Acronis True Image / Partition Manager - BE WARNED

Discussion in 'backup, imaging & disk mgmt' started by buckshee, May 21, 2011.

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  1. buckshee

    buckshee Registered Member

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    I bought True Image 2010 with Plus Pack a few months ago and recently I also bought Partition Manager 11 as I expected to buy a new computer

    Boot disks were created for both programs on the old computer - when I bought my new computer it had 2 x SATA drives. Neither Acronis program recognized the SATA drives

    I had to reinstall Windows from scratch. Why did I waste my money buying Acronis.? I knew I was going to upgrade to a new computer and wanted to restore the image and do the tweaks without reinstalling windows and to partition the drive beforehandl.

    After spending most of the day on Live Chat I was told I was finally told I needed to make a WinPE boot disk (okay - but far to late) Then I was recommended I buy True Image 2011 - that added insult to injury

    I am going after them for a full rebate on both programs.-
     
    Last edited: May 21, 2011
  2. moontan

    moontan Registered Member

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    sorry to hear about your ordeal m8. :(

    was there a demo you could try first before making a purchase?
     
  3. the mul

    the mul Registered Member

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    You can try acronis home 2011 before you buy, I have it installed and it works perfectly well on my system.
     
  4. mind72

    mind72 Registered Member

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    Stay away from Acronis home products! I have cancelled my order. Use Macrium or Paragon!
     
  5. buckshee

    buckshee Registered Member

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    Unless you buy True Image or Partition Manager you don't get to make the boot disk. Then after purchase you get to make the boot disk only to find out it doesn't work.
    Why they can't produce a bootable that works on WinPE properly like Macrium is beyond me. Macrium Reflect boots normally from its WinPE 2.1 boot disk

    Acronis has been in the business for years. They expected me to spend 1/2 a day doing tests for them including taking a photo of my boot screen to prove to them that the programs don't recognize my SATA drives - talk about mickey mouse
     
  6. Baldrick

    Baldrick Registered Member

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    Sorry to hear about your issues. I have 2 drives; one connected by SATA and the other connected by eSATA (as it is externally docked) and ATI Home 2011 recognises both perffectly...in fact I use ATI each week to create a full image of the SATA which is written directly onto the eSATA connected drive.

    Not sure why this works for me and ATI on your system does not even recognise the drives. o_O

    Hope that you manage to get things sorted which ever way you go.
     
  7. Doug_B

    Doug_B Registered Member

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    For imaging and disk / partition management software in general, the customer is generally at the vendor's mercy with respect to the Linux-based rescue disks that they provide, as they decide which Linux variant and version to supply and which drivers are included for disks, network, etc. Such rescue disks cannot generally be customized by the user.

    Inclusion of a WinPE disk by the vendor has some advantages, including (usually) a set of drivers compatible with more PC configs than the Linux-based boot disk and the ability for the user to add drivers not provided by the base WinPE disk. I don't know how far back Acronis has been providing WinPE disks for its programs, but I understand the latest True Image and Disk Director Home products do, and I assume based on the first post that True Image 2010 also does.

    I have not used / fooled around with WinPE 2 or 3, but I assume there are methods to build the disks with add'l storage drivers (preferred) or at least to add them dynamically at boot time. I have done such for the BartPE disk I have built to use programs of this nature (and I still use Acronis Disk Director 10 with a BartPE plug-in), as the relatively new PC I have requires pre-installation storage drivers compatible with my mboard's storage controller, based on my chosen BIOS settings.

    As alluded to above, BIOS settings associated with the hard drives installed can affect the recognition of the hard drives when booting into these rescue disk environments. SATA settings such as Raid and AHCI can require additional drivers. For bootable rescue disks, changing AHCI mode to "IDE Compatibility Mode" or equivalent could get the bootable resue disk to recognize the drives. This is a simple / straightforward test both for WinPE and Linux-based rescue disks for trouble isolation purposes (though do change it back to previous value(s) when booting into installed Windows). Thus, it is a good idea to check the SATA interface settings in the BIOS to see if AHCI is enabled.

    Doug
     
  8. napoleon1815

    napoleon1815 Registered Member

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    I use to live and breath Acronis software...I even worked there for a while...however I won't touch them now. For any partition software I only trust two tools...BootIT Bare Metal first, and Paragon second.
     
  9. jaodsvuda

    jaodsvuda Registered Member

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    Sad to hear this.Thow I´m not Acronis user,a lot of my friends are.Must warn them.
     
  10. TraumaDoc

    TraumaDoc Registered Member

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    Did you actually read the system requirements before buying ? Did you verify that your system was 100% compatible and you had the necessary hardware and software interfaces ?

    Did you read your licensing agreement before agreeing ?
     
  11. aladdin

    aladdin Registered Member

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    Talking about completely dissimilar hardware, not only just dissimilar hard disk!

    LOL!

    I am not sure if Windows will even boot! :D
     
  12. valnar

    valnar Registered Member

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    Acronis is slow to add chipset and SATA drivers to their recovery disks. It's been like that since version 10.0. If you have an IDE based system, all is well.

    This was the single deciding factor that made me switch to TeraByte IFW and IFL. All is well now and my backups (AND restores!) are rock solid.
     
  13. buckshee

    buckshee Registered Member

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    True Image 2010 worked fine on my old system. I bought True Image and Plus Pack ready for when I finally upgraded
    Strange as it may seem (tongue in cheek) I didn't know what system I was going to buy at the time I bought Acronis, nor did I know whether it would be compatible with Acronis (in reply to your dumb statement) - that's the whole point of buying Acronis with Plus Pack so I can recover to a new system, who knows its gonna be compatible till you buy it- the lousy boot CD didn't even recognize my SATA drives. I did a clean install however later I recovered an image from my old computer on to the new one with Macrium Reflect - that worked just fine with Redeploy,
    In any even, I don't buy computers to be compatible with Acronis. I buy what I need. But I'll never buy Acronis again I don't need to and MiniTool Partition manager works better, is free and its free boot disk works - unlike Parttition Manager 11
     
    Last edited: Jun 4, 2011
  14. Corno

    Corno Registered Member

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    I still have Acronis 2010 True Image laying around somewhere, one of those "fabulous deal" offers that you later regret to have bought. Mostly use Macrium these days.
     
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