Thank God!

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by DanielLee, Sep 8, 2006.

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  1. DanielLee

    DanielLee Registered Member

    Joined:
    Jul 15, 2006
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    As my first post slips silently into the past I wanted to make a new post to relate my experience after losing all of my partitions to "one click no more" titled "Oh my God" which you can see here.

    https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=145936

    Here are some notes I wrote the day I lost my information........

    So let me get this straight, I am in the process of making an image of a partition and I select to pick my own options. One of those options is to load a version of Acronis Home Image to the image I am creating.

    Now the image is done and I want to check to be sure that the image works as I am just learning the program. So I reboot one of the options that come up ris "one click restore" (what I now call "one click no more"). I click on that and the next thing that happens is all of my partitions are eliminated and the entire hard drive becomes the sole possessor of the image I have just created. No additional warnings, no second choices just one click and all my information is no more! I have just spent a thousand hours learning how to protect my data from all kinds of threats and now with the program I have spent my money on to help me protect that data I click one button and its all gone with no warnings at all!

    Excuse me but that is insane, what were you people thinking? One click no more may be a great selling feature but it should be changed to "two click restore" (at the very least) with a warning to all those who don't read instructions (like me) of what they are about to do!

    What exactly is the big advantage of one click no more, that is saves me the one minute of time it takes selecting which image I want restored to a which location?

    I am seriously not pleased about this. The only way I will even be partially pacified is with a full refund and for Acronis to pay for the specialist who will get my data back within 48 hours and we all know that isn’t going to happen.

    ------------------------

    Back to the present.

    I am one of the lucky ones as I have the latest back up of most of my data which is 9 days old (a lot when you spend 12 hours a day on the computer and yes I know I need better back up management). I also have another computer which I can use to post to the Acronis forum and get programs with.

    I got some assistance on the forum, Menorcaman referred me to a post by Paul8 who did the same "one click no more" action that I did last May. It made me wonder what (if any) the dialog amongst the heads of Acronis may have said to each other about that event where the guy writes "For me it means loss of years of work". Perhaps the conversation goes something like this"

    Hey JR. did you hear about the guy who lost years of work using our program? Yes JB I did, if that happens over 100 more times we may have to do something about it".

    I downloaded True home image on September 4th, 4 months after the Paul8 post (who knows how many others there are) and the program still had not been changed to give some warning. Kind of makes Microsoft look prompt eh? I guess you can tell I am bitter about this. Read on if you want to know my experience after "one click no more".

    I have the Acronis Disk Manager and I used the "Recover partitions" feature several times following the instructions exactly, it did not detect any partitions.

    I start shopping around on the Internet, one of the programs I try is the trial version of Active Partition Recovery.

    http://www.partition-recovery.com/download.htm

    I make the bootable CD and it finds my partitions! I buy the program (since the trial version will not restore my partitions) and run the program.

    So now Active Partition has restored my partitions, I can use the preview feature to see that all my data is just sitting there intact! I click to save the changes, it asks me to pick a partition to make active which I do.

    I reboot but the computer does not start, I get the BIOS splash screen but then just a blinking cursor in the top left of the all black window.

    I use my Acronis image of partition one (active partition) which has the full version of True Image and go to restore my back up. A window opens which gives me a screen with three choices. 1) One click restore 2) Acronis Full version 3) Windows.

    I know not to press "one click no more" so I click on the Acronis true Image home. It takes me to the home page of that program.

    Now I select "Recovery" where it says "Recover the entire hard disk contents or restore individual files". After what I have just been trough with "one click no more" I don't like the way this reads. I don't want to recover the entire contents of the hard disk only one partition.

    I click on "Recovery" and it takes me to another page with a Wizard. I click next and get to a page called "Archive Selection - Please select an Archive in the tree below and click Next to restore the data this archive contains. I click on the CD drive where the image file is and it shows me that I have an image of Partition C and the size.

    I am now sweating and very resistant to clicking next as I know from experience that may not be given an chance to change on confirm the action. I don't click it but go back to the home page and the instructions (finally, stubborn me) to be sure I am doing things right.

    I go back to the image I want to restore and click next and it does go on from there giving me all the choices I expect from a program, I had just become paranoid from my "one click no more" experience.

    The instructions talk about a "Non-empty destination hard disk drive" and it says that I should get a dialog box asking me if I want to delete the existing partitions or not, I don't get this choice in the Restore Data Wizard and it concerns me.

    I select to just restore the MBR since I have seen with the Active Partition Recovery program that all the files which are supposed to be on partition one are in fact there, the only problem I have it that the computer won't boot so why change more than I have to?

    I select for the back up archive to be verified and click next. When it says that it will take 28 minutes I freak out again, why should it take 28 minutes to verify the little MBR image? I guess it is verifying the entire contents of the image and not just the part of that image I want to use i.e. the MBR part. Anyway I get nervous and cancel the operation and start over.

    I click the MBR check box image and select restore without the verification part. It only takes a second and then it says for me to reboot.

    I reboot removing the CD with the image as I do. I get a screen saying "Starting Acronis Loader.....Acronis loader fatal error: Boot drive (partition) not found. Press <Enter> to try to boot your OS. I press enter and it does not boot. Disappointing to say the least.

    I reboot with the image CD back in place and start True Image Home (full version). Guess what? Yes, all of my partitions are gone again! After a bit they appear again, whew!

    So I try again this time I select image I want to restore on the CD (not the MBR) and click next.

    I manage to get to the point of restoring the partition sector by sector and hope and pray that I have my hard drive back when this process is completed.

    It works! Two and a half day's after clicking "one click no more" I have my computer back to the way it was!

    Problem is that now every time I reboot it says that it is trying to load the Acronis loader and I have to click ok to load windows. I'll deal with that later, right now I am going to take some time off and relax, its been a stressful two days.

    I hope this helps someone somehow and I certainly hope they change one "click no more" to "Two click restore" at the very least.

    Adios for now,

    Daniel Lee
     
  2. seekforever

    seekforever Registered Member

    Joined:
    Oct 31, 2005
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    The lack of an obvious warning about the hazards of the one-click restore was pointed out months ago and Acronis was urged to improve the situation. Acronis may have made a slight improvement in the warning but certainly not the flashing lights, bells and sirens it should have.
     
  3. mark3

    mark3 Registered Member

    Joined:
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    Well Daniel, it's great that you were able to recover your work. Keeping a cool head and logical thinking certainly paid dividends.

    Your report was interesting and worth reading. Many who buy a program and have blind faith in it's ability often get burnt when they don't take the necessary precautions before using it. (Long time back I learnt that lesson well).
     
  4. Mascot

    Mascot Registered Member

    Joined:
    Apr 6, 2005
    Posts:
    64
    My personal opinion is that having to read manual and/or peruse message boards to find out a feature will wipe your disk completely and without warning, shouldn't be a "necessary precaution" in a product like this. It should virtually reach out of the screen and slap you silly when you try to activate such a function, not just silently go and do it with no indication what the consequence is.

    Acronis just doesn't seem to get this. Snap restore used to do the same thing. After complaints Acronis did add a warning. But it was so poorly phrased many "average joe" users won't have a clue what they're being warned about. It seems a bit to me that Acronis has good developers and knowledge of technology, but is woefully weak on people skilled in what constitutes a good user interface.
     
  5. pjiv

    pjiv Registered Member

    Joined:
    Oct 27, 2005
    Posts:
    75
    Sounds like Acronis startup recovery manager is installed, or maybe Disk Directors OS Selector is installed. Simpley remove these and you should be all set.

    If that does not work, you can rewrite the MBR using the Windows Recovery console.
     
  6. jelenko

    jelenko Registered Member

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    Jun 6, 2006
    Posts:
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    I could not agree more! Bunch of geeks sitting in a back room some where coding.
     
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