ATTENTION ACRONIS

[iflyprivate]

ATTENTION ACRONIS:

Before its too late PULL BUILD 859 OFF YOUR WEBSITE. IT'S NO GOOD.

Look at the number of complaints that just popped up since you released it. Do everybody a favor and PULL IT OFF!!!!

Go back a few builds and see what you did wrong and then come back with an update. Learn from your mistakes.

Thank you.

[Acronis Support]

Hello iflyprivate,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

I am afraid it is impossible to pull off the new build 859. However, the main part of complaints cocerns image exploration. This issue will be fixed soon and since it is not the main purpose of Acronis True Image it can hardly be the reason of pulling off this build. We will certainly fix the problem discussed here as soon as possible.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

[WhatsGoingOn]

Could you please explain why is impossible to pull build 859 from your web site? It seems like a simple thing to do. Also, I posted a message that is now nowhere to be seen. Why is that? It did have a reference to Symantec Ghost. Could that be the reason? Just curious.

[Acronis Support]

Hello WhatsGoingOn,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

The problem is that the build is released and there are retail versions that contain the latest build as well. We cannot pull this build off. However, you may download build 826 if you wish. It is available even if you purchased Acronis True Image after the release of the latest build.

As for your post, since it is Official Support Forum there should be no links to Symantec or any other similar products. However, there are threads on Wilders Security without these limitations and you can discuss other products there.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

[Bubba]

-{ Quote: "Also, I posted a message that is now nowhere to be seen. Why is that? It did have a reference to Symantec Ghost. Could that be the reason? Just curious." }-Without taking this thread to far off topic....could the post below be the post your are referencing :-\

This post---> Re: Corrupt files (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=482987&postcount=33)

If so....that post and a few others were merged the other day with this ongoing thread (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=84188).

-{ Quote: "09:40, 11th Jun 2005 Acronis Support Thread merged with 'chkdsk errors on mounted images'." }-

[neuron2]

-{ Quote: "However, you may download build 826 if you wish." }- I have your trial download and am in my 15 day trial period. Please advise how I can get a functioning product for evaluation. Please don't tell me I have to buy a known broken version to be able to evaluate your earlier working version. Thank you.

[Rik Bean]

-{ Quote: " However, the main part of complaints cocerns image exploration. This issue will be fixed soon and since it is not the main purpose of Acronis True Image it can hardly be the reason of pulling off this build. We will certainly fix the problem discussed here as soon as possible.
" }-

Hi Ilya

I find that a strange way to look at things. If image exploration is unimportant, why does the program provide the facility? The answer, surely, has to be that by exploring we can be certain that the image is good, working and not corrupted. To me, it's a vital verification and I have reverted to build 826 until the problem is fixed. However, it doesn't inspire confidence in Acronis' testing procedures that such an obvious failing was missed.

[PaulB2005]

-{ Quote: "I find that a strange way to look at things. If image exploration is unimportant, why does the program provide the facility? The answer, surely, has to be that by exploring we can be certain that the image is good, working and not corrupted. To me, it's a vital verification and I have reverted to build 826 until the problem is fixed. However, it doesn't inspire confidence in Acronis' testing procedures that such an obvious failing was missed." }-

I concer.

If something like this can "slip under the radar" then what next?

If i had let something like this though when i used to UAT (User Accepance Test) for a major insurance company in the UK there would be words. Lots of them. Some most probably a bit rude. The rest.... Very rude.

And we would NOT expect the client to be happy with the broken version either......

[mark7]

Rik Bean,

I agree that an image explorer and the ability to restore individual files/folders is a vital piece of any backup/imaging software. Not mentioning any other s/w names, I was very impressed when this capability was incorporated into some other products a few years ago...

It was also the deciding factor for me in migrating to Acronis TI vs. retaining my legacy imaging s/w.

If TI did not have the capability to explore an image and restore individual files, I would not have bought it.

[Rik Bean]

I agree totally, Mark, and am becoming concerned at just how well Acronis tests their products. I've not been using TI8 for many months, but of the four builds I have used, two have been flawed. It's not a good record and doesn't inspire confidence.

[Acronis Support]

Hello all,

The main goal of Acronis True Image is restoring whole partitions and disks. We do provide the option of single files restoring since it is very important option. Currently we provide trial version of Acronis True Image build 826 at our site instead of build 859. To check the integrity of the image you may use the "Check Image" tool.

We will fix the problem with mounting very soon and the new build with the fix will be available.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

[jmk94903]

-{ Quote: "Hello all,

The main goal of Acronis True Image is restoring whole partitions and disks. We do provide the option of single files restoring since it is very important option. Currently we provide trial version of Acronis True Image build 826 at our site instead of build 859. To check the integrity of the image you may use the "Check Image" tool.

We will fix the problem with mounting very soon and the new build with the fix will be available.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman" }-Ilya,

What you need to communicate to your superiors is that continuing to provide a build as flawed as 859 alienates your strongest supporters.

Acronis needs supporters to tell others about the product because it is not visible on the shelves of many stores. Personally, I have never seen a boxed version of Acronis True Image in any CompUSA, Office Depot or Staples in the San Francisco bay area where you have your US headquarters.

I was personally embarrassed by the failure of Build 859 while demonstrating the product to potential customers. I certainly will never use a new, untested build of TI for another demonstration nor can I recommend that anyone buy the product until I have verified that the current release is functional. That's a very sad comentary from someone who supports your efforts.

The message your superiors need to hear is that quality control needs to be improved dramatically and immediately. Such a catastrophically flawed build must never be released again. Your supporters only have so much patience.

[scaa]

-{ Quote: "Hello all,

The main goal of Acronis True Image is restoring whole partitions and disks. We do provide the option of single files restoring since it is very important option. Currently we provide trial version of Acronis True Image build 826 at our site instead of build 859. To check the integrity of the image you may use the "Check Image" tool.

We will fix the problem with mounting very soon and the new build with the fix will be available.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman" }-
Well its good that you agree that though the MAIN goal is with disks/partitions single file restoration is also VERY IMPORTANT.
I am in a goofed up situation. I downloaded and installed version 859 over 826 and as I do regularly, took a full backup with the new version in the SECURE ZONE. Unfortunately as there was'nt enough space the earlier backups with version 826 got deleted.
Now while trying to restore some files from the My Documents folder, these are found to be corrupt.
What should I do now ? ??? How do I get these important files to work? Will the bug fixed version be able to restore these corrupt files? :-[
In that case should I retain a backup of these files in a separate folder so that these do not get deleted by the secure zone?
I have even tried to restore by uninstalling 859 and reinstalling build 826 without any fruitful result.
I am now not upgrading to 859 anymore.
i would like Acronis Support to respond.

[Rik Bean]

-{ Quote: "The message your superiors need to hear is that quality control needs to be improved dramatically and immediately. Such a catastrophically flawed build must never be released again. Your supporters only have so much patience." }-

I can only second these eloquently expressed sentiments. Build 859 says to me that (a) Acronis do not have a competent testing regime and (b) Acronis do not care about their customers.

I don't use secure zone, like Scaa, and wasn't so badly hit by the flaw - but it makes me wary of future releases, and much less likely to buy or recommend TI or other Acronis products.

[rjbsec]

-{ Quote: "Now while trying to restore some files from the My Documents folder, these are found to be corrupt.
What should I do now ? ??? How do I get these important files to work? Will the bug fixed version be able to restore these corrupt files? :-[
In that case should I retain a backup of these files in a separate folder so that these do not get deleted by the secure zone?
I have even tried to restore by uninstalling 859 and reinstalling build 826 without any fruitful result.
I am now not upgrading to 859 anymore.
i would like Acronis Support to respond." }-

It was my understanding that in Build 859 it was only image mounting that was the problem and that images could be restored without corruption. Are you saying that you cannot restore images made with Build 859?

In my case, images made with Build 859 were shown as corrupt in Build 859 but viewing those images in Build 826 (when reinstalled) showed no corruption. I continue to use the reinstalled Build 826.

[Acronis Support]

Hello scaa,

Please accept our apologies for your inconvenience.

Could you please verify the image archive by means of the Check Image tool and let us know the result?

If you explore an image archive, everything seems to work normally, however, all the files on the mounted drive falsely appear corrupted, i.e. their checksums do not coincide with the ones from original files. It results in the fact that files falsely appear to be inaccessible.

This problem is not in the image archive but in the mounting ability of the program. If you restore this image archive, everything will work normally (files will not be corrupted).

Thank you.
--
Irina Shirokova

[Rik Bean]

-{ Quote: "This problem is not in the image archive but in the mounting ability of the program. If you restore this image archive, everything will work normally (files will not be corrupted)." }-

Hi Ilya

I hear what you say, but how do we know that the images are OK, when we can't test them? This software is for use when we have problems - it's vital that we have peace of mind about the images we have created, and we can't have that if we can't test them.

[scaa]

-{ Quote: "Hello scaa,

Please accept our apologies for your inconvenience.

Could you please verify the image archive by means of the Check Image tool and let us know the result?

If you explore an image archive, everything seems to work normally, however, all the files on the mounted drive falsely appear corrupted, i.e. their checksums do not coincide with the ones from original files. It results in the fact that files falsely appear to be inaccessible.

This problem is not in the image archive but in the mounting ability of the program. If you restore this image archive, everything will work normally (files will not be corrupted).

Thank you.
--
Irina Shirokova" }-
Irina,
:( :-[ The check image tool says that images are OK. Since quite a few file were worked upon since the backup, it means I have to now restore at least the entire partition to get these folders/files working. I will then lose all the work done since then. All these days I have copied those folders/files from the image using explore and tried to open them. Is there any other way out? :-[

[Acronis Support]

Hello Rik,

The main purpose of the "Explore Image" wizard is to restore separate files rather than verifying image. Furthermore, image exploration ismore flexible and sometimes you can mount even the image that is corrupted. In this case it is usually possible to restore almost all the files from the image. To verify the image you may use the built-in "Check Image" tool. If it reports that the image is ok you will definitely not get the "Image archive is corrupt" error during the restoration process.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

[Acronis Support]

Hello scaa,

Since the image is reported to be ok there is no reason to worry. You may download the previous build of Acronis True Image (build 826) and install it. After that you will be able to explore the image normally. Please note that you may need to uninstall build 859 first to install build 826 to let the mounting option work properly.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

[scaa]

-{ Quote: "Hello scaa,

Since the image is reported to be ok there is no reason to worry. You may download the previous build of Acronis True Image (build 826) and install it. After that you will be able to explore the image normally. Please note that you may need to uninstall build 859 first to install build 826 to let the mounting option work properly.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman" }-
I have already uninstalled 859 and reinstalled 826 and things are working ok now. Thanks for your response

[Monk]

This thread is a real joy to come across! ??? I just upgraded from ver7 last night (I wasn't too thrilled about ver7 since it insisted on formatting to the windows default custer size, which may not be correct if you are restoring a raid array).

I found this forum because I was having a problem using ver8 which turned out to be bad sectors on the drive I was imaging from.

Now I see that ver8 has it's own set of problems. Wonderful! I'll give this a few days to settle down. In the meantime, I think I better check the Acronis site and see what kind of warranty (if any) exists for their products.

Let's face it. We buy backup software in order to restore data incase of a disaster. We don't spend an hour or so backing up data because we are bored. We expect the backup software to do 100% of what it is supposed to do 100% of the time. No ANDs, Ifs, ORs, BUTs, or EXCEPTIONs.

Currently, I am backing up 160gb of database data on a raid0 array. I opted for raid0 becasue of the speed and backup software to provide the security of redunancy (sp?).

I chose Acronis as the least of evils. Now, you guys are scaring me. I am going to watch and see what happens. At the same time, I think it would be beneficial to spread the word on the other forums that Acronis has a problem they do not seem to be able to resolve. Let other folks make up their own minds as to whether they want to trust their data to this product.

We will see what happens,
Monk

[Rik Bean]

-{ Quote: "The main purpose of the "Explore Image" wizard is to restore separate files rather than verifying image. Furthermore, image exploration ismore flexible and sometimes you can mount even the image that is corrupted. In this case it is usually possible to restore almost all the files from the image. To verify the image you may use the built-in "Check Image" tool. If it reports that the image is ok you will definitely not get the "Image archive is corrupt" error during the restoration process." }-

Hi Ilya

I hear what you say, but I think Acronis are missing the 'psychology' of this issue. Being able to mount the image and check out a few files is a reassurance, and that's part of what I seek from a disaster recovery program such as TI. Verifying is fine if it's at bit-level, but if it's a checksum verification, I can't be 100% sure. Hence, to me, a "belt-and-braces" approach of verifying but also taking a poke around the image is critically important.

I don't use TI as a data backup system, that's all done separately. I use it as a system backup, and I hope never to need to use it - but I want to feel total confidence about my images.

[Acronis Support]

Hello Rik,

I do realize that exploring an image looks like the verification tool along with its main purpose. The problem was reported to our Development Team and is already solved. The fix has already been implemented into the new build of Acronis True Image Enterprise Server and is going to be implemented in other editions of Acronis True Image soon.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

[Menorcaman]

-{ Quote: "The problem was reported to our Development Team and is already solved. The fix has already been implemented into the new build of Acronis True Image Enterprise Server and is going to be implemented in other editions of Acronis True Image soon.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman" }-Hello Ilya,

Is there any chance that you will be allowed to explain to us how the problem arose and why it wasn't detected by your testing/quality control procedures? Or do Acronis feel that's taking Customer Satisfaction a step too far?!

Kind regards
Tom

[Acronis Support]

Hello Tom,

I afraid I cannot tell how the problem appeared because I didn't have a chance to see how the developing was going. As for the testing control, you have seen that it looks like everyhting is ok and the image can be mounted, browsed. The files can be copied, etc. Furthermore, it seems that small files (less than 4Kb) are not corrupted at all.

We do understand that the problem is severe and that is why it became the major task for all our Development Team as soon as it was reported. Again, we are really sorry for the temporary inconviniences, hope this will never happen again.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

[jmk94903]

-{ Quote: "Hello Ilya,

Is there any chance that you will be allowed to explain to us how the problem arose and why it wasn't detected by your testing/quality control procedures? Or do Acronis feel that's taking Customer Satisfaction a step too far?!

Kind regards
Tom" }-As I said earlier, this sort of thing can alienate even Acronis' strongest supporters.

I could feel the heat from this all the way to San Francisco.

[Rik Bean]

-{ Quote: "Hello Rik,

I do realize that exploring an image looks like the verification tool along with its main purpose. The problem was reported to our Development Team and is already solved. The fix has already been implemented into the new build of Acronis True Image Enterprise Server and is going to be implemented in other editions of Acronis True Image soon.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman" }-

Thanks, Ilya. I hope you do not feel these criticisms are directed at you, they are not, but I, and others, feel let down by the company. I echo Tom's sentiments - it would be interesting to know how this sort of fault, which is pretty obvious, got through quality control. That is an issue of confidence with the software and the company.

[Acronis Support]

Hello Rik,

I do understand what you mean and I do realize that actually you shouldn't care who exactly made the error in the program if it doesn't work for you. As I said above the error is not so obvious as it seems because the image can be mounted, browsed, etc. Anyway, since the problem is already solved all we need is just wait a little while the new build is released.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

[rjbsec]

These things happen, though they shouldn't; however I am puzzled why you would be directing people to "upgrade" to build 859 when it currently has the mounting fault:-
-{ Quote: "Hello erhayes,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Could you please try to create the image on your hard drive and tell us the time? Also please make sure Acronis Bootable CD is created with the latest build (859) of Acronis True Image. You can update your copy of Acronis True Image 8.0 to the 859 build. In order to get access to updates you should register account on our site (or just log in if you have already created it) and then register your copy of the product.

If you use the latest build please try the "acpi=off noapic" workaround (please see http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=55317 for the instructions). Please let us know the result.

Thank you." }-

The number of posts after this was first discovered shows that many new users are being confused and troubled by the fault in build 859. Wouldn't it be better, (for users), to post a link to the previous working copy, i.e. 826 ???

[Acronis Support]

Hello rjbsec,

Though there is a problem with mounting in build 859, this build also contains some fixes. We suggest our customers to update to the latest build during troubleshooting if the problem is not connected with mounting since some problems can be solved by just updating the build.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

[Rik Bean]

-{ Quote: "
I do understand what you mean and I do realize that actually you shouldn't care who exactly made the error in the program if it doesn't work for you. As I said above the error is not so obvious as it seems because the image can be mounted, browsed, etc. Anyway, since the problem is already solved all we need is just wait a little while the new build is released." }-

Hi Ilya

Not to labour the point, but I do care that Acronis let the program out with this bug. If I and other users can spot it quickly, then why didn't the company? That's what I mean when I talk about losing confidence.

It's not about individual blame, it's about learning lessons and putting tighter controls in place to ensure this sort of thing doesn't happen again. I believe, very strongly, that if Acronis do not learn from this episode, they will lose customers. I do not want to see that happen.

[Menorcaman]

-{ Quote: "Hi Ilya

Not to labour the point, but I do care that Acronis let the program out with this bug. If I and other users can spot it quickly, then why didn't the company? That's what I mean when I talk about losing confidence.

It's not about individual blame, it's about learning lessons and putting tighter controls in place to ensure this sort of thing doesn't happen again. I believe, very strongly, that if Acronis do not learn from this episode, they will lose customers. I do not want to see that happen." }-Absolutely!!

Regards
Tom

[deckie49]

i've said this in the past, and will say it again...
vote with your feet.
image for windows (ifw) is rock solid and cheap.
it takes a little learning curve.
but makes great image backups and restores.

[feverfive]

LOL!! Just gotta laugh. My sister sent me an email that I just retrieved; seems she bought & downloaded TI8 the same day as me (6/16/05), & she's having the same issues as I am!! She's asking for help.....from me!! I told her we ended up downloading faulty software & she might want to try an OLDER version, though I doubt she'll be able to access her external HD when using the boot CD as I can't. Maybe she'll be lucky--her equipment is older than mine, & I don't think she uses firewire. He fiancee is an IT guy for a large insurance company (he's currently out of the country, thus she's asking my stupid a$$ for help). Knowing her, she'll complain about this to him, non-stop, & make him promise he'll never use Acronis for his enterprise.