Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office (previously known as Acronis True Image) is a software package produced by Acronis International GmbH that aims to protect the system from

ransomware Ransomware is a type of malware from cryptovirology that threatens to publish the victim's personal data or permanently block access to it unless a ransom is paid off. While some simple ransomware may lock the system without damaging any files, ...

and allows users to backup and restore files or entire systems from a backup archive, which was previously created using the software.“Acronis True Image Is Now Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.” Acronis, https://www.acronis.com/en-us/blog/posts/acronis-true-image-is-now-acronis-cyber-protect-home-office/. Accessed 22 Nov. 2021.Zhidkov, D. A., Kuligina, N. O., & Pavlycheva, T. N. (2020). METHODS AND PROBLEMS OF UPDATING THE MICROSOFT WINDOWS 7 OPERATING SYSTEM TO MICROSOFT WINDOWS 10 IN THE ENERGY ENTERPRISE. European Journal of Natural History, (6), 30-34. Since 2020, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office includes malware and Zoom protection (though the ability to use such features depends on the subscription purchased)."Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office Review." Ben Moore and Neil J. Rubenking,PCMag, https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/acronis-cyber-protect-home-office. Accessed 22 Nov. 2021.Zoom Meetings Cybersecurity Risks - Secure Your Work-From-Home Employees. https://www.acronis.com/en-sg/articles/zoom/. Accessed 22 Nov. 2021. The software is used by technicians to deploy operating systems to computers and by academics to help restore computers following analysis of how viruses infect computers.Warner, Gary, et al. "Investigative techniques of n-way vendor agreement and network analysis demonstrated with fake antivirus." (2014).

Features

Backup

Acronis can create two types of backup archives: (1) file backups (which consist of user-specified files and directories (but not the metadata of the disk or partition)) and (2) full

system image In computing, a system image is a serialized copy of the entire state of a computer system stored in some non-volatile form such as a file. A system is said to be capable of using system images if it can be shut down and later restored to exactly ...

s (which consist of files, directories and disk metadata). The software can create full disk backup archives of several file systems including: NTFS (Windows); FAT32 (Windows 9x and removable media); Macintoish systems (

HFS+ HFS Plus or HFS+ (also known as Mac OS Extended or HFS Extended) is a journaling file system developed by Apple Inc. It replaced the Hierarchical File System (HFS) as the primary file system of Apple computers with the 1998 release of Mac OS 8.1 ...

and APFS) and Linux systems ( ext2, ext3, ext4; ReiserFS, and

Linux Swap Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which inc ...

).How to Back Up a Hard Drive and Restore Your Computer. https://www.acronis.com/en-sg/articles/backup-hard-drive/. Accessed 22 Nov. 2021.Bate, Madeleine. "Acronis True Image Review 2021: Is the High Cost Worth It?" Website Planet, WebsitePlanet, 10 May 2021, https://www.websiteplanet.com/cloud-storage/acronis/. Acronis falls back to using sector-by-sector copy when a non-supported filesystem is backed up. Acronis has an agent that can be installed within the operating system, which allows backups to be performed in the background while the computer is being used.

Local backup

Acronis can back up a computer, selected disks or selected files to a local location specified by the user. The software can perform full, differential and incremental backups. Full creates a new backup archive every time and backs up everything specified by the user. Differential backups only backup the changes made since the latest full backup and incremental only backs up the changes made since the last incremental backup. Incremental backups are a chain and loss of any one of the incremental backups renders the entire backup useless.Stone, W. Ross. “Changing Backup Software rom the Screen of Stone” IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, vol. 57, no. 6, Dec. 2015, pp. 178–79. IEEE Xplore, https://doi.org/10.1109/MAP.2015.2480085. Prior to Acronis True Image 2020, incremental backups were stored individually in separate tib files which made them difficult to manage. Since 2020, Acronis stores backups in a single archive file with a tibx extension.

Cloud backup (subscription users only)

Users can specify to store their backup archives in Acronis's data centers around the globe. Users who subscribe to the software for a year rather than buying a copy of the software receive cloud storage which can be used to store cloud-based backups. As of 2019, premium users receive 1 terabyte of cloud space.Kholopov, V. A., Kurnasov, E. V., Soklakov, F. V., Korolev, E. I., Untura, M. M., & Bolbakov, R. G. (2019). A METHOD FOR ENSURING THE SECURE TRANSFER AND STORAGE OF BACKUP USER DATA AND INFORMATION FROM INTERNET OF THINGS DEVICES.

Recovery and restoration

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office allows users to restore files from a full disk or a file-based archive using either a preinstallation media with Acronis on it or from within the user interface of the program. If protected system files are restored (e.g. restoring an entire system to an earlier state), the system restarts to perform the recovery operation. Users may also mount a backup archive, which allows users to browse the contents of the archive in a manner similar to browsing any other disk drive.

Disk cloning

The software can clone the contents from one physical storage device (e.g.

SSD A solid-state drive (SSD) is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data persistently, typically using flash memory, and functioning as secondary storage in the hierarchy of computer storage. It is ...

, HDD or NVMe) to another drive."Clone Almost Finishes but Then Fails at the End , Crucial.Com." Crucial, https://www.crucial.com/support/articles-faq-ssd/clone-almost-finishes-fails-at-end. Accessed 22 Nov. 2021. The drive does not need to be formatted before data can be cloned to it and may be smaller in size than the source disk but the amount of space on the disk must be at least the size of the amount of data being cloned.Holzman, Carey. "How To Upgrade A Hard Disk Drive." CRN, 23 May 2005, https://www.crn.com/features/channel-programs/163105249/how-to-upgrade-a-hard-disk-drive.htm. Cloning aims to preserve the disk metadata. For example, disk cloning is useful for installing a larger disk in a computer or replacing a hard disk drive with a

solid state drive A solid-state drive (SSD) is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies to store data Persistence (computer science), persistently, typically using flash memory, and functioning as secondary storage in the Computer ...

. Crucial recommends using a preinstallation media of Acronis to perform the clone to avoid possible cloning failures due to partitions being inaccessible. Some hard disk manufacturers including Western Digital, Intel and Seagate provide customized variants of Acronis True Image with their drives that allows the user to clone their existing disk to another disk, typically of the same manufacturer.

Reverting changes

Acronis allows users to protect selected disk drives from unintended changes and revert them if the change is undesired. This can be used instead of virtual machines to create stable and secure environments that can be quickly reverted from within the software.Alsagoff, S. N. (2010, June). Malware self protection mechanism issues in conducting malware behaviour analysis in a virtual environment as compared to a real environment. In 2010 International Symposium on Information Technology (Vol. 3, pp. 1326-1331). IEEE.

Limitations

Possible incompatibility between versions

Prior to Acronis True Image 2020, the backup archives were stored using a proprietary format with a .tib file extension on Windows systems.Acronis True Image 2020 and 2021: Tib and Tibx Backup Format Usage , Knowledge Base. https://kb.acronis.com/content/63441. Accessed 22 Nov. 2021. Due to this, compatibility is not guaranteed between products that are not within the same version.Backup Archive Compatibility across Different Product Versions , Knowledge Base. https://kb.acronis.com/tib. Accessed 22 Nov. 2021. Older versions of the software cannot read backup archives created using a newer version.

Unwanted advertisements

One limitation of the software is the inability to disable taskbar popups marketing upgrades and new products from the developer. The notification will grab focus (i.e. will interrupt a full screen game or movie) and each advertisement must be disabled individually. The company currently offers no way to permanently turn off these advertisements.

Backup management

Managing backup archives created using the Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office software can be challenging for expert users who want to use it in conjunction with other software to manage their backups. For example, the software does not recognize when backups have been deleted using external software.

Uses

Use in academia

Acronis is used by cybersecurity researchers to conduct analysis of

computer virus A computer virus is a type of computer program that, when executed, replicates itself by modifying other computer programs and inserting its own code. If this replication succeeds, the affected areas are then said to be "infected" with a compu ...

es because it is faster than using alternative techniques such as virtualization.

Use by technicians

Acronis is used by

computer technician A computer repair technician is a person who repairs and maintains computers and servers. The technician's responsibilities may extend to include building or configuring new hardware, installing and updating software packages, and creating and ...

s to deploy a common system image to a group of computers."Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office Review." (2020) Jason Clarke, PCMag, https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/acronis-cyber-protect-home-office. Accessed 22 Nov. 2021. For example, the preinstallation media of Acronis allows the user create full disk backup archives of a given system without needing to install the agent on the system being cloned.

History

Acronis began in 2001 as a division of SWsoft and in 2003 became a separate company and continued to release the Acronis True Image software. The ''True Image'' name was applied to all platforms from Home to Corporate until 2010, when Acronis business backup software was renamed, with ''True Image'' being the home version. In 2020, security features were integrated into the product and Acronis argued that a name change was necessary to reflect these changes.

Acronis True Image (2003–2021)

Prior to Acronis True Image 9, their business-focused product Acronis Backup or Acronis Cyber Protect shared the same name as their home product with the minor exception that the business versions were called Acronis True Image Server. Later server backup software was renamed "Acronis Backup".

Versions

The table summarizes the key changes between versions of Acronis.

Similar products

Acronis also produce a series of similar backup solutions for businesses including: *

Acronis Cyber Protect Acronis International GmbH, simply referred to as Acronis, is a Swiss technology company with its corporate headquarters in Schaffhausen, Switzerland and global headquarters in Singapore. Acronis develops on-premises and cloud software with uniqu ...

(previously called

Acronis Backup Acronis International GmbH, simply referred to as Acronis, is a Swiss technology company with its corporate headquarters in Schaffhausen, Switzerland and global headquarters in Singapore. Acronis develops on-premises and cloud software with uniqu ...

and

Acronis True Image Server Acronis International GmbH, simply referred to as Acronis, is a Swiss technology company with its corporate headquarters in Schaffhausen, Switzerland and global headquarters in Singapore. Acronis develops on-premises and cloud software with uniqu ...

) * Acronis Cyber Cloud

References

{{Backup software Backup software Proprietary cross-platform software Disk cloning