Finally a Very Good Reason Not to Dual Boot Windows

[Whizbang]

I have always been one of the last ones to drop a tradition, or pick up a trend.  I refused to wear jeans for many years rather than identify remotely with the hippie generation.  I never did let my hair grow long for the same reason.  Even Merle Haggard eventually succumbed and let his "hair grow long and shaggy in Muskogee."  Now that I have tried Acronis and its OEM offshoots for drive imaging, I see no reason to maintain another virtualy unused Windows version as a utility to repair the main OS or to use it as a method for copying the main OS to a backup.  Of the two offshoots of Acronis, Seagate Acronis and Maxtor Acronis, the Maxtor version seems to be less restrictive and will allow storing the complete active OS on an occupied partition.  You must however, have an actively running hard drive of corresponding manufacture to use either of these utilities, although data transfer can occur between hard drives of other manufacture.  The amazing thing to me is the compression that Acronis is able to achieve.  This innovation allows a rather large active partition to be copied from the backup .tib file to a DVD disc for additional protection.  It also allows for many sequential backups to be stored until degeneracy sets in.  The older outdated .tib files can be deleted.  Since formatting a drive and reloading everything from scratch can take several days of part-time effort, the advantage of having a fast method of storage and retrieval makes formatting an almost medieval venture that should be avoided whenever possible.  My other bit of total amazement, and embarrassment, came when I saw that the "Acronis adventure" can back up a 5G partition in less than 3 minutes.  The "old fashioned way" of OEM Cardera DOS or alternate dual boot OS can take thirty minutes.  That brings to memory the TV ad for an amazing stunts documentary, "How did they do that?"  Pretty amazing stuff indeed. 

[Mark H]

I use Acronis for all of my photography machine backups and it is indeed very quick. I love it!

Mark H