A few questions about this site...

First off, Howdy Folks!

I'm new here, and am looking to see if this is where I can get a little help.

My questions are- is the truly the "official" forum of Acronis True Image products? meaning this is backed/funded/maintained by Acronis, or are there just some Acronis employees who frequent this site?

If this is an Acronis site, does that mean I cannot get support/advice for True Image 7, since its outdated?

...a little background.
I downloaded True Image 7 back in Oct. of 2006 during some free promotion. I got my serial number by email from Acronis.
I created an image right away, and never touched it after that.
A few days back, I whacked my c: drive, including Dell's symantec partition with the factory restore image.

True Image to the rescue!!!

Well, maybe not. The "bootable" cd didn't boot (actually it got up to the loading screen then locked up). So, I reinstalled XP using the dell disks. Now, I downloaded the latest build of 7.0, and I made a new image in the safe zone. I also made a brand new bootable cd. Now I am able to boot using acronis, but haven't re-imaged... yet.

In my search for answers, I came across a thread on some forum, that posted an email reply from acronis- basically stating 7.0 is no longer supported. I have no problem with companies moving on and no longer supporting older versions, but IMHO, at least have a knowledge base or FAQ regarding the older stuff. I did find the sticky at the top of this forum very helpful, but it took me a while to find this site, and that sticky.

I heard so many good things about true image, and yes, it looks easy to use, and has powerful tools. It would be nice to have a place where some questions could be answered, even if my version is outdated.

Anyway, thanks in advance!
Rob

 

Yes, you will get answers here from the many unpaid volunteers on any version of True Image. But many will advise you to upgrade to at least version 9 which will be compatible with the newer hardware that is out there.

 

Hi Rob,

Like you, I took advantage of the promotional offer of TI-7 last fall. I had considered it before that time but because of the many problems I saw in this forum, I held off and stuck with my tried and true Drive Image 4. Because DI-4 was DOS-based and did not support external disks, when TI-7 became available for free, I decided to try it. It worked fine for me and I have been using it all the time ever since. I have also followed this forum off and on and decided that I would not be interested in upgrading to the lastest and greatest version for two reasons: 1) many problems continue to be experienced by users as indicated in this forum - seemingly caused for the most part by poor hardware support from the Linux environment, which is needed to restore an OS partition and 2) increasingly bloated software with what I consider unnecessary "features" that fall outside the basic core function of imaging software and that only serve to increase complexity and the potential for additional problems.

With that said, my first recommendation to you would be to verify that the TI boot CD actually can boot properly on your hardware and that you can access all disks, including any external ones (USB, firewire, network) that you plan to use for storage of image files. That means making the boot CD as a "full version" one and not a "safe version" one. The "safe version" one will not support external disks so is as limiting as the old DI-4 was. Next, I would recommend purchasing a spare hard disk that you can use to actually restore a whole disk image to, install that disk back in your computer, temporarily replacing the original source disk, boot from it and verify that the entire process works for you. That is really the only way to be sure. Anything less is relying far too much on the claims of others as far as I am concerned. You only have to browse this forum a bit to see the advisability of this. I would also not bother with installing the startup recovery manager (SRM) or the secure zone (SZ). If the TI boot CD doesn't see your disks, the SRM won't either since it is also based on Linux and uses Linux drivers. See the thread posted by casacki https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=181923 for today's example of the poor hardware support provided by the Linux environment. It's a situation that you see here on a regular, recurring basis.

If you verify that TI-7 does the complete job for you on your hardware, and you are interested in just the basic cloning/imaging functions of the software and not a multitude of "backup" features of questionable value, I see no reason to pursue later versions and you should not need further "support" outside the software instruction manual. If it doesn't work without significant effort, it's time to look at something else. When the time comes for me to replace my hardware and TI-7 ceases to function properly for me because of it, I will look for different imaging software unless Acronis changes TI dramatically relative to the recovery environment. When the core functions don't work, it's time to move on to something that does. I refuse to pay for software that puts the burden on the customer to mess with third-party technical "fixes" such as BartPE and plugins (not available for TI-7 anyway) just to get the thing to work as advertised. I like TI for now because it happens to work well for me. But that may not be the case for long. If you wish, you can try out the latest build of the latest trial version just to see if it works. But the first thing I'd do after installing it (minus SRM & SZ) is to make the boot CD and test it to see if you can boot your system and see external disks. If it doesn't work at that point, it would be the end of the Acronis trial right there for me.

Rod

 

It's official. Tech Support staff from Acronis often answer questions.

You can as the other answers already show.

Since you can now boot from the Recovery CD, I assume you plan on restoring the image you made earlier. Make a new image first for security and verify it. Then you can go ahead and restore your old image to save reinstalling everything.

That's true in terms of full support. After all, there have been three subsequent versions released.

Welcome to the right place.

Old versions are fine for older hardware. How old is too old? Well, if you can boot from the Recovery CD successfully and see all your hard drives including any external hard drives and your network if you backup to a network drive, then your hardware appears to be supported. Create a backup and verify it. If possible, restore the backup after booting from the Recovery CD to a spare hard drive. If those steps are successfull, you have proven that you really have good backups.

Why upgrade? New hardware that isn't supported by your current version. New features that you would like to take advantage of. Windows Vista support.

 

Hello rob75383,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

To what was already said, I would like to add: we do support users of older versions. "Outdated" in this case means that there will be no new builds of the particular version of the program, and in case of the issue being caused by the lack of the drivers to support new hardware, the only possible solution will be upgrating to a newer version of the product.

If you have any further questions concerning Acronis software, please feel free to submit a request for technical support or post any of them on this forum. We will certainly try to help you in resolving any issues.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

After re-installing XP on my gaming rig, I tried to setup TI7.
All I did was to setup the safe zone, and then boot to it.

Unfortunately, it does not have the ability to see my SATA c: drive (which contains my OS) but it can see my IDE drive (which I already use as a permanent backup location using DVD's)

It does seem to work on my ancient 1.3 ghz celeron, as a consolation, I guess.

 

"Safe zone" you mean a secure zone? Don't use one if you don't absolutley have to. It's only value is to store backups onthe same drive as the one you are backing up -- never a very sensible backup strategy -- if the drive goes south, you've lost it all.

A newer version of ATI would probably have drivers that can handle your hardware, SATA etc.

sh

 

I could be wrong on this but I am not sure that TI7 supports any SATA drives tho' if it does it won't include yours .
Without being a spoilsport the EULA says that each computer should have its own licenced copy of TI so V7 would be fine for your old machine and it would entitle you I think to an upgrade version that you could use on your new computer.

Xpilot