Trial: My opinions

Hi i've been using the trial for a few days and want to publish my opinions on this product.

Firstly this product has been a valuable tool in my latest reformat. I ghosted my computer before the format and certain minor things I forgot to backup the normal way I managed to restore in the new format One slight problem, which is more my fault, as restore permissions is defaulted to on, at one point acronis locked me out of my user directory, as it set it to the user SID from the pre format which obviously no longer exists. This gave me a perfect chance to test out the full restore functionality of the software (I could have fixed it, but thought it would be easier to ghost, plus I wanted to see how Acronis handled it). It rebooted and seemed to restore without a hitch however...
Bug! The system froze at the end of the restoration, the mouse wouldn't move, or the num lock wouldn't turn on etc (I've submitted this to pre-sale support, although with no response as yet (#1339910)) After a hard reboot however, everything seemed to be well, well apart from the fact that windows complained about not being shut down properly - assumingly due to the fact that it backups windows while its running. This could be better explained to users that this will happen, or perhaps delete the files which cause windows to think its had an ungraceful shutdown? Anyway after that I was backup and running. So I tried setting up an Acronis Secure Zone. Now this wasn't easy...

I set up a Secure Zone in windows, and set it up to take space from one of the partitons on one of my hard disks (not the same disk as windows is stored on) and install a 100GB secure zone.
It rebooted but then disaster... BOOTMGR IS MISSING! Again for a non-technical user this would be a serious showstopper and panic them. I tried to fix my MBR by booting from the vista DVD and running startup fixer, but to no avail. I then realised that Vista had installed the boot files on another drive than the OS drive, which Windows likes to do. Once I moved these files to the Windows partition it booted fine. Although i'm not sure what Acronis did to suddently break this, when i've never had a problem with windows boot files not being on the windows OS before.

After it booted Acronis resized the drive (without any data loss or anything it seems) and installed the secure zone. However the F11 prompt did not appear on boot. So I booted into windows deleted all the boot files from the non OS drive, uninstalled and reinstalled the secure zone, and then finally the secure zone worked and allowed me to boot into it! I couldn't help but think however that this is far too complicated for a lot of people? Surely this could be improved upon?

Overall I'm impressed with this product. Having been using Ghost 2003 for years due to uncertaintly with Hot Imaging I am pleasently suprised by how it works actually and doesn't seem to be any major problems with hot imaging (although how it handles files being changed during a backup I don't know!) and it has been very handy with replacing some files such as some itunes preferences which I wouldn't manually backup. I am considering buying this product and probably will do, although I have a few more days to test it out first!

 

File during a backup aren't touched. You can even create new files while the backup is running or alter old once. These files won't be in the backup because at the point the snapshot is made the snapman driver activates a driver which freezes the states and begin backupping up that state. But the OS doesn't see this because the driver remembers al the changes that are made and commits them after the backup is done

clear enough I hope!

 

supergeek, TI is the best product I have ever bought. It has helped me so many times and for me, it works flawlessly.

 

I'm laughing and crying at the thought that ATI 11 might be flawless (although you might have been commenting on another version, 11 is the only one Acronis offers for sale for home users).

I don't mean any offense but ATI in any version is certainly not flawless in general. All version have problems running on some hardware setups-that's pretty much unavoidable unless you have an essentially closed and restricted platform like Apple's.

ATI11 is loaded with bugs; many of them harmless; some of them critical to key features like running scheduled incremental backups, performing file-by-file-backups, being able to restore from the ATI bootCD. . .

It's possible to run only full tasks and experience no problems on many hardware platforms but it won't perform that way for everyone. And regardless of the platform, some of the bugs are unavoidable unless you jsut ignore things like progress indicators, uselss alerts. . . If ATI performs flawlessly for you, and you are using version 11, you are very lucky.

I don't mean to disparage the product generally. I think ATI 8, 9, and 10 were excellent products; ATI 10 is the best home user backup product Acronis every produced, arguably, that anyone has produced. And I've used ATI many times to restore drives. I've used ATI since version 7 or so and found versions up through 10 to be pretty darned reliable after getting past the first couple of builds of a release. ATI 11, I hope, someday will be as well written and up to the quality and performance of prior releases. But ATI 11 is the reason I have had to stop recommending ATI to any of my clients; it's just too embarrassing to make all the apologies.

I suposed the reason it matters so much to me is that I know what promise ATI 11 holds.

 

shieber, your comments are actually misleading and making false accusations, and I will explain why.

Firstly, I never said that TI 11 IS flawless in general. No program or application is flawless.

I said it has worked for me flawlessly, which is a 100% accurate statement, because whatever I have told TI 11 to do, it has done it without any errors. Thats defined as having worked flawlessly for me.

Notice carefully my statement: "It has helped me so many times and for me, it works flawlessly."

Notice I said, "for ME, it works flawlessly"

No mention there about the program being perfect and flawless in general. In fact, in another post I have made I discuss this exact issue that no program is perfect. There doesn't exist even one that works perfectly for everyone, all the time. So why do you expect Acronis TI 11 to?

I am now ready for your apology

 

Speaking of apology. Now that there is an official response.........
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=199764

 

In my experience it hasn't been flawless.

All I wanted was a backup program that I could schedule and it would just run...
Full, 6 Differentials, Full, 6 Differentials, Full, 6 Differentials, ...

The Backup Location looked great because it would just clean up the old ones.

Well,

I thought doing a backup/verify/shutdown would be a no brainer, but its not.
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=194806

Ok, I can live with that.

Then I was suprised to find that my backups that I specified a password for in the backup task were not password protected.
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=196050

OK, there's an anoying work-around for that.

Then when I finally hit the Backup Location Size Quota I end up with a mess.
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=201428

So I have to set the Backup Location size to unlimted and remember every few weeks to go and delete the older backups manually.

I have hope that Acronis will release a new build that will bring the product up to an acceptable level. (Especially since I bought 3 copies).

Would I recommend it to anyone?

 

I already apologised to Mustang.

In the words of Albert Einstein: "I think and think for months, for years; 99 times the conclusion is wrong, but the hundredth it is right.