Outlook files from personal folders disappear

I do find "the menace's" continual questioning a PITA and childish. I recognize this is a user forum with what might be best called a volunteer Acronis reply mechanism but it would be nice if Acronis would give some clue as to the status of this issue. Anything from can't duplicate, true, we recognize it and are working on it, ..., not true would be beneficial.

The absolute biggest mistake a support organization can make is not to tell their customers what is going on and this is equally true even if the answer is one the customers don't really want. The worse thing is uncertainty!!! By participating in this forum Acronis has indicated that issues raised here are read and thus deserve a response when the issue pertains directly to a perceived flaw in their product rather than a philosophical disscussion on some feature.

 

Como if you don't have anything to offer on this problem please don't post.

 

Just noticed this, any help?

Remove '*.bak' from 'default exclusions' when doing a backup.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1359857&postcount=5

 

This issue seems to be more serious than "just" missing Outlook.pst files, which is bad enough of course. I just noticed that I too am missing a pst file, so I found this thread. Then I mounted the last backup to recover the old pst file. While doing so, I noticed that I am missing almost the whole content of Docs&Settings\User\Local Settings\Appdata!

So basically all my user settings and other application data of the applications installed on that system is "lost" after a backup of ATIH.

This is ridiculous!


I think I'll simply recover the whole archive, to be sure that nothing else is lost too. I hope this will be fixed soon. I was pretty happy with ATIH 2009 up until now (especially since the backup consolidation finally works, at least it seems so), but with such a huge bug in it, it's pretty much unusable. Yes, I know, I shall deactivate the file exclusions, but how can I be sure that this bug is only related to this and that it won't happen again?

This is really frustrating, since I bought 3 new licenses for other systems just yesterday

 

Spooky were you running a automatic backup or manual when having the .PST missing? If it was automatic, did it occur during a missed backup time?

"While doing so, I noticed that I am missing almost the whole content of Docs&Settings\User\Local Settings\Appdata!"

How did you discover that? Most of the folders and files are gone? You may have discovered a more serious problem on this matter!

Is thast the same path as this:

C:\Documents and Settings\myname\Local Settings\Application Data

 

I am a newcomer to the forum and the software, unfortunately. I installed TI 2009, created a first time backup and all was well. Then my files started missing their identifying icons, specially the Microsoft office files. I immediately uninstalled TI and my icons came back! That is when I found this thread. Guess what I found in the following file:

C:\Documents and Settings\myname\Local Settings\Application Data

The Iconcache database file.

I had no idea how buggy this software is. All the reviews you read are relatively positive.

 

Hi,

This thread began on November the 11th and I chimed in on November 29th stating that I too had just lost the entire Outlook folder twice. I mentioned at that time that I also lost my SnagIt files from under the same limb,
i.e. c:\Documents and Folders\<user>\Local Settings\Applications.

SnagIt was under the Techsmith\SnagIt folder there.

I believe I have seen other post that pointed out that the problem was more extensive than just pst files. The common thing about Outlook and SnagIt is that they are often running when backups are made.

It's been almost two months since this was first reported and Acronis has no unofficial or official warnings to users about this problem much less a solution! Shortly after 2009 was released and then re-released and all of the various problems began being reported here, I took the advise of one of the posters here and installed Maxblaster from Maxtor which is an earlier version (working) version of Acronis.

And now having continuous, unfathomable problems with 2009 I have on my desk here a brand new copy of Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 8.5 that I am installing tomorrow. I can't yet confidently remove 2009 because of the reported problems with that chore but I can just let it sit there doing what it does best - nothing until Acronis publishes official uninstall instrucitons for 2009.

Good On Ya Mates!
Jim

 

It was an automatic backup, however I don't think I can find out if it was on schedule or a "missed backup", since the outlook.pst (and every other missing file and folder) is still there in every backup archive and therefore I can't find out when it got lost first.

Yes, that's the path I meant, I just abbreviated the directory names. I discovered it, because I navigated to the location of the outlook.pst file, which is under Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook. When I saw the Application Data Directory, I noticed that only 3 folders where in there, even though there should be much more folders there, since much more applications are installed. Then I compared this folder with the one in the backup archive and noticed, that almost the whole content of Application Data simply got deleted by Acronis True Image Home 2009. Fortunately, the data is still there in every backup archive (as is the outlook.pst, as I mentioned before) and so I can still recover everything (hopefully).

By the way, I installed the Trial Version on 3 different workstations and the same thing happened on each one . Each one got most of the content in Application Data deleted (and the Outlook.pst in App Data\Microsoft\Outlook, the App Data\Microsoft\Outlook folder itself is still there in every case). And the recent comments here show, that this doesn't happen just to me.


As I said, this makes Acronis True Image Home 2009 unusable and I would recommend not to use it at all, at least until this is fixed .

 

Of course they are. 99% of the reviews typically are re-typed vendor produced promotion material with the reviewer giving some kind of a personal opinion on the user-interface layout. Darn few of them really do any real work with the programs and even at that, it is mostly superficial.

 

Seekforever I agree completely with your comments about trustworthy software reviews but my old reliable PC Magazine has published the first blistering review that I have seen about ATI 2009. Please see

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2336015,00.asp

 

Oh wow, that's really a bad review.

A question to all users which experienced vanished files:
Was your backup a drive-imaging backup or a file-and-folder backup?

Thanks,
loopguru

 

Drive Imaging in my case.

I also had trouble restoring the Image. Even though I saw the missing files in the backup (by exploring and mounting the backup), after a complete system restore, the files still weren't there.

After that I made a file-by-file restore (and only selected the Docs&Settings folder) on 2 systems and a complete system restore on the third system, but this time using the rescue CD (since the trial expired today on that system). This way I finally restored the data. I just have to hope now, that ATIH didn't delete anything else on the 2 other system were I only restored the Documents & Settings folder.

 

Mine was drive-imaging backup.

 

He obviously nailed it very well and certainly did some practical testing. I'm also glad he mentioned less than a satisfactory reply/workaround from Acronis. I'll put PCMag reviews in my 1% of good reviewers.

 

I was wrong about this. In every case a full disk restore did not recover the lost files, for whatever reason. I had to restore the files manually from the archive.

 

Now that is spooky.

 

Monday morning blues. It happened again. Missing my .PST file after an incremental update when computer was turned on. It skipped Saturday and Sunday because PC was off.

 

Indeed spooky. I reverted to 8.0 until this issue is clarified.

(I only hope that in a case of emergency the BartPE+ATI2009 CD can restore 8.0 images...)

 

Dennis:
Anything in the logs (Acronis TI Log and Windows Log)?

This bug is severe - basically I think nobody should use ATI2009 anymore as long as this is not resolved.

 

The Acronis log just says that it backed up in the morning. No error. Windows Event logs no issues. ATI2009 can not be trusted until this is fixed.

 

DenistheMenace

Can you post us the comments from Acronis either from their emails or from LiveChat as to what the problem maybe?

Thanks

 

Its been more than 1 month since this thread opened and 71 postings. Not a single word from Acronis. Just gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside.

Time to defect to another vendor for Drive imaging tools.

 

Tatou I heard nothing from them.

 

I had some similar problems a few years ago and had to just hang it up - no patience for that sort of thing with 6 machines to take care of in the household. I don't have a clear enough recollection of the details to contribute constructively, although I'm fairly certain it had to do with imaging as opposed to file and folder backups. Seems like Acronis would do well not to ignore the elephant sitting in the corner. You all have my moral support at the very least.

 

I had a LiveChat a few days ago, I don't know if am allowed to post the transcript, but here it is. Save and rename it to .eml in order to open it in a mail application of your choice.

Manish apparently thought at first, that I was using a "My Email" backup. That was my fault, I should have explained my backup task more precisely. But I am still unclear whether he understood what I really meant, since he insisted on saying that "ATIH 2009 can only backup .pst files upto 500MB" (and where in the User Guide does it say that?), even though I explained several times, that this isn't the only issue and that also almost the whole content of the Application Data directory gets deleted during a disk image backup.

~Private communication removed per the TOS. - Ron~