Acronis.com

Acronis is one of the biggest players when it comes to backup solutions, they aim to serious users who understand the real value of data security. Their wide range of products will allow you to back up everything, from full backups of a home computer to serialized image backups suitable for running in virtualized environments.

Their main backup product is True Image, which will create and restore backups in no time, as well as having continuous data protection, which means that the real risk of data loss is nearly null.

True Image can be enhanced and optimized by using another flagship product, Disk Director, which will optimize the hard drive so that data uses as less space as possible, which will result in smaller backups and a more efficient backup and restore procedure.

They also offer a Migrate Easy Suite which will assist users while replacing a hard drive for a bigger or newer one without having to do an operating system reinstall. This is done by creating a full backup of the original hard disk, moving it to the bigger or newer disk and adjusting all disk parameters and partitions as well as operating system settings to match those of the new disk.

Acronis’ excellent products are now enhanced by Acronis’ new offering, an online backup service that interacts seamlessly with Acronis True Image. Instead of using a web based interface like most online backup providers do, access to Acronis Online Backup is granted from within True Image, so you can access your “online vault” (that’s how Acronis Online Backup calls your storage space) and select which files to restore. By using incremental backups, Acronis Online Backup also allows you to restore a file to a previous version or state.

Acronis Online Backup offers Government Grade data encryption to all backups while they are being transferred to Acronis and once they are uploaded to its servers they are encrypted again. Each user can manage the encryption level used for a specific online vault. You can back up to 5 PCs using a single Online Backup account.

If you already own Acronis True Image, then you can get a free 2 Gb account at Acronis Online Backup, so that you can test drive their service risk free. One you’ve decided to make Acronis Online Backup an integral part of your disaster recovery procedures, you can sign up for a paid account, which will cost you just $4.95 a month for the first 25 Gb of storage and $0.79 for every Gb beyond that.