Some of my drives don't show up in True Image!

Hello all. This is my second question here. I currently have an evaluation copy of TI-09 (downloaded just a few days ago) and I’m trying to decide whether or not to purchase – though honestly it’s not looking good at this point.


On my computer, Windows XP SP3, I have two internal drives – a 76GB Raptor (C) and a 300GB Velociraptor (D) and two external drives – 500 GB MyBook (E) and 1TB MyBook (K). When I run Acronis, the D: and K: drives don’t even show up on the list for selection in the “Backup Wizard”. However, when I run the “Cloning Wizard” the D: and K: drives do show up on the list, but if I try to select either as the source disk I get an error message saying: "the harddisk with the unsupported structure cannot be selected as the source disk for cloning". It also doesn’t matter if I try Automatic or manual, I still can’t get past that first step of selecting the source disk (the other two [C & E] can be selected just fine). In other words, it is impossible for me to backup my D: or K: drives at all, backup or clone, neither method will work.


This seems to be a larger issue to the one I discovered last night: https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=232867


However, these are the internal drives formatted from within XP. All my drives work normally in the system, and it doesn’t seem to matter if I physically move them between SATA cables on the controller. Acronis seems to just like certain drives and not others. Why would Acronis call a standard, nothing special, “Plain-Jane” NTFS drive an “unsupported structure”? This makes no sense.


I'm actually quite disappointed with this as I've heard quite a few good things about Acronis and the description looked to be the perfect answer for my backup and disk cloning needs. However, as of now, either I’m doing something fundamentally wrong (wouldn’t be the first time ) or this software is seriously buggy. Any ideas?


Thanks

 

Version 9 is an old version. Do a trial with a more modern version like ATI 2009. This has the drivers for a bigger range of hardware. Some USB drives only work with the newer builds.

 

Sorry, I guess I might have been a little unclear. I am using Acronis® True Image Home 2009 (English), downloaded off their website last Tuesday. Is there a newer version?

Thanks,

 

Okay I understand. The latest official version of ATI 2009 is build 9709.

BUT if you talk to Live Chat they have provided on request special ISO files which contain custom boot disks. If you tell them about your hardware they may give you a boot disk that works for you. This wont help you backup within Windows but will enable you to backup and restore using a boot disk.

 

Thanks,

After reading through this forum, and taking into account the problems I'm having after only a couple days using this software, I'm beginning to get the impression that the very first statement from their website:

Acronis True Image Home 2009 - complete PC protection

is not exactly true. I'm just glad I haven't spent any real money on this yet!

 

If you find any better software let the forum know.

ATI 2009 works on my system with XP sp3. It took months but after advice from the users I now have full daily scheduled backups.

Having a backup which restores 100% of the time is worth the price of the software to me. But it has been the biggest investment of my time for any windows software that I have used.

Getting to grips with spreadsheets, databases and graphics packages has been a walk in the park compared to getting Acronis to work.

 

I can certainly understand that the world of backups and drive imaging is not a simple affair. After reading through some of the posts on this forum it is clear that many of the problems described are related to the more arcane and/or advanced features of the software. However, for Acronis to tell me off the bat that a simple NTFS hard drive, formatted and partitioned in XP (not even a boot partition), is an "Unsupported Structure" is beyond pale. To borrow the popular phrase, that simply does not compute. Heck, I can get freeware on the net that can clone a NTFS drive. There must be something else going on.

 

Matanuska, I had same issues and tried out Paragon and have had no problems and they will respond to your tech emails

 

Wow!

Thanks, this is exactly what I am looking for!

Paragon even runs on both W2k and XP! And they have a support forum too! I'm there!

I just hope Acronis doesn't have any hidden uninstal problems.

Thanks again,

Mat

 

I thought mentioning other backup programs here was against the AUP, and that such posts would be deleted?

 

Well, it's certainly not the reason for this forum, but when someone is having fundamental problems with Acronis software, it's very helpful to them to have somewhere to go.

 

If that were true then lots of threads would be missing.

Outright personal abuse directed at Acronis staff quite rightly is deleted.

The guys from the Acronis Helpdesk posting here in my opinion have an uphill task but they are trying, so that is good. It is a shame that there is just so many postings reporting problems. Then again Forums are for help so you should expect people here with issues about the software.

So thank you Acronis Support for posting here.

 

Go to any support forum and you will see problems as people post when they need support
I notice on the Paragon support forum a familar request for help "Boot CD wont recognise SATA drive"

and the same helpful people who post here providing suggestions.

Try the official Adobe Photoshop Elements if you want to hear about problems with a programme released by a major player.

The beauty here is that there are a lot of helpful people freely giving their time to try and help.

Having said that Acronis has not helped themselves by bloating up a programme that is very successful at its core task. Making and restoring images of system discs/drives.

 

Yes there are threads here about Uninstall problems. I think that Acronis provide a uninstall tool. Talk to Live Chat.