I Bought Acronis 10 - Did I Waste my Money?

I purchased Acronis True Image 10 recently but am afraid it does not work!

I did not want it for it’s general backup capability, but rather purely to be able to take an image of my system with OS and core applications installed, configured and registered, so that I could boot from a CD, reformat the C drive and restore that image to return the PC quickly, reliably and accurately to it’s ‘freshly installed’ and set-up state. I am not interested in the ‘general backup’ capabilities, that is take care of already, I only want ‘stand alone’ image and recovery.

I need to do this for two main reasons;

• Firstly, I like to do a fresh install of Windows XP and main core applications regularly as this has performance benefits generally, and being a lengthy and complex (my standard Registry hacks) procedure what with installing the OS motherboard chipset drivers, soundcard drivers, Ethernet drivers, video card drivers (plus the hassle with Microsoft of re-activating) and then hours of fun on Microsoft Update getting all the Security patches and updates with multiple visits and re-boots. To be able to do this once, and then take an image that I can revert to frequently is my goal.

• Secondly, I am involved in a lot of hardware and software testing and evaluation and performance benchmarking and again I therefore need to be able to start my PC from a ‘fresh install’ state for each one, and often revert to it again at the end in order to be able to achieve consistency and have a ‘level playing field’ for each separate exercise. To be able to simply boot from a CD (or DVD) and reformat the C drive and restore my core image is my goal.

I though that Acronis True Image would do just that, from the advertised claims, and although everyone at work advised me to get Symantec Ghost, I read reviews that rated Acronis True Image as a better product – which it may be, but problems I have mean I cannot determine this!

I thought I would not actually need to install it on my system, and all I want to do is boot from CD, take an Image of my system and save it on another local hard disk (or network drive if possible), and then when I want to re-image, again simply boot from the CD and reformat the hard drive and re-install the image, and then boot it up and away I go!

So I purchased the full version complete with the bootable recovery CD. However unfortunately it does not work on the high performance PC I wanted it for (Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 on an ASUS Commando p965 Motherboard), nor on any of my three daughters PCs (AMD Athlon 64 3500+ on an ASUS M2V VIA K8T890 Motherboard).

So I thought OK I need to install it on my PC, and then generate my bootable CD using Rescue Media Builder as the process might then also include essential driver and system stuff required fro my machine….. so I did,….. and got exactly the same result from the bootable CD I created. I also activated and tested Acronis Startup Recovery Manage (although this is really not what I want to do, I want to be able to boot and recover from a CD/DVD), but I thought it worth trying. After rebooting and pressing F11 things looked more promising, I did get a menu option come up to choose the Recovery Option or Boot from Windows, but this was short lived as on choosing the recovery option, I then got the same failure as above.

I then took the bootable CD I created at home using Rescue Media Builder to work and tried it out on a bog standard boring Compaq PC, and it appears to work fine, It boots up and I get the option to restore, and to select the media (even search the network for the image location) so it seems to work. I say seems to because there is no image to actually recover, I was just trying to see if it might work.

So it seems to work on boring, standard PCs at work, but not on my ‘exotic’ performance PC at home that I actually bought it for.

I have now done more research and discovered that this is a know problem with Acronis that is at least 3 months old – see thread https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=151380.

I am appalled that I have bought software with such a major fault that it simply does not work as advertised on a huge number of modern motherboards, that the developers have known about it for at least 3 months, and there is no warning on their web site about it!

I now believe I should have got IFW from Terabyte, or even Norton Ghost? I do not expect to buy new software that does not work as basically advertised, and then to have to jump through complex hoops to try to get it going, or to have to wait for the next release to hope for a fix!

However – have I wasted my £34, or will it get fixed soon (and can I have confidence that it will image and restore reliably?). One thing is for sure, had I found this Forum before I bought Acronis – I would not have bought it!

I guess my only hope is BartPE with the Acronis Plugin – will that fix the problem?

 

The post you reference has a well know workaround for what is probably your problem.

- Boot the computer from Acronis True Image bootable rescue disc (Full version);
- Hit F11 key after the "Starting Acronis Loader..." message appears and you get to the selection screen of the program;
- After you get the "Linux Kernel Settings" prompt, please add "acpi=off noapic" parameter (without quotes) to the end of the Linux kernel command line (so it will be "quiet acpi=off noapic");
- Click OK button.

Many recent PCs seem to have this problem. Acronis supply a fixed ISO image to build a new recovery CD (request through support).
It has been requested of Acronis that they build this workaround into the product but nothing has happened.

Hope it works for you.

 

OK thanks for such a fast reply - I will try this. I have reported the problem to Acronis technical support - if they have a 'fix' ISO for this problem I am surprised they have not told me - they have had over 24 hours.

If not I guess I try BartPE - I guess this is a good option - why else would they supply the plug-in as standard otherwise?

 

You may need to wait for up to a week for a response.

Bart PE (and other PE based environments) are a breath of fresh air. It is a pity Acronis could not find a way to work around the licencing red-tape which prevents them from using this as their recovery environment. They would probably save a fortune in support and development costs if they could ditch their Linux environment. I am surprised they are not trying harder to this end.

F.

 

Arrr thank you - you appear to be confirming that BartPE is the best way to go - I am happy with this, but don't understand why Acronis can't simply say so, something like:

" Due to licencing issues we are unable to supply Acronis True Image in a BartPE environment, and therefore have had to develop the Boot CD and Recovery Manager in a Linux environment. However we qualify that Acronis True Image runs fully under BartPE and to help ensure that there are no compatibility issues with your system configuration we recommend that you create a Boot CD environment for your stand-alone Image Creation and Recovery operations using BartPE"

That would be fine by me.....

 

Only if you can get them to run on your machine. ;-) That isn't always the case. Sometimes the Bart is more trouble to get get going than a cranky ATI.

It's an alternative but it's not necessarily a better alternative.

Yes it would be nice if ATI paid the licensing fees to use Windows on the boot cd, but the cost of ATI would certainly go up. I think it might be worth the cost (at least to some of us) if it was as easy to set up the Windows bootCD didsk as it is to make the Linus disk.


sh

 

A week! I posted a question to tech support yesterday about a restore issue with TI 10 and was hoping for a quick response. ALL my data is in a backup file that I cannot access. I can't wait a week!
I will post the same question here in another thread.

thanks.
Rick

 

Perhaps I have been lucky. Many of the problems I am aware of seem to be people sourcing an installation disk. I don't really see the problem once this is achieved.

F.

 

Thanks 800ster This worked OK on my new PC (Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 on an ASUS Commando p965 Motherboard), but not on my daughter's PC (AMD Athlon 64 3500+ on an ASUS M2V VIA K8T890 Motherboard).

I have also created a BartPE boot disc - works great on the P965 C2C machine - runs about 5-6 times faster than the Acronis Recovery Boot CD using the above workaround, but unfortunately on the AMD PC it can't 'see' and SATA hard discs (I did not need to press F6 to load SATA drivers when I installed Windows originally - it worked OK without) - and if I do include the SATA divers the BartPE Boot always fails with "The file MV614X.SYS is corrupt", and I have coppied off original CD, downloaded from ASUS web site and other driver sites... always the same result.

So I am getting there but still battling!

 

Well I think the final answer to my question is YES. I have still not had a reponse from Acronis Technical Support. I have lost all faith in the product and the company.

Because of all the problems I have experienced - I have decided to dump ATI v10 - it is a hassle and a waste of money. <SNIPPED>

Bye bye Acronis!


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