ACRONIS users: advice please

[Clair]

Mr Clair has been dutifully recording and transferring dozens of episodes of 'Allo 'Allo on our network-attached storage (NAS) and had a hair-raising moment of panic yesterday when he thought he'd deleted the lot by mistake!

As a result, I am now looking to automate a back-up system to cover both our laptops (his Mac and my Windows).

For Mac users: As I understand it, Acronis does not support Mac, though I have read about "Acronis Backup & Recovery for Mac", which requires additional files tagged on to Acronis.

Does anyone use this and if so, does it work with the latest Acronis (True Image 2014)?

As the backup facility included in my version of Windows 7 does not allow backing up on a network drive, and considering that the latest Acronis may not work with a Mac, I may well go for a free automated backup system for my Windows laptop, and I'd be grateful for a comparison from Acronis users.

How does Acronis compare with SyncBackFree and Macrium?

Am I overlooking something else?

Thanks in advance.

[AnOther]

I think you may be mixing together two things together which ought to be separate.

Backing up your files such as videos, photos, documents etc. is best done to an external drive (preferably more than one if you truly value them) and your actual system should be backed up with Acronis or other imaging programme with the images similarly stored off machine.

Beware of windows own imaging system as you need a functioning version of Windows, or a windows installation disc,  in order to be able to restore from them which kinda defeats the object !

Can't say for Mac but for Windows MS's own SyncToy will do the job of syncing files to another location.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=15155