Acronis True Image WISH-LIST thread

I downloaded and bought TI 9 and it does not have uninstall option be nice if I could uninstall and then install the new build. - feature has been already requested

 

Why, when several years ago, PowerQuest's Drive Image allowed a backup of just the C (Active Partition) with the MBR included can't Acronis' TI give up that option? Sure we would have to boot out of Windows by using the restore disk to get the MBR included in the image, but so what? Would save us having to be 'safe' and backup *all* partitions to get the MBR. This would give the simple option to backup one's active partition only, but retain the MBR. Doesn't sound that hard to me, but it would be welcomed by all of us I would venture. Backing up useless saved data and files on separate partitions just to be sure of the MBR, is such a waste of space and time, if all one is after is a sure restorable image of the active partition.

...Allen

 

Hi, Allen L.

If it's Useless Data, why not delete the the Data and or Partition before you create an Image, saving space and time?

Take Care,
TheQuest

 

Templates for file/folder backup, such as 'My Documents', email from popular clients, various browser profiles, and the one I would like most is 'system state' (same stuff as XP system restore).

 

A chkdsk / HDD surface scan utility that is superior to chkdsk /r /f which allows Acronis users to scan and recover any bad sectors/files/index errors before making an image. - feature has been already requested

 

I mis-stated that it was 'totally' useless data...what I meant was files such as movies or large files that may or may not be used later, so they wouldn't be a critical loss if they were later lost, but may take up 10 to 20 GB's.

My main point is the fact that it would not be that hard for Acronis to offer us the ability to back up the Active OS partition that takes so long to set up from scratch and changes daily, the ability to safely know we could restore just that partition in case of a 'crash'. As stated, this was done 'out of Windows' by Drive Image for years by booting with a floppy disk. Some of us backup our critical data from other partitions other ways with different programs, and always will. Just the option to stay booted to Windows is not that important to most of us. If fact reading the archived posts shows that a majority of users either don't use Windows actively or backup 'out' of Windows with the restore disk at the present time. This would give the ability to do a fast backup of the active partition that may only be 4GB or less in 5 minutes or so.

...Allen

 

Restore Image to bigger partition

I did a search for this and didn't come up with anything.
What I would like is to do a restore of a image to a larger partition then the size the image was created from. I have installed bigger drives and wanted to increase the size of the partitions but when doing a restore with the BOOT CD it recreated the partition to the size the image came from. VERY annoying. - feature was implemented

 

Recovery should leave the file dates unchanged. This is very important for a backup!!! At least it should be an option!

I tried the new files and folders backup option in True Image 9.0 (build 2289). The backup itself seems OK, but when I restore the files to a different location the dates on the files and folders are reset to the restore date (both Created and Modified).

I then tried the new selective recovery option, again restoring to a different location. Again the dates are reset to the restore dates!

True Image (7& always restored files with the original dates. This was of course with a full restore. I assume that True Image 9 still does that, although I have not yet tested it.


See also:
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=100796
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=101016

 

Overhaul the Database Tool: Part of Scheduled Task instead of Global Option

...after all, the script I want executed shuts down a database program that only runs on one partition. The current setup bounces my Domino server several times while performing a scheduled task with several partitions, once for each partition, when the database files only reside on a single partition.
If the ability to run the scripts was tied to a scheduled task, I could create a schedule for the Domino partition that runs the script and another schedule for all other partitions that doesn't.

 

One problem I saw with ti9 was that another program like auto update caused the computer to reboot between backing up to DVD. How can a backup program allow scheduled tasks to happen is beyond me.

 

I'd like to have this feature as well! - feature has been already requested

 

It would be great to have a small standalone viewer application enabling images to be explored without having to install True Image. i.e. have image and viewer on a memory stick - then can keep files etc. as an image and view on any computer. It would also be good to have this as web-enabled - i.e. can store image and viewer on a website and open images for ftp copy of required folders and files.

 

Dear folks,

I would like to put in a VERY strong request for file-based rather than sector-based incremental backups. Since my impression is that some people (including possibly developers at Acronis) don't appreciate the importance of this, let me explain what sector-based backups do to my workflow.

First, I have Diskeeper set up to intelligently monitor the fragmentation of my drives and defragment them when it seems necessary. This is a smart strategy for keeping my performance up. I've run experimental benchmarks, and I know obsessive optimization is pointless; a modest level of fragmentation really doesn't cause a performance hit that anyone besides benchmark geeks would be able to detect. But run for a month or so without defragmentation and I *WILL* see a marked difference. And it's easy to forget to optimize if you're doing it manually and when you finally notice the problem it's going to take a long time to get the disk cleaned up. So, as I said, smart strategy is to let the software automatically take care of it. That's what it's for.

As a photographer, I also frequently work on moderately large files. I try to set up separate partitions for each of my projects (simplifies back up and helps maintain data integrity) but a project nearing completion still might end up with 30-50 GB of files, with lots of them several hundred MB in size.

So there I am creating or modifying maybe a gigabyte worth of data in a day. Because the files are large, any time I save changes to them they will almost always get written back to the disk in a large number of fragments. Diskeeper cleans that up for me nicely overnight .

And then True Image comes along and says, "Oh my, look at all these files that have changed!" (because a bunch of sectors have been moved around). " I will be a good and dutiful backup program and perform a 20 GB incremental back up, because 20 GB worth of files are different!

This is insane. Not only does it force my backup hard drive to write over old backups unnecessarily because it fills up WAY too fast, but it makes porting the backups to off-site storage a real pain. Since the incrementals are unpredictably but sometimes vastly inflated, I end up having to run a brand new full backup far more often than I should, just so I can insure that I have clean and relatively compact backups to port to removable media that I can take off-site.

To put it concisely, sector-based backups are simply not a good idea when one is doing regular disk optimization and incremental backups, and especially not if one doesn't have totally unlimited backup storage space.

Polite rant mode (how's that for an oxymoron? <g>) off.


pax / Ctein
[[ Please excuse any word-salad. ViaVoice in training! ]]
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-- Ctein's Online Gallery http://www.ctein.com
-- Digital Restorations http://photo-repair.com
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A bit off-topic , but...... what the hell.......

Isn't NTFS (and FAT) a crap file system. I've observed many a time when there is plenty of contiguous space left on a partition/disk, but NTFS insists on writing files sized much smaller than this contiguous space all over the place resulting in massive fragmentation over time.

While there are certainly some clever people at MS, there are also plenty of people who haven't a clue about good design.

 

Build 2302 Annoyance: Message says you can cut-and-paste in the serial number during install--you can't, not under WinXP Pro SP2 anyway.
Other minor annoyances from 2289 have gone away, so. . . thanks!

Oh, here's another: Restoring from multiple DVDRs, it doesn't see the first file (after inserting disc 1 per message), so it asks you to put the last file disc back in. After that, it will read the first file as it should. Same thing happened on two computers with two different sets of backup DVDs.

 

Team up with Paragon Ext2FS anywhere to enable mounting of Linux Ext2 and Ext3 images as drives in Windows. - feature has been already requested

 

A Response to cutting and pasting in the serial number, Yes you can copy and paste the serail number (by keyboard only) copying and pasting won'y work using a mouse or at least won't work pasting using a mose but using the keyboard command (Ctrl + C) To Copy and (Ctrl + V) To Paste, This keyboard command works

 

The last post (not a wish list item) has been split to its own thread here.

 

I've tried searching for this but haven't found anything.

I'd like to see a tool (command line preferrably) for accessing .TIB archives and recovering files from other operating systems. Chiefly Mac OS X, but if a simple little recovery tool could be made open source, then maybe others could port it to other operating systems.

This would make archives more reliable over time since they could be recovered from in the future without needing a computer that can run the software that created them.

 

I would like to see True Image have the ability to restore an image to a new, larger hard disk, and have a choice to have the partition size automatically adjusted to fit the new larger drive without having to use another separate partition manager application to adjust the partition size. - feature has been already requested

 

Multiple Jobs

I'd like to be able to start multiple jobs from the UI. I can only start one at a time because the "Operation Progress" dialog is modal. - feature has been already requested

 

Standardized Keyboard Shortcuts

I can't do certain operations from the keyboard. For example, how can I rename a job from the keyboard? I have to figure out which icon I need to click -- and the icon artwork isn't so intuitive.

It would be nice if I could rely on the same keyboard shortcuts that other popular programs, or even Windows itself supported. For example, I should be able to run the selected job by pressing F5, or edit its name by pressing F2.

A context menu wouldn't hurt, either.

 

Fix The Grammar

I'd like to see a release of TrueImage that made the error messages more readable and the UI clearer. There are many grammar errors -- simetimes, so severe that clarity is affected. - feature has been already requested

 

Copy and Paste from UI

I wish it was easier to copy log entries from the UI. That would make it really easy to show the messages to other people, such as when posting here in the support forums.

I've found that I can save a log entry to a file, but this generates an XML file. Are such files acceptable for posting to this fourm?

 

Recoverable Full Image

I don't like to use incremental images; I'd rather backup a full image.

I've found that TrueImage will open the target full image and truncate it if it already exists. If the backup operation subsequently fails, this deletes the previously available full image backup.

That isn't very robust!

I wish the program would open a temporary file. Then, if the backup operation runs to completetion successfully, the program can delete the old file and rename the temporary file to the old file's name.

Because it takes more space (up to twice the space during the backup operation, when both files exist), this might need to be a switchable option. - feature has been already requested