Acronis True Image alternative

[Espresso]

Recent True Image snapAPI drivers don't install as volume filters anymore so that should improve compatibility issues.

[MPSAN]

Hello ALL:

I am also looking for a FREE TI alternative. FREE, because no one supports their product any more anyway.

I have used TI9 and 11 with perfect results...until a few weeks ago. I tried TI9, as usual, and after a while, the system (XP Pro 32bit) just froze. Had to reset to get it all going again. Not a windows issue as it happens when I boot the Linux CD from TI9 or TI11. Anyway, I also changed destination drives...1 RAID and the other an eSATA drive...same results. Ran MEMTEST 86+ to be sure as well!

SO, I downloaded and installed BOTH Macrium Reflect FREE AND EaseUS TODO Free Backup. They BOTH work. Makes me wonder what TI does not like! However, Reflect Free has not let me verify a backup image. Am I missing something? I made the Linux CD but the PE disk is a 1.7GB download. I did this and it wants to install WAIK...but does that work for XP? Reflect Free does not show my RAID drive when in windows.

TODO seems OK, but I have seen some say that Reflect is better.

So, I am sure I will not be able to get TI working again, and want to get some issues with the free versions resolved. The Acronis forum just suggested a chkdsk, which I did, along with defrag!

I know that the Free versions are not supported by the Company but how can you decide if you want to buy an upgrade if you have unanswered questions about the Free versions?.

[alternety]

I am currently in a rather untenable position. I tried backing up one of my drives with TI. It has always worked fine. Then TI said there was an error on the drive. Tired several times. Ran chkdsk; no problems reported. Looked at the drive; it still seemed fine. Tried backup again.

Eventually I got a disk-not-found. Looked at disk management and the entire disk is now shown as RAW, healthy. TI will not go past the now broken drive. Every time it hits it, it fails. This is just during initialization so I have no way of fixing it. An incredibly stupid behavior.

So, I can't backup. I can't restore. TI is effectively dead because one drive that may or may not be used in a process can not be ignored/bypassed while loading the program.

And there are those wondering why I would abandon TI.

[Keatah]

Macrium free will allow you to verify an image.

CheckDisk, Defrag.. All standard catch-all answers. Why Acronis is locking up on your system **I** cannot say without further examination. Maybe someone would care to guess? Get it right. Look like a hero.

[Keatah]

Originally Posted by alternety

I am currently in a rather untenable position. I tried backing up one of my drives with TI. It has always worked fine. Then TI said there was an error on the drive. Tired several times. Ran chkdsk; no problems reported. Looked at the drive; it still seemed fine. Tried backup again.

Slow down.. Error? On which drive? Source drive?

[alternety]

It is not locking the system - TI is simply failing to load. It sees that drive and fails. Hence: no backup regardless of what I want to back up.

I ran a Macrim backup last night and it seemed to work fine. It looked at the screwed up drive but was not bothered by it. I have not attempted to back that drive up. Unfortunately it has a bunch stuff on it that I can not recover otherwise.

I have this baseless feeling that TI broke it. The drive is now showing as an unlabeled raw partition. I don't know if my data is still in there or not. I have no idea how to try to recover it. Any suggestions for some recovery tools?

[MPSAN]

Originally Posted by Keatah

Macrium free will allow you to verify an image.

CheckDisk, Defrag.. All standard catch-all answers. Why Acronis is locking up on your system **I** cannot say without further examination. Maybe someone would care to guess? Get it right. Look like a hero.

Great, but I did not see where to Verify an already created image, but today it is there! I am using Reflect Free 5.1.5732. Did they drop the feature to see a RAID? It does not see a RAID drive even in Win XP. Not a big deal, but it says it sees RAID in the PE you make. First, that is a heck of a file I downloaded...1.7 GB, and I am not sure I want to install WAIK. Also, if the PE will see a RAID, why won't the program in windows see it? I must say that Reflect is faster than TODO Backup.

[carfal]

Originally Posted by alternety

Eventually I got a disk-not-found. Looked at disk management and the entire disk is now shown as RAW, healthy. TI will not go past the now broken drive. Every time it hits it, it fails. This is just during initialization so I have no way of fixing it. An incredibly stupid behavior.

So, I can't backup. I can't restore. TI is effectively dead because one drive that may or may not be used in a process can not be ignored/bypassed while loading the program.

And there are those wondering why I would abandon TI.

It looks like something has happend to your HD and caused it to loose all information. The HD needs to be initialized using a 3rd party Disk Management tool. I know that Acronis disk director allows you to Initialise HD's (using their boot disk). Dont know about others.

[aladdin]

Originally Posted by carfal

It looks like something has happend to your HD and caused it to loose all information. The HD needs to be initialized using a 3rd party Disk Management tool. I know that Acronis disk director allows you to Initialise HD's (using their boot disk). Dont know about others.

How true Carfal, it looks like the HD is saying bye, bye.

Best regards,

[MPSAN]

WELL!!!!!

After having TI9 and TI11 fail both in XP and from the rescue CD...see above...I tried everything. I did a defrag even of the MFT and pagefile, and cleaned the reg and did a defrag of it. BTW the free WISE utils and PURAN were great and.....TI still failed by freezing the system. During this time Reflect Free and TODO Backup Free always worked and were faster than TI ever was.

I always used TI with MAX compression and High Priority. I noticed when it froze, I would crash the system (ctrl-alt-del would NOT work) and the output file would be 0 bytes and a number 1 would be added to the file name. I checked the TI logs and the last operation said locking partition C:

Well, I got my first success in TI11 just now. Here is what I did. Perhaps you people can tell me why this mattered! It took so long on each system freeze that I did something that I should not...I changed a few things at once.

Here is what worked...

I changed Priority from High to LOW
I changed Compression from Max to NORMAL
I changed the backup file name from P4-2400-03-14-2013 to TEST

Also, I did not do a verify at the end, but did it as a separate op when the Backup finished.

SO, now does anyone have any idea why this now worked?

I must say that I am impressed with Reflect Free's speed! It does not back up the page file, but am I correct in thinking that if I click "create an image of the Partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows" that I can restore to a clean drive and boot like all was OK?