TI11 TIBs not backward compatible?

That's what I'm finding.

I created an image in TI11. It was a full backup of a partition with an additional incremental slice.

I initiated a restore from the Windows version of the older slice. Of course the machine is rebooted, and it's done in it's own Linux or WinPE (whichever it is) environment. Part way through the restore I decided I wanted to restore the second slice instead. So I canceled.

I couldn't find my TI11 rescue CD, so I used a TI10 rescue CD I had. When I got to the point where I select the image to be restored, when I clicked on the .TIB (either the first or second version), TI completely froze. I waited a good ten minutes, but there was no disk activity or anything.

Fortunately I was able to locate my TI11 CD and restored the image without any problems.

But for those of you reverting to TI10, make sure you have a TI11 rescue CD, if you are planning on restoring images created in TI11.

Acronis: Is this a defect in the way TI11 images are created in that prevents earlier versions of TI from restoring? If not, is it documented exactly what kinds of images are restorable from which versions of TI?

-Jeremy

 

The tib file format has been changed in v11 to take account of the invalid image problems that some people were having.

TI 11 can read older version tib files, but the older versions of TI won't be able to read the new format. This also goes for the rescue CD.

Colin

 

You are asking for forward compatibility. You want the older version to know how to restore a file created by a version that didn't exist when it was last updated. Changes to the files system for added features or improvements are almost always going to prevent older versions from working with those files. All software companies have this same problem.

You make a very good point about keeping a TI 11 CD around to restore TI 11 files if you uninstall the program.

TI 11 can restore files from earlier versions of TI. That's backward compatibility. However, backups from some very old versions of TI may not be restored by TI 11.

It would be nice if this were clearly documented somewhere, but I've never seen it.

 

There is a bit of a catch which I suffered from but will probably only affect a few others.

V11 .tib files stored in a secure zone cannot be seen by V10. The FIFO management built into the zone also cannot see these files so they are not flushed out as further newer images are added under V10.

The solution I used was to remove the zone and start afresh using the Manage Secure Zone Wizard. Making sure of course that I was fully backed up by other means .

Xpilot

 

I wasn't really asking for anything. I was just trying to determine whether the the tib versions were intended to be compatible (bug) or not (not a bug). (It's also not uncommon for new versions of software to be released without changing their file format). Apparently the answer is that the new .tibs are not intended to be backward compatible.

And you are right, that this should be clearly documented. Also, I should add that compatibility may not be an all or nothing affair. For example, maybe a straight, full backup is backward compatible all the way to version 8. But if you are doing incremental or differential backups, it's not. I'm not saying this is the case -- just that it *could* be the case.

It might not be a bad idea for file formats which are not backward compatible to be given new extensions, like tib8, tib9, tib10, etc.

Also, it would certainly be nice for TI to give us an informative error instead of completely locking up the machine. That's definitely not cool.

-Jeremy

 

I think you are viewing this from the wrong end, ie, the tib files rather than the program. It is the program that needs to be backwards compatible not the tib files. The program should be able to read the old archives and this is what backwards compatiblility is. Having a backup archive compatible to a previous program version like 8 really means providing forwards compability and this is typically not done unless it is trivial;usually in this case there is no mention of a format change since the file can be read by all versions.

If I have the latest version of a program installed then why would I be concerned about reading the archive with an old version of the program that I no longer use? This has only become a bit of an issue because some people have put TI11 on, decided they didn't like it, and then put TI10 or earlier back. They shouldn't be overly surprised it can't read the TI11 files and they should have cleaned up the archives, especially the SZ which they know is managed only by TI, before they reverted to a pre-TI11 version.

I agree that format changes/compatibility should be in the documentation. I don't know about TI11 locking up the machine trying to read an old archive but previous versions encountering a different file format used to give a message saying it wasn't an archive file and quit.

 

seekforever, you are right. I had my terminology wrong. I was talking about forward compatibility of older versions of TI with the new TIB format. But we agree about the documentation. And I think we also agree that older versions should be forward compatible enough to at least not crash or lock up the machine when encountering an unknown or unexpected format. But I doubt Acronis will be interested in releasing patches or updates for older versions.

-Jeremy

 

Hello everyone,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please notice that Acronis True Image has guaranteed one version back compatibility. Forward compatibility, however, is not guaranteed as the archive format is a subject to constant improvement, and the older versions of the program have no way to know how to correctly interpret new format.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov