Very Disappointed

[Garris]

Sorry, as a computer programmer, as a Tivoli administrator, as an IT guy, I have to say, I think I know a thing or two about computers and software. And for those reason, I have to say that my opinion is taken by others with some serious consideration.

In my opinion, Acronis True Image is a very poorly conceived piece of software that should be considered amateur quality at best. I would not recommend purchasing it, but it will get the job done if you happen to get a free copy.

My first complaint is addressed by my first post in these forums. The documentation doesn't specify that the incremental/differential backups must use the same name as the full. Admittedly, this is just an annoying problem. I don't mind the way in which it works, it just isn't well documented.

I came this evening to figure out why the schedule tasks are not running on schedule. I have to manually trigger them. This computer stays online 24x7. There is no reason for these backups to be missed. I'd hate to think of what undocumented flag I didn't set now.

While searching for an answer to that, I come across a troubling thread: Deletion differential backups (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=194034).

In this thread there is a post by an Acronis representative:

-{ Quote: "Hello eliotrtow,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We may recommend you the following setup that will allow you to keep original full and one latest differential backup at all times:

Set a scheduled task to create a differential backup to existing full one. In the task setup specify a pre command to rename/move the existing differential backup (it will always have the same name), and a post command to delete the renamed/moved file if the new backup was successful. This will ensure that at any point you have a good full backup and a good differential one. Please see chapter "pre/post commands" of the respective User's Guide for more information.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov" }-

This is flatly wrong.

My full backup currently is in six files. What if next week, the amount of data being backed up causes the number of full backup files to span to seven? If I had followed this advice and deleted Backup7.tib before each differential, then I would be deleting part of my full backup.

Someone made the point that the new differential doesn't overwrite the previous in the event that the new differential fails. If it had overwritten the previous, then you'd've lost your differential. Well, the full overwrites the last full, so if it fails you have no backup at all.

Simply put, the software itself should be smart enough to remove the previous differential after it validates the new one.

If anyone wants to suggest things to check in order to get the scheduled tasks to run on schedule, that would be appreciated.

If anyone wants to suggest lightweight backup and restore software that really does work, that would be appreciated even more.

-Travis

[jmk94903]

-{ Quote: "...In my opinion, Acronis True Image is a very poorly conceived piece of software that should be considered amateur quality at best. I would not recommend purchasing it, but it will get the job done if you happen to get a free copy..." }-In recent reviews by major computer magazines such as PC Magazine, True Image has lost it's Editor Choice standing. A key comment was that Acronis is spending too much time on adding new features while not fixing long standing problems. I think many of us would agree with this evaluation. Quality control is not job one at Acronis unfortunately. New builds and new versions are offered with many bugs which the users are left to discover.

Echoiing your experience, why scheduling should be so difficult is a mystery to me. I have given up using True Image scheduled backups after so many different versions have failed to backup automatically for unexplained reasons. That greatly reduces the value of True Image and the number of situations in which I can recommend it.

If Acronis were willing to license the software from Microsoft to create a Windows based boot disk, a great many hardware recovery problems would be eliminated. Other software developers have chosen this route, so perhaps it is the future for Acronis. Or perhaps not.

You might want to search the PC Magazine online archives for their reviews of alternative imaging software which would better suit your needs.

[Joe in PA]

I'm in total agreement with the previous two posts. A few days ago, I reached the end of my patience with TI 11, and completely uninstalled it from all of my systems.

In my 15 years of working with computers, I've never seen an application with the bugs and shortcomings that TI has. As for those who claim it's awesome software, more power to you. Consider yourself lucky.

In my case, I got fed up with...

1. The master boot record corruption
2. The corruption of generic volumes
3. The program causing USB flash drives to stop working entirely without a reboot.
4. The unpredictability of image files.
5. The program's overdependency on hardware.
6. The flat out stupidity of some of the workings and functions of the program in general.
7. The sorry excuse for a User's Guide.

I want my freakin' money back, although I doubt that's gonna happen.

As of today, my frustrating experience with Acronis has ended. I'm going back to the program that's served me well since 2001... Norton Ghost. That's right... Norton Ghost.

And finally... as for the system builder (i.e., *ssclown) who recommended Acronis to me in the first place... I want nothing more than to knock his head off.
And to add insult to injury, on his system builder website, he no longer includes Acronis with his systems. He switched to Paragon. All the more reason for me to wanna to kick his sorry behind.

Goodbye Acronis. I'm never gonna deal with you again.

[shieber]

Can you tell us specifically, which magazines have dropped their rating for the reason you cited?

-{ Quote: "In recent reviews by major computer magazines such as PC Magazine, True Image has lost it's Editor Choice standing. A key comment was that Acronis is spending too much time on adding new features while not fixing long standing problems. I think many of us would agree with this evaluation. Quality control is not job one at Acronis unfortunately. New builds and new versions are offered with many bugs which the users are left to discover.

Echoiing your experience, why scheduling should be so difficult is a mystery to me. I have given up using True Image scheduled backups after so many different versions have failed to backup automatically for unexplained reasons. That greatly reduces the value of True Image and the number of situations in which I can recommend it.

If Acronis were willing to license the software from Microsoft to create a Windows based boot disk, a great many hardware recovery problems would be eliminated. Other software developers have chosen this route, so perhaps it is the future for Acronis. Or perhaps not.

You might want to search the PC Magazine online archives for their reviews of alternative imaging software which would better suit your needs." }-

[Garris]

Now that the scheduled tasks are working, they corrupt my iTunes library files every single time.

I'm uninstalling Acronis. I give up. I want my money back. This is crap.

[jmk94903]

-{ Quote: "Can you tell us specifically, which magazines have dropped their rating for the reason you cited?" }-PC Magazine is the most recent. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2257160,00.asp.

[demoneye]

HI YO

i can add also my bad impression of ATI , i just uninstall it in order to install disk clone 5 from farstone. but i cant coz ATI left some blocking keys in the reg area.

i connect ati support and they give me the keys need to be taken.
realy amuture behavior of a company which add EC in pcmagaine.

i agree with all posters in here. this software is realy not worth the price , actuley i want install it for free:argh:

cheers>:(

[photogman]

I read this thread and followed it to PC Magazine's Review. Happened to read the magazine's review and other users' review of ShadowProtect.

It does the few simple things required of great backup software (not the goofy extra bells and whistles) and it does them very well. That did it for me. I will be moving to ShadowProtect immediately! Life just became less stressful. For some people, fortunately not me, just their daily presence on this forum has kind of been an addictive self-help group, by choice originally, but now it's almost counterculture for some. Life is too short spending it almost incessantly on a forum looking for answers or work-arounds to run a program that should be much easier to run than True Image.

What's I find almost incredible is how people stay with this program believing it will improve, almost like repeating the same thing over and over again expecting different results and we all know what the meaning of that is....

[GroomLake]

Here at the Data Center we test applicants on their ability to read and comprehend and can take appropriate action.

[Sam49]

Ok i have read what has been said about TI 11 and i agree i have used both v10 and 11 in the last few years with some sucsess but now i am running a dual boot system with XP and Vista and TI will not restore a full image and i have had to reinstall Vista approx 5 time now, its rubish as a full system backup.

So what do i use now i have down loaded the trial varsion og Ghost Ver 14 but i am unable to make a full system backup i have to do it one partition at a time and this upsets the matser boot record. also the trial version does not let you make a boot cd so how can i tell if te resotre works.
I have also tried Paragon Drice Image but when i try to select the image file to restore it just crashes.

So what do i use ???? please

[photogman]

So what do you use? You try the trial version of the desktop version of ShadowProtect. Enough said.

[bcool2]

Or... or you stay put with TI9 b2,337. Solid version & build - has never failed me once other than a software conflict which wasn't its fault at all.
You others can deal with the bloat. 8)

Edit: Sorry, I haven't a clue if TI9 works on Vista.

[Sam49]

Hi will true image 9 work with vista, plus acronis always say use the latest version.

regards

[DwnNdrty]

-{ Quote: "Hi will true image 9 work with vista, plus acronis always say use the latest version.

regards" }-
It will ... but with the bootable Rescue CD only. I don't think you can install the software on Vista, though I've never tried it.

[Tatou]

-{ Quote: "Or... or you stay put with TI9 b2,337. Solid version & build - has never failed me once other than a software conflict which wasn't its fault at all.
You others can deal with the bloat. 8)

Edit: Sorry, I haven't a clue if TI9 works on Vista." }-

TI 10 and TI 9 work for me. Rock solid but I just use them to restore and backup complete drives using BArtPE with Mustang's plugin for restore and I have a pretty bog standard Desktop box

Also have VistaPE and plugins which also works OK

For a complete picture of Shadow Protect read the support forums as well as the reviews.

[The Sand]

-{ Quote: "For some people, fortunately not me, just their daily presence on this forum has kind of been an addictive self-help group, by choice originally, but now it's almost counterculture for some. Life is too short spending it almost incessantly on a forum looking for answers or work-arounds to run a program that should be much easier to run than True Image.

What's I find almost incredible is how people stay with this program believing it will improve, almost like repeating the same thing over and over again expecting different results and we all know what the meaning of that is...." }-

I just want to say those people who are here on a regular basis to help others have been a real blessing for me. I only recenlty ran into a problem that I can't find the answer to. Most of the time when I post here it is a "how to" question and I certainly have benefitted from their vast knowledge of Acronis products.

I hope it makes them feel good about themselves - like charity work... for it is "charity" when you take the time to help others without payment. Most times they don't even get a "thank you." I am grateful they are here...

Sandy

[Joe in PA]

Adding to my previous post...

When I mentioned that I was going back to Ghost, I failed to mention that I went back to Ghost 2002. Granted, I had to convert my software partitions back to FAT32, but considering the poor quality of imaging software nowadays, it's a small price to pay for simple, DOS based, RELIABLE cold imaging.
The reason I bring this all up is simple... the versions of Ghost since 9.0 make Acronis look like a godsend. If you think that things will be better with any version of Ghost newer than 2002 or 2003, you're wrong. Ghost is actually far worse than Acronis; even with all of TI's bugs. Symantec in general went down the crapper a long time ago, but that's a story best left for another thread.

The only safe and somewhat reliable way to use Acronis is to run it from the bootable CD. It's not perfect, but it's a much better alternative than having the whole program on your computer. Just be prepared for brutally long image creation and restore times. And along with that, at least you'll be getting some return on your investment.

[jmk94903]

-{ Quote: "Hi will true image 9 work with vista, plus acronis always say use the latest version.

regards" }-TI 9 can't be installed in Vista, so you can only use it from the CD.

TI 9 doesn't support lots of new hardware, especially SATA configurations and RAID configurations, so you are dead in the water if you have a new system that isn't supported.

My new Dell Vostro 1000, a $440 Sempron notebook - far from state of the art - will only work with TI 10 or later. With TI 9, the internal SATA hard drive is invisible.

So, old versions of TI are fine for old hardware, but new hardware will force you to upgrade.

[shieber]

Certainly this doesn't happen on all systems. Is it the library (the data index and store) or the music files that are being corrupted?

-{ Quote: "Now that the scheduled tasks are working, they corrupt my iTunes library files every single time.

I'm uninstalling Acronis. I give up. I want my money back. This is crap." }-

[shieber]

Okay, that's one. It sounded like someone had suggested that more than one had done this.


-{ Quote: "PC Magazine is the most recent. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2257160,00.asp." }-

[shieber]

Egad. Reformatting back to Fat just to use DOS based Ghost? You are a dedicated fellow. I still think ATI 10 beats out the Dos-based imagers by a wide margin, given it's abiltiy to backup while running windows, have automated backup file managment (not jsut scheduling), and works on a wide variety of platforms. Of course, ATI 11 has faults in all those areas and I wouldn't recommend its use. But ATI 110 over the old Dos-Based? . . .

-{ Quote: "Adding to my previous post...

When I mentioned that I was going back to Ghost, I failed to mention that I went back to Ghost 2002. Granted, I had to convert my software partitions back to FAT32, but considering the poor quality of imaging software nowadays, it's a small price to pay for simple, DOS based, RELIABLE cold imaging.
The reason I bring this all up is simple... the versions of Ghost since 9.0 make Acronis look like a godsend. If you think that things will be better with any version of Ghost newer than 2002 or 2003, you're wrong. Ghost is actually far worse than Acronis; even with all of TI's bugs. Symantec in general went down the crapper a long time ago, but that's a story best left for another thread.

The only safe and somewhat reliable way to use Acronis is to run it from the bootable CD. It's not perfect, but it's a much better alternative than having the whole program on your computer. Just be prepared for brutally long image creation and restore times. And along with that, at least you'll be getting some return on your investment." }-

[jmk94903]

-{ Quote: "Okay, that's one. It sounded like someone had suggested that more than one had done this." }-You are correct. I exagerated. Actually, I thought I'd seen another review with similar comments to the PC Mag review, but I can't find it, so it was probably that I read the same review in two places. Ziff Davis sends out links to the same stuff via different emails, so I got confused.

[Sugaree]

-{ Quote: "
The reason I bring this all up is simple... the versions of Ghost since 9.0 make Acronis look like a godsend. If you think that things will be better with any version of Ghost newer than 2002 or 2003, you're wrong. Ghost is actually far worse than Acronis; even with all of TI's bugs. Symantec in general went down the crapper a long time ago, but that's a story best left for another thread." }-
Maybe you're looking at the wrong software.

Haven't you heard of Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery? They make both a desktop and server version. Allows you to image the drives while the box is running, unlike Ghost that you must shutdown the PC for imaging the C partition.

No voodoo with Symantec BESR, it just plain works. Period, end of story!

[Earthling]

Tosh! In my XP+Vista dual boot I've got Ghost 9 in XP and ATI 11 in Vista. The SATA drives in this box completely defeated ATI but Ghost has had no problem at any time. ATI 11 was so problem ridden that I was effectively unable to use it until I came here and found out about using it in VistaPE.

[motiger]

Ide be happy to go back to v10 if I could figure out how to get rid of all the registry entries that keep telling me I can't do this. I still feel it was a great program back in the v7-10 days. What a shame they went for the money and not the quality. If they wanted to do us a favor they could write a program that would get us back to v10.

[Joe in PA]

-{ Quote: "Egad. Reformatting back to Fat just to use DOS based Ghost? You are a dedicated fellow. I still think ATI 10 beats out the Dos-based imagers by a wide margin, given it's abiltiy to backup while running windows, have automated backup file managment (not jsut scheduling), and works on a wide variety of platforms. Of course, ATI 11 has faults in all those areas and I wouldn't recommend its use. But ATI 110 over the old Dos-Based? . . ." }-
LOL. I know my method sounds crazy on the surface, but in my case, I have multiple systems, so I don't have time for unstable foolishness. After all, time is money.
I've lost count as to the number of backups and restores and disk clones I've done with Ghost 2002 since it first came out. It's simple and reliable, and has never failed me. Not once. (knocking on wood... LOL)
Along with that, I'm a die-hard believer in cold imaging. Winblows is an unstable OS to begin with. Asking an imaging program (ANY imaging program) to image while Winblows is running strikes me as just too damn risky.

And as for FAT32 vs. NTFS, in my case there's no performance difference. The partitions are small and I keep the systems well maintained. I only use NTFS on my production systems (i.e., audio and video), because of the file size limitations of FAT32.

When someone releases an imaging program that actually performs like an imaging program, I'll buy it. But the current products that are available are too hit and miss, and some are downright crap. The only exceptions are the pro grade ones, but I'm not willing to part with that kind of money.

[Joe in PA]

-{ Quote: "-{ Quote: "
The reason I bring this all up is simple... the versions of Ghost since 9.0 make Acronis look like a godsend. If you think that things will be better with any version of Ghost newer than 2002 or 2003, you're wrong. Ghost is actually far worse than Acronis; even with all of TI's bugs. Symantec in general went down the crapper a long time ago, but that's a story best left for another thread." }-

Maybe you're looking at the wrong software.

Haven't you heard of Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery? They make both a desktop and server version. Allows you to image the drives while the box is running, unlike Ghost that you must shutdown the PC for imaging the C partition.

No voodoo with Symantec BESR, it just plain works. Period, end of story!" }-

Good point. Actually, I have looked into BESR, but considering Symantec's track record when buying other company's products, I'm still a bit iffy on it. At the very least, the server version has been on my table of future options for some time now.

[springheal]

Quote

When someone releases an imaging program that actually performs like an imaging program, I'll buy it. But the current products that are available are too hit and miss, and some are downright crap. The only exceptions are the pro grade ones, but I'm not willing to part with that kind of money.

I totally agree with you Joe in PA.

If we bought a new car, home appliance etc and something was not right with it, we would have it repaired by the company at no charge and no input by the user. What REALLY gets me with the Acronis threads is that THEY expect the user to fix THEIR problems all the bloody time and that is not on. They do not even consider that many of the users are not computer geeks and that is why users want a reliable backup program. Acronis insist on demanding so much information which is such an inconvenience to the user. Sure, all computers have different setups etc, but Acronis and other image programs should consider this and provide a hassle free program that " JUST WORKS ".

P.S. Notice how silent Acronis is with all the criticism!! They know we are all right and they will not and never will admit it.

[Acronis Support]

Hello all,

We're doing our best to help our customers. If you've encountered any issue then please start a thread on this forum and fill it with details or contact our Support Team and we will do our best to assist you and to resolve the issue or explain any feature.

Regarding 'Product A is better' discussions - such threads are based on personal experience. For example, product A can work like a charm on the system #1 and would fail completely on the system #2, product B would work only on system 2 and so on. If our software is not working on your system then let us assist and fix it.

Thank you.
--
Michael Levchenko

[bcool2]

-{ Quote: "TI 9 can't be installed in Vista, so you can only use it from the CD.

TI 9 doesn't support lots of new hardware, especially SATA configurations and RAID configurations, so you are dead in the water if you have a new system that isn't supported.

My new Dell Vostro 1000, a $440 Sempron notebook - far from state of the art - will only work with TI 10 or later. With TI 9, the internal SATA hard drive is invisible.

So, old versions of TI are fine for old hardware, but new hardware will force you to upgrade." }-

That's too bad actually. On the other hand I might not have added the emphasis "especially" to the bad news about SATA & RAID configurations. Version 9 has trouble with some perhaps - but not all. I myself did NOT! Although for reasons unrelated to my imaging software, I no longer run my SATA disks in RAID. But when I did (RAID 0 stripe), I recollect no problems imaging or restoring with version 9 b2337. Guess I was lucky. But that aside, I realize that Vista incompatibility is a deal breaker for most. :(

[ronjor]

Acronis Support has responded to this thread. http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1201018&postcount=30

Any further suggestions and testimonials for alternative software should be posted in the software and services forum, not in the Acronis support forum.