How dumb can it be.

Here goes my first backup/restore adventure.

- I do a full backup of my C:\ partition.
- For testing purposes, I do a restore after that. All goes well.
- I don't do anything to my C: partition, except deleting (not using Recycle bin) a directory containing 20 GB of rar files.
- I do an incremental backup using the previously created backup as a reference.
- Guess what ? The new incremental part is 20 f*cking GB big ?

~Snip~ I've seen batch files doing this stuff better than this stupid program.

BTW, where is our limit to incremental files ? Where is our Backup location size limit ? Why can't this program do a simple validation without going nuts ?

Really guys, the author better makes his program worthy instead of spoiling every thread with his "Please buy my wonderfull program" spam.

Hey, at least now I understand that Acronis' biggest interest is the deal with Harddrive manufacturers.

 

Since TI does not restore the image to exactly the same sectors on the hard drive, the Incremental based on the restored image will be considerably larger than if you made a new Full backup and then used that as the base for further Incrementals.

 

Don't do incrementals (or differentials) and you won't lose any more hair. . It is worth it to invest in a large external hard drive, large enough to hold as many FULL backups as you feel comfortable with.

 

I don't think you really understand what an image backup is. Unlike a file backup where files are identified as already backed up by the archive bit, an image is a sector backup. There is no archive bit for sectors. If there is any change, the sector will be included in an incremental backup.

When you restored the first image, you changed almost all the sectors. When you then made an incremental, it was very large because it had to include all the changed sectors.

In any event, an incremental of a boot partition or one with programs installed on it will always be larger than you might expect because Windows and programs open files, create temp files, etc. All the sectors for those changed files are included in the incremental. Defragging a drive will make the incremental huge because that changes lots of sectors.

I don't think the program is stupid. However, it does require understanding how it works to understand the results.

 

John,

Different imaging software handles incremental backup images in unique ways. One of my computers, which doesn't have TI installed, has a weekly baseline image of 4 GB. Daily incrementals average 50 MB in the absence of defragging. Even with daily defragging the incrementals average 120 MB. These are quite acceptable figures. The computer gets a lot of use from my son with frequent software installs and uninstalls.

I'm not trying to start a "this is better than that" discussion. Just mentioning there are differences.

 

That's a good point.

 

Well, first I was somewhat relieved that at least the restore worked as it should, I was staring the screen, heartbeat at 200+/min angstly waiting for the red "Restoration failed" window to appear but to my big surprise it restored the drive perfectly.

I've been wandering through the (extremely small) help file and other PDF's but I cannot find anything about the promised option to limit incremental files before a new full backup will be written ? I've been searching for the size-limit of the backup location, and while I was doing so without results, there was True Image again, popping a nice "Backup failed, partition full"..........

Please people, I don't think it will be beneficial in the end-run for the website to promise people that this tool is a 'Heaven on Earth' invention, while it actually feels like a badly programmed batch file with some colourfull icons.

So, at the end we can conclude that for backuping up a 20 GB partition and at least have some options to do some intermediate restore, we need a harrdrive that is at least 4 times that size ? We can conclude that any promised options to limit incrementals and backup location size limit are only existent in the endless commercials at the programs website.
We can conclude that we need ANOTHER partition at least as big as our backed up one to validate that the backup is valid by doing a complete restore on another partition and then buying some partition comparison tool for actually making sure that backup is correct, while the Acronis programmers aren't even capable of making a simple validation routine.

I really think u need at least 5 500GB harddrives in your system for this program being able to make a simple backup of 20GB.

 

Not at all. My laptop has 7 partitions (Windows, Linux, Disk Utilities, etc) and contains 15.3 GB of data in total. A full image of all partitions creates a .tib file of 8 GB. After a week of heavy use including over 1 GB of file additions an incremental image creates a .tib file of 1.4 GB. Personally, I prefer to never use incremental imaging but that's just me.

Your problem started when you based your first incremental image on a full backup that had been restored (and in the process had almost all of the sectors relocated). See reply #2. I think if you now create a full image of your current setup you'll then find that the incrementals will be much smaller.

 

Well, yeah sure it will be much smaller, but what bothers me is, say for example I uninstall 3 games, clearing 15 GB's of data, I know that the next incremental will be AT LEAST 15 GB's big, and that clearly shows that this whole 'method' of incrementals is completely wrong implemented.

I'm still waiting for someone pointing me out where and how I can restrict the max incrementals though..... It's advertised on the site, so where is it ?

Also, has anyone managed to get the Email notification to work, or is it foobar too ?

EDIT: Ooooh, the email adress has to be between <> brackets. That's original ! Ohhhh, i guess it took too much work for the developers the take the correct screenshot for the PDF User manual. Poor guys have too much work spamming review-sites to dead about their fantastic tool.

 

No, that's incorrect. If you delete files the unallocated sectors will not be included in an incremental. I just tried this on the example I gave previously in reply #8. I deleted 700 MB of new files that had been added in the past week. I then created an incremental image based on last week's full image. The size of the new incremental decreased from 1.4 GB to 685 MB.

The information that you are looking for about backup management is in Chapter 7 of the User Guide.

Email notification works fine for me. See 11.2.1 in the User Guide.

 

You may want to read Need Help? These Beginner's Guides May Fill That Need!. They may help answer some of your questions.

 

I agree that most people are not used to using <>, but if you check out RFC (2)822 you will find that this is actually part of the SMTP specification. So in fact it isn't as original as you might assume

F.

 

I think you are mistaken. If you try it you will see things are not so bad.

I have an 80GB disk which is about 60GB full and uses four partitions.

I back this up daily, with one partition being done incrementally going back 28 days. My backup disk is a 140GB external USB partition which sits at around 100GB full - always.

F.

 

Then I hope Acronis will correct their PDF User manual, after a year of customers complaining and asking for help, I wonder if it is really that much work to at least update the user manual with the correct 'specification'...
User Manual, page 64, first screenshot ! What a specification !!!

Oh Yeah ! The questionmark right above the dialogs looks really nice, really cool looking gadget, does it also offer anything else besides just being there ?

 

I haven't had any significant problems using TI, probably over the last 5 years or so. However, I would say that support in general (and I include the help files in that) are the weak point in the product. In particular, as pointed out by another poster, the most important message which should come out of the documentation is to encourage users to check they have compatibility between the linux environment and the hardware. This check should be done as part of the installation phase by the user, but Acronis seem to treat their users as if they are DR/IT experts. Such people already realise that they have to prove their DR cycle works at the outset. However, Acronis are not restricting the pitching of the product to this class of user, they are actively targetting home users who definitely need more hand holding, and Acronis are missing a massive trick here IMHO.

F.

 

Well, the (lot of) manual mistakes/adding a bit of real help/making the Validation function work/etc... are actually all easy to do things, I really hope Acronis will offer an update real soon which will address these tiny but very useu-unfriendly mistakes. I would rather see them addressing the whole lot of bugs than adding more unproperly implemented features.

In the meantime, I found another (I lost count allready) bug, when you have scheduled a Outlook Express backup, editing the scheduled task, points you to "My Application Data" instead of "My Email", not that big of a bugger but one another example that TI10 needs alot of improvements, other publishers would definatelly call a release in such a lacking state a Beta.

Anyways, I'm glad to say that the 1 time I really needed it, it perfectly restored my XP partition.

 

It usually helps to rtfm ;-)
Anyway, you can try the program for free. If it suits your needs and you like the proce, buy it; if not, then pass.

Taking a verbal dump on the forum and its users isn't useful.

sh