was really nice and simple. You begin by selecting either a “Typical” or “Custom” installation followed by the standard “Click Next” until you’re finished procedure and a restart of your system.

• The whole installation took less then five minutes.

Cloning My Hard Disk

Once you open Migrate Easy 7.0 the user interface is extremely simple and gives you exactly what you need to get started in the main program window without searching through a load of menus.

• After installation of the software I also installed the new hard disk in my PC.

I selected the, “Disk Clone” option and, being lazy, opted for the automatic clone mode.

• The software states that with automatic clone mode there will be only one difference between the disks – partitions on the newer disk will be larger. Everything else, including the installed operating systems, data, disk labels, settings and software on the disk will remain the same.

I was then presented with a few screens of information which confirmed the disk drives being cloned, the new disk partition layout and a disk cloning script containing the list of operations to be performed.

Clicking the “Proceed” button started the operation, which prompted me to go make a cup of tea. After two cups of tea and a biscuit the operation was complete. A results message was displayed stating that everything had gone as planned.

The Final Test

Having cloned my hard disk I turned off my computer, removed the old drive, replaced it with the new drive and turned the computer back on.

Surprise, surprise! Everything worked as normal.

• I had a larger, quieter hard disk in less than an hour from start to finish.

Conclusion

This software, Acronis migrate easy, was extremely quick, reliable and easy to use with a nice simple, uncomplicated user interface with excellent hard disk recovery tools. It does exactly as described in a clear and concise way, best data recovery software, good migration implementation from drive to drive, good image backup.

• The only downside I found was the documentation which could be confusing for someone new to the process – though I must admit, I only read the documentation after I had done the job.

Overall Acronis migrate easy is definitely worth the very low $39.99 for the full package and considering the other things you can do with this software, such as backing up you system via a disk image, it’s well worth the outlay.

Note: Don’t forget, if you have a laptop, laptop hard drive backup and recovery is a must. It’s too easy to have a laptop stolen or dropped necessitating recovering data from a crashed hard drive.

Well, I hope you found something useful and enjoyed this session, please don’t forget to let me have your thoughts. See you soon.