One of my customer wanted me to help him reinstall Windows on his laptop. Reinstalling Windows is easy but the hardest part is to make sure that all his important data has been fully backed up so that he is able to restore it back after installing Windows. Asking him what he wants to backup and he answered everything while his files are everywhere! I can’t afford to spend a lot of time helping him backup so I had to figure out another solution. Seeing that my customer also have a desktop which he claims that he no longer uses it and also a 1 terabyte external USB hard drive, I figured that it would be best to use Acronis True Image Home 2012 with a backup strategy.
My idea is to backup the laptop into an image using Acronis True Image Home 2012 and save the image to the 1TB external USB hard drive. Then I will connect the external hard drive to the desktop and boot up the computer using Acronis Rescue Media to restore the image to the desktop using Acronis Universal Restore technology.
Acronis Universal Restore allows you to restore a Windows image to a different computer without blue screen crashes
While the restoration process on the desktop is in progress, I will start reinstalling a clean Windows 7 on his laptop. When both the restoration on desktop and installation on laptop has been completed, he can take his time to move whatever files he wants from his desktop to his laptop either through network share or external USB hard drive. If for some reason the restoration doesn’t work, he can always mount the image (Tools and utilities > Image mounting > Mount image) to retrieve his files. Other than that, on worse case scenario he can always restore the image to his laptop since the image is saved to his external hard drive.
Unfortunately Acronis True Image Home 2012 is a shareware that now cost $49.99 for 1PC license. To use the Universal Restore feature, you will have to purchase a separate Plus Pack add-on that cost $29.99. Currently Acronis is having a promo that last until 30th November where by if you purchase a True Image Home 2012 license, they give you the Plus Pack for free. Do note that you will have to access the Acronis’ United States region website in order to get the promo.
The backup strategy suggested above can definitely be done for free using some other third party software but surely involves a more lengthy process. I needed a quick solution so that both me and my customer will not waste too much time on backup and restore process.
Seeing that Acronis True Image Home 2012 is such a useful application and I still have a bit of budget for this month plus Acronis are having a promo, I will personally purchase a Acronis True Image Home 2012 with Plus Pack license to be given away to one lucky verified member in our forum. The winner will be automatically and randomly selected by the Giveaway system in 48 hours.