Dissatisfied TI V7 users read this

Hi everyone,

I just noticed this forum and reading your posts, I see I was not alone.

I have been promoting Acronis products on the major forums and bought TI V7, as I wanted to move away from Drive Image, PowerQuest, and Symantec.

I received a BSOD when executing the main TI program in Windows and for two months this was the case I have never been able to get the UI to remain on screen before getting a BSOD. I also was unable to use the rescue program as the mouse and keyboard where unresponsive.

To my dismay I saw that Acronis were stating TI V8 was coming out. Thinking that this was a free upgrade, because it fell within the year that software developers give, and the fact that TI V7 was a dog I asked Acronis for a free update.

I was told only users who bought TI V7 within the month of V8 being released were eligible. I replied explaining that was it also the case that Acronis would be producing updates every 2 months or so – a ridiculous proposition.

Is it unreasonable to expect a single major version release per year and updates within that version being free and unlimited until no longer supported? I think this is fair and not asking too much of any software developer. Some software developers, the ones I normally support, give free lifetime updates.

I wrote a cordial but strong email of disappoint to Acronis, which took two attempts. I stated that as an IT practitioner moving away from Symantec’s imaging and partitioning products, promoting Acronis products, not being about to use V7 in Windows or via Rescue Diskette, that I no longer would be purchasing or promoting any of their products on the major computing forums.

Acronis did the honourable thing, apologised, and gave me a free update from TI V7 to TI V8.

Now they will not be too happy about this post of mine but I believe Acronis, by giving dissatisfied users of TI V7, a free update to V8 (or a significant discount) this will be doing there customers a favour and regaining some credibility.

Now I have also bought Disk Director Suite V9+ (DDS) and this also gives me BSOD on executing in Windows. So far I have not been able to use it. PartitionMagic V8.01 is light on the HDDs, and has always worked flawlessly.

If Acronis want to take on Symantec’s partitioning and imaging might they are going to have to sort out their partitioning and imaging programs act out.

My advise to Acronis is give their customers of TI V7 a free or discounted update to V8 and make TI and DDS work as they should. At present, they are not of merchantable quality, and not fit for the purpose they were intended.

G

 

Well, I'm another TI fan who just spent several hours trying to get OS Selector (A Part of disk director) working. What a mess that thing is! Finally went back to Disk Commander, which worked flawlessly in 10 minutes. Acronis must have lost their star programmer.

 

Well, Acronis gave you more attention than me. Been a TI user since V1.0, upgraded to 6.0 and when 7.0 came out, got it as well. Also purchased Partition Expert. Conveyed in an email my disappointment and loss of trust concerning their action coming out so soon with ver 8. Really didn't expect even a reply, much less a FREE upgrade. However, after about a week or so, did receive a reply. They apologized for the delayed response and THEN posted the site where I could BUY the program. Gave me the impression my email wasn't even read, just posted a canned reply. And even told them I would never BUY the program!

 

Thank goodness I'm not alone in thinking that OS Selector is a dogs dinner!It's more easy to do things the hard way-i.e.create partitions during the installation process than use that thing!

Have to say TI7 always worked well for me...but I glance at the shelf and see a pile of Acronis products I'll never install again,much less use.

 

Add me to the long list of unsatisfied customers.
Last week I wanted to format the hard drive and restore from an image I made a few months ago.
Luckily I made a new image just in case, now I had 2 backup images.
I formatted the drive and went to restore, guess what?
The earlier ***** image was corrupt. I had to restore my computer to how it was before the format.
I can't make a proper boot cd unless it's in safe mode, and now I got a corrupted image which was totally useless.
I bought version 6 a year ago, upgraded to version 7 in the new year and now they want 30 bucks to upgrade again??
I sent an e-mail to support and after about 3 weeks got a response to update to the latest version 7 build to fix my problems.
Why don't they treat their PAYING customers with respect and do the honorable thing and give us a real discount on version 8 if not for free.
Looks like I might have to go back to one of their competitors to get a trustworthy imaging program.

 

Thanks guys for posting about all the problems you had. You saved me some money and a lot of aggravation.
It seems you are are having as many problems as the old versions of PowerQuest Drive Image(2.0).
I don't like Symantec, but Ghost 2003 works. I have used it and earlier versions for years and it has been very reliable. Bootable CD images, USB keyboard (didn't bother with USB mouse driver) and all, no problem.
Maybe the whole backup image process shouldn't be done in windows with all the file locks and such?

 

FYI Ghost 9.0 should be out in a couple weeks. Might be a decent app since it'll be a combination of Ghost and Drive Image (one I used prior to Acronis, had very little problem with it other than requiring .net and other apps did a better job with compression, not by much). Something to keep in mind.

 

Wow, thanks tazdevl for the info.
I liked both Drive Image and Ghost and this new version should be a really nice program.

 

Downloaded the new Norton Ghost 9.0 manual (9.0 will be available beginning of September) and just started reading. I know that some of you are aware that this new version will be able to restore DI images, but I also found this:

"Before installing Norton Ghost 9.0, you must first
uninstall any previous versions of Drive Image or
Norton Ghost."

Also this:

"If install detects a previous version of Norton Ghost or
Drive Image on your system, you must first uninstall
the software before you can install Norton Ghost 9.0."


Acadia

 

gentlemen this is an acronis support forum not a platform to discuss the use of other software. please keep the discussion to acronis trueImage. thanks bigc

 

big:

I respectfully disagree. Many of us got ATI as an alternative to Ghost as I did when there was a promotion to switch from Ghost to ATI 6.0.

Turnabout is fair play...

RLK

 

But in this forum we like to have the discussion run in the direction of what the thread was originally pertaining to. Or on a product specific forum such as acronis trueImage we expect the discussion to run on that line. It will help to keep the less experienced that want to fix a problem or learn a function of the forum specific product from possibly getting confused between the forum specific product and the other software being discussed off topic.

thanks bigc

 

Like BigC said not in this forum section.

 

Okay bigc, and thanks for the extra effort to moderate.

RLK

 

Now TI V7 users who did not get a free upgrade to V8, point to my thread link below.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=45254

Ask them how they can give it to me and not to you. I write cordially and firmly, but there is no reason why I should be favoured above others.

Now I strongly urge Acronis to become better organized. I can still not use the latest versions of TI and DDS in Windows without a BSOD and having to reboot. This is very inconvenient when all I want to do is check the two programs out in Windows and nothing more.

I was able to make a sound image pre-Windows using TI V8 and use it for restoration a week ago – so it works fine in this respect. Personally, I think this is the image creation approach with the least problems. Imaging an active system volume is not the be-all-and-end-all for the end user.

Do your imaging pre-Windows and your images should be sound.

We will have to wait for the fixes to the remaining problems. Who knows, may be V9 is only a month or two away . Again I would expect a free upgrade

Do you not think it is strange that technical support does not frequent the TI part of the forum? This behaviour use to be the case with Roxio and GoBack. As the major contributor, it was like keeping a sinking ship afloat. Yet TS were everywhere else. May be TI questions require too much effort to reply to.

 

I was also disappointed that I have just purchased TI7 over the last few months and was still trying to keep ahead of the update builds being relased when TI8 appeared and only give the full updgrade to purchases within the month. None of the other software I have purchased for my computer have ever done this and I feel given that I have TI and Power Utilities that at least the upgrade to TI8 should have been offered.

I purchased mine on a forum recommendation but feel the lack of replies from Acronis and the fact they hadn't finished with bulding TI7 they have left all of us with outdated software even though we have not had it for 6mths! I have never used an image I have made to restore but I am now worried that even though it has been verified on restoration it could be corrupt

'Compute with Confidence' was something I thought I had found with TI and I do like using it but feel even if I had the address to ask for my upgrade the lack of reponse would disappoint me even more. I thought it would be better to perfect the build which was well documented in the magazines and forums before introducing a new one. I have TI7 but do not feel I should have to pay for TI8 for any added extras it may have.

Yes, it is nice to use and does not take as long as Ghost takes to image but it does make me feel I have something out of date given that TI8 + build versions are being issued

 

I never had a problem with my image. Beforey ou said your image was corrupt, if you were smart, you would verify the image AND explored that image to make sure it is not corrupt. But if you just make the image without checking the integrity, that's ur fault.

v7 or v8 works great for me. And I had no problems doing a restore.

 

If the program worked like it's supposed to and was reliable, the image wouldn't be corrupted.
How can it be that I had 2 images and one was corrupt and the other one wasn't?
They are on a separate hard drive not on a separate partition.
I never had problems with my images either until this last one I went to restore from.

 

Well that is a fair and diplomatic reply, so well done Aton.

See my post and start getting your free updates.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=45254

To paraphrase Aton, the upgrade was not necessary and could have been incorporated in to V7. It makes Acronis look incompetent and greedy. The very reason I left the Symantec camp.

I would like to here replies from my thread of any success in getting a free upgrade to V8. If the upgrade to V7 to V8 is minor, intimated by Anton, irrespective of problems or not with V7 a TI V8 free upgrade should be given mandatory to all V7 users.

Acronis lose money, but if they carry on in this manner, they will lose a great deal more. I will not tolerate this customer abuse. Their credibility has been seriously undermined, and they did it without any outside help – self-inflicted.

It is becoming increasing more expensive to keep up with new software development and current upgrade purchasing.

I typically seek out software developers who play fair. That is, you pay the initial fee and all upgrade are lifetime free. Runtime.org who make the excellent recovery programs does it, as does Ace Utilities, Superwin and ElcomSoft to name but a few.

These developers get my help, money, and recommendation without reservation. This is the policy I prefer and I ask this before purchasing any software. Otherwise, I cannot afford to upgrade this and upgrade that – especially when they are minor payable upgrades.

The main topics are the problems users are having with Acronis software at the moment, or their complete disillusionment as the upgrade to V7 to V8 being a short time span, not free upgrade, and unusable.

Acronis do the right thing, right off any monies you were expecting from V8, work hard on getting V8 working for the majority and not the minority and prepare for V9 this time next year.

If you do I will stick with you, if you do not I will not.

G

Keep your claws in people. We are all on the same side - remember this.

 

There really two issues here and you're trying very hard to make them one.

1. Upgrades vs updates. There is no objective criteria available that can help determine when a new software version comes out, should it be an update or an upgrade. Every software developer has to make that decision and sometimes economics help make that decision. In a free market, the developer makes his/her own decisions, as does the consumer. Anton is an employee, probably not an owner of Acronis. His opinion is just that. Personally, my own feeling is anyone who had issues/problems with V. 7 and still upgraded to V.8 just compounded their problems.

2. Expectations for a satisfactory product. Anyone who purchased a product from Acronis and has issues with its functionality has every reason to expect a timely resolution. If the developer doesn't live up to his end of the bargain, as a consumer you should take action. What action you decide to take depends on whom you're dealing with.

Acronis has no obligation to give anyone a free upgrade to version 8, just because version 7 is a problem. They do have obligation to resolve issues with the version you bought. But, you can't make them make that happen. You can decide to stop supporting them. And that's probably the best action you can take.