Acronis True Image 2015

Discussion in 'backup, imaging & disk mgmt' started by DVD+R, Oct 18, 2014.

  1. DVD+R

    DVD+R Registered Member

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    Major bugs in this version, cant understand how they missed it:

    1: System Freeze after Restore boot
    2: Changing default backup scheme wont save, reverts back to default after closing
    3: Backups made on a daily basis even though it's set to weekly (not incremental, but full versions)

    This is what I've come across so far, If anyone has anything else to mention, please add it
     
  2. Hadron

    Hadron Registered Member

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    I gave Acronis away a few years ago.
    Too many problems for me. You don't need a troublesome backup program.
     
  3. treehouse786

    treehouse786 Registered Member

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    not a bug but still stupid. no options at all for the program itself. like this for example
     
  4. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    Tested the backup speed for three imagers (all boot cd, and cold image): Acronis TI 2015, IFL v2.93 and Shadow Protect v5.2.4. File system is NTFS, Windows 8.1 Enterprise X64 on a 128GB SSD. Used space on the SSD is 21.8GB.
    Have a 2nd HDD in the same computer as a storage drive. The test was to image the whole SSD OS drive, and saved the images to the HDD drive. In all three programs, default parameters are used. The only options I changed were the compression level: for Acronis and SP, used high compression; for IFL, used enhanced size - A.

    The resulting images are almost the same size: Acronis image: 11.6GB, IFL image 11.7GB and SP image 12.4 GB. The most significant difference is the time used: Acronis only needed 1.7 min, SP 3.2min, and IFL 5.1min. The speed of Acronis is just too impressive. I know it was fast before, but did not realize it's so much faster than other imagers.

    Despite ppl reported bugs in the 2015 version, I have been using Acronis for more than 10 years and never had any problems. Granted, I only use the boot CD and image from outside of Windows. Looks like Acronis and SP would be my imager of choice for Windows system in a while.
     
  5. pvsurfer

    pvsurfer Registered Member

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    I am an Acronis TI 2014 user, along with Drive Snapshot and formerly, the free ATI WD Edition. I did not upgrade to ATI 2015 as the ATI 2014 boot disk works great on my Win7 and XP systems and the 'what's new for 2015' didn't impress me. Sounds like that was a wise decision!

    Insofar as performance, I found the free ATI WD Edition to be totally crippled, taking at least double and often triple the time of ATI 2014 to backup and restore! For hot backups, ATI 2014 was about 20 -30% faster than Drive Snapshot (depending on whether I was backing up my Win7 or XP system). For cold backups, ATI 2014 leaves DS in the dust, backing up in about half the time of DS! ATI 2014 is also nearly twice as fast as DS making differential snapshots (DS doesn't do incrementals), but (interestingly) I find DS is able to complete its restores in about 10 - 20% less time than ATI 2014. In all of the preceding cases the resulting image sizes were pretty close, with ATI's images about 5% larger than those of DS.

    That said, the ATI 2014 installation was huge (in size) and hot backups had some quirky issues. Consequently I have since uninstalled ATI 2014 and I now only use its Linux boot disk for backing up (and I continue to use DS as well).

    pv
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2015
  6. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    Oliverjia, not knowing your device specs, that Acronis imaging rate is about 113mB/sec for reading that 21.8gB SSD, applying the appropriate compression and writing 11.6gB of compressed data back to an HDD (probably 7200rpm). I find that to be... well, quite unusual, especially when using the HIGH compression rate of Acronis.

    What's the manufacturer/model # of your HDD drive, and... what CPU (model #)/RAM (size) are you using?
     
  7. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    LOL that was my impression as well - I said "too impressive" - almost unreal. However it's what I recorded. I think the way it works is that Acronis read data from SSD to memory, compress data in memory, and transfer the compressed data to HDD. It's a simultaneous, dynamic process, rather than a single line read-first, wait for memory data processing, then write process. Looks to me the bottleneck here is the data transfer rate of the HDD - the reading from SSD, compression in RAM took less time than writing to HDD. My guess if Acronis could utilize multiple CPU core for the reading/compression/transfer.
    Here is my specs: i7-2700K, 8GB of RAM, SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 ST1000DM005/HD103SJ 1TB.
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2015
  8. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    Last edited: Jan 21, 2015
  9. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    oliverjia,

    With respect, I find it strange that anyone is using the old manual method of cold imaging in 2015. Ten years ago there were "heated" arguments about hot imaging being unreliable because "you can't hit a moving target", etc. Hot imaging works and you rarely see negative comments about reliability these days. With scheduled hot imaging your images can be created without you even knowing it is happening. No command window or GUI being visible. If you want to create an extra image then a double click is all that's needed and you can continue to use your computer.
     
    Last edited: Jan 21, 2015
  10. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    Hi Brian,

    LOL totally understand your point. Hot imaging nowadays is much more convenient than the old school boot USB method, and it's reliable also. Me however, kind of used to the cold imaging of an OS. The way I do it is clean install an OS, install major programs (MS office, photoshop, acrobat etc), update, then delete all temp files, and cold image the whole OS using at least two imaging apps (choose among IFL, Acronis, Shadow Protect, Paragon and Clonezilla), store the image files on at least two extra HDDs (one internal, one external).

    I keep all data files separate from the OS partitions, and back them up frequently manually (using Windows Explorer copying LOL). So I never find the need to image the OS partitions frequently. I normally restore the images when I suspect there could be slight chances of malware infection, or somehow the system is broken. In reality these situations are very rare so I find myself keep using the OS for several months to half a year.

    I want to keep my system as clean as possible by minimizing unnecessary software on my computer. Therefore when I have a chance to use a boot USB/CD to do imaging, I restrain from installing the imaging app. Anyway I am old school guy, I don't even have a smart phone yet, LOL...
     
  11. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    oliverjia,

    I'm with you. I have never bought a mobile phone. I use old phones given to me and I rarely turn them on. Having been "on call" all of my working life, I enjoy being non-contactable.

    Regarding imaging, I image daily as I frequently make small tweaks to my OS and I don't want to lose them when I restore an image, which I do 2 or 3 times a month.
     
  12. pvsurfer

    pvsurfer Registered Member

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    Hi Brian,

    While your comment to oliverjia re hot imaging being far more convenient and totally reliable nowadays is applicable to most PC users, those of us with Rollback Rx systems are in a different 'lifeboat' . ;)

    pv
     
    Last edited: Jan 22, 2015
  13. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    pvsurfer,

    I tried Rollback Rx a few years ago and couldn't see the point. My cynical view was that it is software that needs hours of time expended to save seconds in the future. Not one of my favourites but each to his own.
     
  14. pvsurfer

    pvsurfer Registered Member

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    How so? :confused:
     
  15. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Raw, all sector, Cold backups are very time consuming and your computer is out of action while the image is being created, frequent installing and uninstalling RX is what I recall. The time saved when restoring a snapshot over restoring an image was less than two minutes in my case. I didn't feel it was worth all that effort to save less than two minutes.
     
  16. pvsurfer

    pvsurfer Registered Member

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    Brian, if the difference between restoring an RB snapshot vs. restoring an image was 2 minutes on my system I would totally agree with you! But that's not the case and certainly not the norm. ;)

    On average, cold-raw backups of my C-drive take about 20 minutes so I just let them run while having dinner - so no lost time.

    I typically spend less than an hour every 2 or 3 months to uninstall RB, run a clean-up and disk-defrag, then reinstall RB. Again, not much of a burden (I'm sure most of us kill an hour every couple of months on less worthwhile things).

    pv
     
    Last edited: Jan 23, 2015
  17. MPSAN

    MPSAN Registered Member

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    So, Brian, I understand about being on-call. You should get one of those new devices I used to call a "Phoneless Cord"!
     
  18. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    MPSAN,

    My son explained it to me. Sounds good.
     
  19. Hadron

    Hadron Registered Member

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    Add me to the list of people who hate mobile phones. I don't like being too contactable. How did some people ever live without them? o_O

    Pete Denahy - Looking At My Phone
     
  20. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    pvsurfer,

    Thanks. What you are doing isn't a burden. But we could all have 2 minute OS restores. It's a matter of separating data from the OS. Easy to do but folks don't do it. Then an image takes 2 minutes and a data backup takes 10 seconds.
     
  21. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    True, but then the image doesn't have the data, which in some cases may be desirable
     
  22. pvsurfer

    pvsurfer Registered Member

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    Brian,

    Perhaps so, with a very small (SSD) system partition, but not with my HDD system partition which stores just W7 + programs (my data is on another partition). The total size of my C-partition is 70GB with 36GB used. Using DS (I don't have ATI installed) a full hot backup of the sectors in use takes 14 minutes without verification. Even a differential hot backup taken immediately afterwards takes 5 minutes without verification (and that's with no actual changes)!

    A cold sector-by-sector backup of my C-partition (using ATI) takes just 20 minutes to complete without verification (ATI is much faster than DS).

    A Rollback Rx snapshot of my C-partition typically takes around 5 seconds to create and about 1 minute to restore! Those are the facts of the matter.

    pv
     
    Last edited: Jan 23, 2015
  23. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    pv,

    In this tablet, the Win8 partition is 25 GB with 10.5 GB used. My main computer has over 10 OS on the SSD but the Win8 partition is 40 GB with 25 GB used. The backup drive is also an SSD so that contributes to imaging speed. That computer is down at present awaiting a new motherboard. Over the years I've had more motherboard failures than HD failures.
     
  24. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Pete,

    No problem in my case as there is no personal data in the OS partition.

    These folders are in the D: drive (my data partition)

    Desktop
    Documents
    Downloads
    Music
    Pictures
    Videos

    Edit.... My Windows Explorer looks the same as yours but any files placed in the above 6 folders reside in the D: drive.

    For example...... D:\Users\Brian\Documents (not C:\Users\Brian\Documents)
     
    Last edited: Jan 24, 2015
  25. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    You missed my point. In my case I don't have huge amounts of videos and pictures. The "data" is more of a business nature, and I want that in the images, as they respresent a snapshot in time. Another source to recover data.
     
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