Gene Barlow’s September Article

Posted in Sponsor Updates, Uncategorized

ANNOUNCING ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE 2018
By Gene Barlow, User Group Relations
Copyrighted August 2017

Last January, Acronis announced their True Image Premium Subscription product with Active Protection against Ransomware, which is the most common Internet Cyberattack tool used by hackers today. With this announcement of True Image 2018, Active Protection Ransomware blocker is now included in all three versions of True Image. This makes Acronis the only software vendor to offer a top backup utility along with a powerful Ransomware blocker today.

The new release includes major updates to the program’s backup and recovery capabilities, and is the first personal backup software to incorporate artificial intelligence-based technology designed to actively protect data against ransomware. True Image 2018 has many new features including the following:

Backup activity and statistics — For every backup, you can easily view how many times it was started, if the operations were successful or not, size of the backed-up data, status of operations performed on the backup, and other details. This information is collected on the Activity tab, which allows you to track the full backup history starting from its creation.

Improved and simplified creation of WinPE-based media — When you want to create a WinPE media, the amount of data that you need to download is quite significant and can easily exceed 1 GB or even more. The new method optimizes this process and downloads only those files that are required for the WinPE media creation. As a result, you need to download only about 500 MB. Moreover, instead of creating a WinPE media you can create WinRE media. This is much easier because Windows Recovery Environment is already included in Windows Vista and later versions of Windows, and you do not need to download additional components from the Internet. Similar to WinPE-based media, you can add your drivers for better compatibility with your hardware.

Acronis Active Protection dashboard — This is your new command center of anti-ransomware protection with all the necessary settings, statistics, summary, and exhaustive information on the current processes.

Acronis Active Protection 2.0 — In this version:

Detecting injections, that is attempts of ransomware to inject malicious code into healthy processes.
Using Machine Learning technology. This technology allows us to analyze big data, update the process behavioral patterns on the basis of the analysis, and therefore temporarily improve quality of ransomware detection engine.
Converting Acronis backups (.tib files) to virtual hard disks (.vhd or .vhdx files) — You can create .vhd(x) files based on disk-level backups, and then mount these files as virtual drives or run them as virtual machines.
Backup settings transfer — You can import and export the settings of your backups via a .zip file. This comes in handy when you need to transfer backups from one computer to another, or to the same computer after upgrading to the next Acronis True Image 2018 version.

User interface improvements — The following interface elements were added or improved:

Three tabs for full control of every backup were added: Backup, Activity, and Recovery.
Backup comments were reworked.
Mobile backup and social network backup were moved to the backup source section. The Dashboard tab was removed from the side pane.

Free Upgrades for Subscription Users: If you purchased either the True Image Standard Subscription or the True Image Premium Subscription products from me in the past year, then you are entitled to a free upgrade to the new True Image 2018 release. Acronis will probably send you a notice to download and request your free upgrade. If you don’t see this notice, you may go to your Acronis account and download the free upgrade separately.

Free Upgrades for Recent Buyers: If you purchased True Image 2017 from me after July 1, 2017, then you are entitled to a free upgrade to the new True Image 2018. I will be sending these buyers an email to tell them how to request their free upgrade. Watch for this email and get your request in early to enjoy the benefits of this new release.

To order Acronis True Image 2018 for PC/Mac or Acronis Disk Director 12 from us, go to our secure website at www.ugr7.com and click on the Order Now button near the top of that page. Not only do we provide the best prices for these excellent products, we also give our customers much better support than they will get from Acronis or other distributers.

If you have questions about this article or the Acronis True Image 2018 for PC/Mac or Acronis Disk Director 12 products, send an email to support@ugr7.com and I will try to help you with your questions.