Anyone Have Experience with Acronis Plus Pack?

[George Tyndall]

Formerly available only to corporate customers, this add-on allows a user to restore the user's image(s) to dissimilar hardware, for example, to a new computer.

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/?mid=4148&lid=5&uid=13122#plus-pack

Also, if I understand this correcty, I could use the image that I currently have on an external HDD of my Win7 C drive to perform a restoration to one of my XP machines--or any other machine--thereby converting that machine to a fully-updated Win7 machine.

That sounds too good to be true.

Comments please!

[Bob]

This feature is called Acronis Universal Restore and it's essentially a way to replace a DLL file (hal.dll), which is the hardware abstraction layer, and load appropriate mass storage drivers so you can boot from the restored volume. You need to have the appropriate new drivers for the hard disk drive controller and chipset drivers ready to install and accessible at a predetermined location before you do the restore. It does not install the required drivers for your video card, display, audio, or other plug and play drivers. You will need to install those separately after booting from the restored drive to complete the migration. And, it won't address any hardware detection and configuration done by your applications. If there is a dependency, you may need to reinstall those too. It also doesn't address the issue of activation. Change too many aspects of the hardware environment and Windows will need to be reactivated. Which may or may not be allowed depending on your version of the OS, the type of license, and the EULA. Unless you have a corporate bulk licence, you will need separate product keys for each copy you are running.

It can be useful if your primary PC crashes and you have to replace it with a different hardware configuration, but it's by no means as easy as a simple restore.

[George Tyndall]

This feature is called Acronis Universal Restore ....It can be useful if your primary PC crashes and you have to replace it with a different hardware configuration, but it's by no means as easy as a simple restore.

So, would the following be accurate statements?

1. Mirror images are primarily useful for avoiding a clean install when replacing one's C drive.

2. But if there is any other hardware change, say, replacement of a mother board, even with an identical one, a clean install may be the most efficient method of getting back to work?