TI9 Disappoints

I'm not sure how much is bugs and how much is just mediocre implentation of new features over TI8. Plus some other big issues true with TI8 and TI9 which i can't believe exist.

Here's what I've noticed so far:

1) When you install TI9, if you have a Acronis Secure Zone, it asks you if you'd like to delete it. Sure! I'd love to delete my Acronis Secure Zone with my backups! Go right ahead -- enjoy! (sarcasm)

2) In updates of TI8, if the Startup Recovery Manager needed to be updated, it would do it -- on reboot, or whatever. In TI9, if you boot into Startup Recovery Manager, you'll see it's still TI8. Maybe you have to delete the Acronis Secure Zone in order to have the TI9 version installed. Great -- what am I supposed to do with my backups?

3) In both TI8 and TI9, I cannot find any way to move my backups from the Acronis Secure Zone. This is absolutely awful. The only way to do it (that I can find) would be to restore each one, and create a new backup of that. No problem, that'll only take a few hours. (sarcasm)

4) It would be nice to otherwise manipulate the images in the Acronis Secure Zone -- e.g., editing the comments.

5) In TI8 and TI9, when you want to create an image of your boot partition, it takes you through the whole wizard, and then tells you to reboot. Then you have to do the entire wizard again in the Acronis Startup Manager version. This is ridiculous. There's no way to write our selections to a text or XML file in the Windows version, and then read it from the boot version? In Powerquest Drive Image, you don't even have to interact with the boot version at all when you backup or restore the active partition from Windows. If it needs to do it on boot, it does it without any user interaction, and then boots to Windows.

6) In TI8, you are given the option to save various preferences, but in truth none of them are sticky. Toolbars always come back to their defaults, and anything set in the Options are as well. Again, this should be a simple matter to program.

7) In TI9, one of the big new features is supposed to be the file-level backup. I really don't see what the big new feature is at all, and what advantages over any other file-based backup solution. The fact that it's a TIB really makes it somewhat inconvenient, as you have to mount it through TI. Why not just create a Zip file? I don't get it.

In TI9, there are options for Pre/Post commands, but virtually no documentation on this. Furthermore, there are Pre/Post backup, but not restore. I have my hopes as to what this might be, but the documentation tells me nothing.

9) I make frequent images of my Windows system partition and try as much as possible to keep my data in a second partition. Windows and Windows programs don't always make this easy. As hard as you try, some of your data always gets overwritten on restore. For example, CuteFTP forces you to have your site profiles in Docments and Settings.... MailWasher Pro keeps all its data too. And it's not configurable. So what I'd like to see is a way to automatically back up certain files or directories before restore, and restore them afterwards. I was hoping that this is what was being offered in TI9, but if so, I can't figure out how to do it.

10) I applied for, and was accepted to, the Acronis beta program. However, after that I never heard from them. I guarantee you a lot of the problems with TI9 would have been reported had I been involved in the beta.

-Jeremy

 

Particularly agrre with point 5 : it is a pity that contrarily to others TI isn't able to boot itself into operating mode when you try a restore from windows for an acive partition. Ghost does is easily for years now.

A simple "script" would do it whatever type it would be
( if Symantec Ghost 6 can do it why not ACronis TI)

This no-feature has allways very much irritated me

Other points of less interest to me, since no more use secure zone. But I agree : whenusing it I was astonished that the images are so well secured that one can even not burn them to CD or "backup" them. I did it once in Secure Zone, than another time to HD then burn
( never forget : any hard drive can fail, even the backup one !!!! A DVD is less likely to loose data, and can be secured at another place)

I think that TI should absolutely remember what it has to do when rebooting the PC itself.