Acronis True Image WISH-LIST thread

add the feature universal restore to true image home 2009
we can buy separately, apart

 

Good idea. This would be a great feature to include in ATI 2009.

 

Add Drive encryption and the ability to restore an individual encrypted partition.

 

http://www.securstar.com/products_drivecryptpp.php

works perfectly with Acronis

Drive Crypt Plus is the only encryption program that I have been able to find that works with imaging. If anyone knows of any others I would be interested. It would be nice if Acronis could build this sort of thing in but I'm not holding my breath

 

Would be nice if we had the choice to use date/time as part of the backup name in place of the incremental numbering system i.e. 1, 2, 3, & (1)1, (1)2, (2)1, (2)2 etc.

e.g. mybackup(25/01/09 13:23)

This would make it much easier to choose the backup that you want.

Also multi-delete would be useful, before 2009 you could just delete them from the destination, but this now upsets TI. If you have a long list of full backups it's a pain to remove them!

 

Have option for Quick Validate.

As I understand from spending much time perusing this forum each validate
reads the entire backup set

Currently, if I do a full backup and then 30 incremental backups:
full backup is 200GB
each incremental is about 1GB
validating after every backup will have done
31 times 200GB, or 6200GB of reads of the full backup .tib
30 reads of first incremental
29 reads of 2nd
28 reads of 3rd
...
1 read of last
for a total of 1GB*(n)*(n+1)/2 or 465GB + 6200GB or 6665GB total!
Note: the factor of (n)*(n+1)/2 is for sum of 1,2,3...n integers.

If we assume read/write speed is 100MB/sec then it will have taken 18.5 hours
for the validation, but only 1.85 hours for the actual backups. Even if we
assume some overhead time, this factor of 10 validate time/backup time seems
excessive, and would tend to put a very large amount of wear and tear on the drive.

We need an option to do a "Quick Validate" which would only validate the most
recent backup file, and perhaps have the option to do a full validate after a
given number of incrementals (or differentials).

Because of the time involved I only valiidate backups every
few weeks.

TI 2009, build 9709.

 

1. Possibility to do a backup of scheduled tasks.
So after new installation one doesn't have to create these tasks from the scratch. Very often there are plenty of such tasks. Furthermore theirs definitions can be really complicated. So manual restore can be a time intensive job. With backups of scheduled task the user could save a lot of time.


2. Possibility to create copy of tasks. Just in order to define some task,
a little bit different from the existing one. It would help to avoid errors
in task creation and save the user time.

 

The word you need is "thread", not "threat."

Don't worryt about your poor English; many people on this
forum will be very happy to help you.

Best regards
Chris

 

Hi all,

This is my first REAL post in this forum, so plaese don't flame me!

The feature on my wish list is an addition to the Acronis True Image Home 2009 scheduling options:

There is an option to set a task to execute at any given time the user chooses, including at system startup.

Would it be possible for an option also be added for the user to choose system shutdown?

I would really like to see an option that allows me to back up whatever I want automatically when I shut the machine down.

Thanks and regards
Christopher Souter
(Sydney, Australia)

 

Very good, for checking the integrity of (older) backups it must be secure to check a created file- / backup-checksum like MD5.

Helpful was a right-click ‘disable task’ / ‘enable task’, too.

 

I hate wizards.
I also guess, some of you will hate them too.
Therefore it would be nice to get offered a choice every time a backup task is being created or reviewed:
- backup task wizard
or
- backup task editor

In the same context: If backup task is really complicated (to get such a task it is sufficient to apply a long list of changes made since previous backup in the task comment field), the task summary pop-up prevents a big part of ATI gui from being visible - irritating for the user.
The pop-up time-out is too long to be not disturbing for user.
But simultaneously it is too short to be helpful for review of task definition.

 

The ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING aspect of validation is that what should take less than 1 hour actually WASTES a whole day.

This is NOTHING to do with incrementals.

I used a complete image each time, and set the default to validate upon creation.

So long as I manually select from the Tree a folder for the image, only the latest image is validated.

I think I found that manually selecting a BACKUP LOCATION then validation was NOT restricted to the new image - but ALL THE 25 OLDER PREVIOUSLY VALIDATED images got done yet again ! !

When I use a task to perform the creation, it ignores my defaults, and either
1. Performs absolutely no validation at all; or
2. Validates this PLUS ALL THE 25 OLDER PREVIOUSLY VALIDATED images.
The defaults have no effect - it is determined by whether or not I add a separate validate action to the task.

I now prefer to NOT validate upon creation, and instead manually select the newly created image and validate that - it saves so many hours of my life.

Regards
Alan

 

This is the test, if all Backups are valid / available.
Therefore it was helpful, to validate validated (older) backups via MD5 or ..., only.

 

It is a TOTAL waste of time to validate previous images.

YOU NEVER NEED IT FIXING unless you are going to use it.

THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO FIX IT.

A new image is created and validated, and fails validation.
I immediately correct this by creating and validating an image until Acronis gets it right.
I now have the image I originally wanted, plus any virus signature updates and trivial things that change as the seconds tick by.

When an ancient image is validated and fails, what are you going to do ?
You cannot recreate it because life moves on - You have probably upgraded some applications, and replaced others. There is no going back.

The ONLY time it is sensible to revalidate an ancient image is if you are about to bet your system on it - if it has become invalid then choose an image that is still valid.

Most times images are there as backups in-case the worst should ever happen, so 90% of the time you will never need the image, so why waste your life revalidating it 25 time times over and over again as each new image is created ?

One of my partition backups takes 6 minutes to create, plus 4 minutes to validate. I have just computed MD5 and computation took 4 minutes also. (value is d5873f19d13cf106f6cfcbc045e6e4e1).

This 4 minutes is the time taken to read the entire file over a USB2 interface.
I strongly suspect that had the image been on the internal drive the MD5 computation would have been a little bit faster, and Acronis validation would have been much faster.

MD5 computation is quite intensive. It uses very long multi-byte values through-out with very complex computations for which the principle use WAS to detect fraudulent manipulation of a file/message, but it also will detect accidental corruption. I think the internal HDD can probably deliver the data faster than the processor can compute it.

The Acronis validation is reported as umpteen checksums per GB.
A checksum could be 8 bit summation, which guarantees a single error is detected, but two or more errors have a 0.5% chance of not being detected.
Just possibly Acronis might use a 16 bit summation, which gives 65000 to 1 odds that multiple errors will be detected.
I really doubt that Acronis waste effort using an anti-fraud MD5 computation.

My measurement demonstrate no difference in time taken when the image is on a USB2 connected drive, and my arguments suggest that if data transfer time is removed the computation burden of MD5 is far more than needed, and probably much longer than a simple checksum Acronis validation.

Finally, how could a previously validated image become invalid ?

Elsewhere I have read that Acronis uses MOST of the available RAM when creating an image, and any defect in the remote corners of RAM will corrupt the image that is being created. Most users are not aware of a RAM defect because most applications never use the far corners, which is why they think their RAM is O.K. and blame Acronis instead.

Questions, things I do not know :-

1.
When validating an image, does Acronis again fill the remote corners of RAM so a defect will invalidate the image ?

2.
If an image was validated when created, how could it subsequently become invalid ?

3.
If it has become invalid, is this just bad luck with a bit of RAM, with a good chance that you will strike lucky if you keep on trying ?

Or can an image held on the HDD become corrupted ?

And if an image on a remote partition can become corrupted,
Should we stop worrying about Acronis and start panicking over corruption of C:\Windows\system32 etc. etc. ?

Regards
Alan

 

Hello, my wish is to add the option to make a backup, while the pc is turning off. so you push the turn off button, go away, TI is backing up and turns the pc off. Easy? yes!

 

Include an ABOUT box where you can easily access the build of TrueImage

Include a capability to check for updates via internet

 

I'd like to see a few features that make it easier to create a one-click shortcut for a backup task.

Currently, you have to manually create a shortcut with the following syntax:

"C:\Program Files\Common Files\Acronis\TrueImage\TrueImageService.exe" /script:"[driveath\scriptname.tis]"

It would be nice if TrueImage had some commands to make it easier. How about a right-click context menu option in the Task window: "Create Shortcut to Task" or something like that.

Also, it would be nice to be able to have the backup task show a progress indicator when you run it from the shortcut. Add an option like "/progressn" or something like that.

Hopefully we'll see these in the next version.

 

Hi This is the first time in this forum and as a Silver Surfer and a novice I am Lost on my recently purchased Acronis True Image 2009. I find the instructions very confusing and I would have liked a workshop with illustrations of the various windows so that it can be clearly followed without so much Technogabble . Lizzie

 

Search the forum for any post by user groverH and download and read the guides listed in his signature, the guide may not be for the version you have but not much has changed regarding backup and restore over the various versions.
You should also look in the sticky at the top of the forum "Product Links, FAQs & Useful Threads (updated Feb 26, 2009)" for useful advice, groverH's guides are listed there but I am not sure if he has updated them recently.

 

Hi Como, Thanks very much for your advice I have printed off the PDF Documents by GROVERH as you suggested and they are what I was looking for although they do not refer to Acronis 2009 they are very helpful It must have taken groverH many hours to do this and I do find that all the people in these forums are so kind . I just wish the people who sell these programs would give a thought for the newbies to computing Thanks again Lizzie

 

I assume you have down loaded the user manual from the Acronis website, whilst not as user frendly as grover's guides it has up to date information on the latest version and contains screen shots of the various wizards.

 

Give much better support (and simpler) for RAID 1 configuration (and other raid setups) but for me RAID 1 would be priority although Raid 0 would also be high on the list.

-Macpeteo

 

Would be nice if....
The install TI2K9 (Home) dvd had an extra routine written into it to expedite new users to download the most recent point release & eliminate USB driver issues...

Most home users wouldn't have any idea what caused their USB devices to suddenly stop working... Jus' my 2 cents' worth FWIW.
mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Jan

 

ESSENTIAL CHANGES TO ATI AND ITS CUSTOMER SUPPORT.
I have been shocked that in my moment of need I find that I CANNOT contact Customer Support without buying a paid for incident service, and that ACRONIS rely on the Wilders forums and the community, with only haphazard attention from their technical support people.

30 day support is NOT enough. What is needed in addition is a free non-time- limited single incident report for assisting with a problematic restoration. This can be made dependent on a VERIFY ARCHIVE having been done at the time of the backup. All new builds of ATI should make VERIFY ARCHIVE the default, and if it is turned off, one forfeits the right to the free incident support.

This post is also a little test of ACRONIS. Will they rise to the challenge?

 

Let's see, let me count the ways:
1 Customer support, not forums
2.Easy to understand instructions for everyone, not just computer geeks
3. Backups that really work.
4. Consolidations that automatically update changes to ONE backup, not lists and lists of backups.
5. Backups that occur at shutdown, not in the middle of work time.
6. I'm sure there are many more, but I just gave up on Acronis and deleted it from my computer.