Acronis True Image WISH-LIST thread

Hello Flutje,

You haven't said so but do you realise that you can temporarily copy the .tib files from DVD(s) back to a folder on your HD and then Mount/Browse the image from there?

Regards

Menorcaman

 

It would be nice if you could setup remote booting and have it skip loading the Acronis Agent CD at least once.

 

-Task scripts saved in XML format

 

Provide an option to delete (vs. consolidate) qualifying archives (full backups and any associated incrementals/differentials) when Backup Location quotas are exceeded. Archive consolidation is a resource intensive process that vastly exceeds the time required to create the original backups ... especially with disk images. There are many scenarios when it is desirable to delete older archives when more recent full backup(s) exist. This is the methodology used for space management in the Secure Zone (delete older archives) and should be available as an option to those who prefer the flexibility of Backup Locations without incurring the overhead of mandatory consolidation.

 

Hello, I would like to let run TI10 on my PC in a functionally way: When my system brake down, TI was not able to start, all I got was a black screen!...+ fortunately, this was only a test and no real crash! So, what I had to do, was to look in FAQs to find a solution and found the hint to try some startup-parameters by pressing F11 at the startup-screen. But imagine this had been a real crash: There is no possibility to look for FAQs, when the PC isn't running.
But unfortunately my system does'nt want to start allways with these parameters. Sometimes it works after a certain delay and sometimes not! The only way to work is to start in protected mode, but the startup recovery-manager does'nt offer the protected mode! My system is about 4 years old and runs under XPSP2, TI10 is build 4.942. So the hint in FAQs concerning not known drivers the linux kernel can't handle should not be valid for my system, I think.
Restoring the system from a running windows via secure zone or any other backup hangs after automatic rebooting with the black screen as well! So I have to restore by useing an emergency-CD and then with selection of protected mode. That's not funny.

Here are my requirements for an futural update:
1. Implement protected mode to startup recovery-manager and the possibility to use predefined parameters
2. Enhance the start-up screen with the hint, that there is the possibility to use parameters by pressing F11. A table with the available parameters including an explanation of their function should be implemented there and should be selectable by mouseclick and then added to the command line. These composition of parameters should be stored in an user-ini-file for later reuse e.g. for restore started within a running windows.

 

Backup task: Automatic renaming feature

When creating a backup task, there should be an option to use an automatic (re)naming feature, for example, at backup-runtime the following variables would resolve to the following backup image file names:

%YYYY%-%MM%.tib -> 2007-06.tib

In this case when running this task several times in June 2007 it would first create a new backup image file (if "2007-06.tib" does not already exist), and then backup different/changed files to this tib file (incremental/differential backup).
But in JULY 2007 this task would create again a new tib file "2007-07.tib", etc. etc.

An additional option for the renaming feature could be: Restrict the absolute number of backup image files for this task, for example: When the automatic renaming feature is about to create a new tib file and the number of tib files created by the renaming feature exceeds a custom number then the oldest tib file is deleted. This makes sure that the target hard-disk would never become completely full, and there are always a custom number of fresh backup tib files.

 

Any scheme of disaster recover which relies on the same media which is being safeguarded to carry out the recovery on itself (e.g. the hard disk) is folly IMHO.

F.

 

1.) Create shortcuts to tasks on the desktop
2.) Create tasks for restoring (no more manual "Restart")

Thomas

 

Create an IT edition license were IT professionals can use the software on any system

 

I run my backups unattended over night using a removable 200GB drive for the target. Occasionally, I'll see an error message in the morning that the backup had a problem writing to the target media. A single retry will almost always succeed. I would like TI to automatically retry a write error at least several times before halting with the error message. Perhaps this could be a user configurable option for the backup task?

 

First I love TI.
But, could you fix what has been broken since TI9?

With TI8, it took about an hour to backup 30GB to an external HDD using a linux boot cd.
Since then, that time can vary up to many days to backup (but to tell the truth I never waited more than 8 hours).

I'm using a Bartpe cd as a work around, but I think it's an extra burden on the user, and it is much slower getting to the Acronis menu than an Acronis made boot CD.

thanks

 

As part of my Norton True Image 10 Home Edition purchasing decision, I looked at many product reviews. On one Web retailer's review forum there were two reviews from angry techs pointing out that the software had a serious omission, about which it had failed to adequately notify purchasers. They each had discovered it after trying to use full drive image back-ups to restore drive contents on a new drive on a new computer (with new motherboard) in the case of a failed motherboard and/or drive. The image restoration only works if the image was generated by the same hardware to which the restoration is being made. Both were unhappy that they had the misfortune to find out about it after the fact. I reviewed the past year of this thread's entries; no discussion has mentioned this issue re TI 10 Home Edition.

Over the years I have had as many motherboard failures as I have had drive failures, usually in portables. One computer was irreparably damaged in an accident, although a fire would have created the same problem. While Norton TI 9.1 Workplace would have the ability to restore a drive image to new hardware through its optional Universal Restore application (as would be needed in all such cases), TI 10 Home Edition would not.

Can this added feature be incorporated into future versions of TI Home Edition? It would seem that, until such time, there should be plenty of clear warnings about this shortcoming in all TI 10 product information, or customers may feel mislead by current product claims.

 

That's not a fault of the backup program, that's a problem with Windows. When you restore an image to a drive in a system with a different motherboard, Windows may require a different HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) dll to function. The trick is to do the restore, but before booting from it, run a repair install of Windows to replace the hal.dll with the one appropriate to the new hardware.

There is nothing that TI (or any other image backup program) can do about this.

And Norton's product is Ghost, True Image is from Acronis

 

I would have to respectfully degree with your above statement and so will take the time to “spell it out”, in order maintain my earlier wish-list suggestion. There is bound to be something TI “can do about” it for their “Home and Home Office Solutions” customers because they already have done it for their “Corporate Solutions” customers by providing them a relatively inexpensive purchase software option, that is, to additionally purchase Acronis’s Universal Restore application to run with TI 9.1 Workplace.

I have an inherent distaste for the kind of corporate cynicism that permeates those marketing decisions which propose to incorporate a sort of misleading logical slight-of-hand through the omission of prominent disclosures of critical but typically unknown or misunderstood exceptions to marketing claims. Business accountability for such types of decisions is typically swift and costly, even deadly, when selling to the big guys in the corporate marketplace. Unfortunately, the little guys (one can imagine, not unlike many “Home and Home Office Solution” users in this case), unless able to somehow muster a class-action suit, are typically pretty much left in the weeds.

It may well be that the fact that Acronis provided an optional solution to their inherently more litigious and deeper pocketed corporate customers, but failed to do so for their “Home and Home Office Solutions” customers, while also omitting to prominently alert potential Home Edition purchasers within their prominently advertised product claim of the potential for an unanticipated and negative effect due to this missing capability in their Home Edition product, was an act of omission, rather than commission.

All the more reason to do something about it now.

It is only common sense that if there are Web thread contributions from techs who failed to anticipate the potential problem, then the problem is bound to be beyond easy anticipation for many, if not most, of the “Home and Home Office Solution” seekers. Accordingly, many, if not most Home Edition users could purchase the product with the expectation


(on the basis of the product’s unqualified marketing claim that

“Acronis True Image 10 Home creates the exact copy of your hard disk and allows you to instantly restore the entire machine including operating system, applications, and all the data in the event of a fatal system crash or virus attack — no reinstallations required!”

[the above was pasted from Acronis True Image’s TI 10 Home Edition's Product promotion page])


that they will be able to “instantly restore the entire machine including operating system, applications, and all the data in the event of a fatal system crash”, perhaps if that fatal system crash occurred when a motherboard failed (and, of course subsequently had to be replaced with a new one).

I know that I certainly just about did.

Meanwhile, in my view, the marketing material pasted above would be best qualified, perhaps simply, by adding an asterisked point as follows:

Acronis True Image 10 Home creates the exact copy of your hard disk and allows you to instantly restore the entire machine including operating system, applications, and all the data in the event of a fatal system crash* or virus attack — no reinstallations required!

*except in the case of key hardware failure and replacement. [?small print?]


Hmmm….somehow takes some of the buzz out of the claim, doesn’t it?


So, having said all this, I would reiterate my earlier suggestion that Acronis would be well served to modify the next build and/or version of TI 10 Home Edition (and if necessary their Universal Restore application) in order to provide users the same ~$29 option they currently provide to their “Corporate Solutions” Acronis TI 9.1 Workplace edition, that is, to offer their customers easy product driven ability to do full system restore from full system image backups in the case of all significant hardware (eg: motherboard) failure and replacement incidents.




PS: Please forgive my previous post’s inadvertent Acronis to Norton company naming error. Comes from too much product comparison reading at 2:00 in the morning.

 

What the Universal Restore feature does is exactly what I said had to be done when restoring to a new motherboard (or to a different drive controller). It does a replacement of the HAL with the necessary drivers to support the new hardware. See http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/ATISWin/universal-restore.html for the details of how it works.

If you want them to offer a $299 (not $29 as you stated) feature option for a $50 program, I don't think you'll be very convincing to many customers when they can do the same thing with the repair install.

 

Re your first point re restore mechanism: That's nice, but it is beside the point with respect to the suggestion I made in my wish list posts, which was to modify Acronis True Image 10 Home Edition so that it can run the application Acronis Universal Restore. When it comes to using computers, my priorities are ease of use and risk reduction, in keeping with what Universal Restore would provide me.

Re your 2nd point: I suggest you check your facts (see below). I made specific reference in my post to Acronis True Image 9.1 Workstation Universal Restore. A ten-fold upward misquote won't win you any arguments in the end, nor Acronis any sales.

Cut & Paste from Acronis site:

What is Acronis Universal Restore?

Acronis Universal Restore allows you to restore an image to different or replacement hardware (different CPU, motherboard, etc.) or to virtual systems. It provides complete disaster recovery by ensuring that systems can be restored to any hardware or virtual machine.

Please note that Acronis Universal Restore is an add-on option to Acronis True Image.
Acronis True Image 9.1 Workstation Universal Restore Price: $29.99

My note: Of course, to use it you would also need to run Acronis True Image 9.1 Workstation (Price: $79.99/license). (Currently the Universal Restore application will not work with Acronis True Image 10 Home Edition)

It seems odd to me to run into a forum poster so bound and determined to shoot down another forum poster's wish contribution to a wish list that playing fast and loose with facts and arguments becomes an integral part of the effort. Unwritten wish list rules might be: Everyone tells about what they wish the product would do for them. Those who read these ideas might be inspired to contribute their own wishes for the product. The application developers get good ideas from the list about what product changes the market might demand, and will invest in making them part of the product in accordance with their business plan. Seeking to engage other wish list contributors in argument by making specious arguments about their wishes amounts to bullying other forum contributors for putting their wishes out there, which just isn't part of the game.

Time to give it a rest, guy. Be .

 

My apologies, I didn't realize there was a Universal Restore Option to TI Workstation, I could only find the Server version. It is indeed only $29.99. I wonder what the differences are to justify such a disparate pricing.

I still stand by my original statement that the problem arises because of Windows and not TI. As for your "fast and loose" remark, I'll ignore it as I did my research, just didn't arrive at the same page as you did.

I never said it wouldn't be a nice feature to have.

I'm done here.

 

I'm not sure if anyone has stated these but i'm sure someone somewhere has but i'm not sure if Acronis has aproved it. However it would be the bigest single improvement for our company and i'm sure a great deal of others. The ablilty to do a restore and set a flag that once it's complete it simply reboots the system!! Currently i'm able to tell it to restore and it works great but once it's done it prompt's for you to hit "OK" or something along those lines that it's complete and then you have to manualy exit the program for the system to reboot. For those of use that work remotely it's a little hard to then drive to gain access to the location your attempting to restore.

Or if anyone has a solution that they have figured out how to do this please please let me know.

 

Dear Santa Clause,
For any early Christmas present, I would really appreciate including the following enhancements to True Image 10:
1. The ability to split archive files when backing up/using the automatic archives management feature. This will give the user the ability to copy a specific backup to CD/DVD if need.
2. Need to include a start date field start when creating scheduled tasks. This would be allow the user to create all scheduled tasks during a single session as opposed to remembering to create a task sometime in the future. Currently to create altenating weekly backups I'm having to change the system clock back one week to create the first schedule, then set the clock ahead one week to create the second schedule. All appears to work but what a hassel!! We really really need a start date field.
3. Provide the ability to validate only the newly created archive files, excluding any archives that reside in the folder from previous executions of the scheduled task. Currently when using the automatic archives management feature, it appears that TI 10 validates all archives located in the folder, and it takes forever to complete the task.

 

My wish for True Image V11 (which is probably due to hits the streets in around 3 months) is that prior to release it has been significantly better tested than all of its previous versions.

I am dreaming of course, but version 11 should merely consist of high quality simple functionality with all the bells and whistles ripped out. Less is more in this case.

F.

 

I'd appreciate the option of stopping the DVD/CD eject after backup completion, as I have a number of backups which are easier to keep separate. This would allow the various backups to run unattended

 

I'd be happy if they just made a version that worked.....LOL.

 

Hey,

Disk D1 is the second drive as far as XP Disk Manager is concerned. My C: drive is D0.
Why does Acronis not follow standard Windows drive numbering?
I know it is a Home user product, but this I found to be very disconcerting on first use of ATI.

 

This discrepancy is usually down to the fact that Windows and Linux can map their drives in different orders. This is not normally a TI problem as such.

F.

 

How Linux ennumerates drives has nothing to do with how Windows ennumerates drives.

Indeed, running Linux from a LiveCD for Ubuntu 7./04, sometimes, the USB drives are ennumerated first, other times, the drives on the SCSI controller are ennumerated first. I consider this to a bug in that LiveCD, but it still has nothing to do with Windows.