Avanquest Perfect Image 11 Backup & Protect Suite in Software

Acronis has so totally dominated the desktop backup scene over past couple of years that another firm is going to have to come up with something special to break its grip.

Avanquest's backup and protect suite attempts to do this by cramming the features in and matching Acronis feature for feature.

The software certainly feels comprehensive: it's divided into three parts: there's Perfect Image itself (the main backup tool) AutoSave, which monitors file use and instantly backs up anything you modify, and DiskCopy & Clean, which allows you to transfer data from one disk to another or permanently erase all data on a disk.

The first two applications are installed from a CD, while DiskCopy & Clean comes as a bootable second disc.

As soon as installation is complete, you are asked to choose a drive to back up to, and AutoSave begins archiving anything you modify.

This compliments Perfect Image well, which makes regular, broader, but less frequent backups.

This main application allows you to schedule regular backups, and also creates disk images, manages partitions and clones disks. This makes Perfect Image a powerful tool.

As well as making regular backups, you can easily use it to switch hard disks. Files can be backed up to a partition, external disk or even a network drive, in both AutoSave and Perfect Image.

Saving regular disk images can become storage intensive, though, so the software offers differential backups as an option, saving only those files which have changed. A full restore is still possible, but archives take up considerably less space.

Differential backups take longer, because of the overhead involved in comparing data with previous archives, but if backups are scheduled overnight or out of office hours, then it's less of a problem.

Unfortunately, though, at £34 Perfect Image costs slightly more than our A-listed Acronis backup software, and offers no advantage. In fact, Acronis is easier to use, with all features encompassed in one easy-to-use application. Like Perfect Image, it offers permanent file deletion, but it doesn't require you to reboot your computer using a CD, and it can delete single files rather than whole drives.

Perfect Image is a capable and intuitive set of applications, but it isn't cheap enough or powerful enough to oust Acronis as the market leader.

Author: Matthew Sparkes