True Image Disk Clone works sometimes...

Still no satisfactory answer from Acronis

Cheers,
Johnny.

 

Dear All,

I am extremely disappointed with Acronis' silence on this problem. Have any of you received a similar silent treatment?

Thanks,
Johnny.

 

Do you have an official problem ticket submitted?

 

yes.

still nothing.

 

Hello Johnny,

Post the Acronis Support query number that you received from them by email. With luck, one of the Acronis Support Moderators will pick it up and provide some feedback.

Regards

 

Check your PM.

 

I cannot clone either from Windows. Acronis gets to the point where it says "press any key" without copying anything to the new disk. I will now try with a recovery CD. The last time my HD died, I had imaged everything using Acronis v. 9 and was only able to retreive the files from the image, but still had to install Xp again, plus waste a week tweaking XP, re-installing programs and digging for licences. So Imaging can go wrong also. Giving this one more try with version 10. With something as tricky as cloning and Imaging, a responsive techinical support team is essential. If they dont answer requests for support.....

Carel Struycken

 

Johnny, I have the EXACT same problem as you while trying to clone drives within Windows. My system's behavior with TI-10 Home is a "clone" of yours, pun intended even thought this issue is definitely not funny. My experience is also version independent among versions 8 through 10, inclusive. I haven't tried the rescue disk procedure, but it looks like I will have to do so. I submitted a technical support request, ticket #904545, on February 2nd and still have not received a response, other than a canned auto-generated email receipt. Today, I submitted an online Customer Service complaint and plan to give them another five days to respond, which to my way of thinking is probably too generous. I hope Acronis takes responsibility for this problem very soon, because it is a lot of work for a single customer to have to get a company to obey U.S. consumer law when they are not inclined to do so voluntarily. It can be done, but it is a pain. I just wished we all could get the product and service for which we paid. It would be so much simpler. Thanx for keeping this issue going. Good luck...

 

I also like to have a cloned disk as a quick backup. I had no problem with the Acronis 8.0 software. I used it to clone several disks. I recently upgraded to version 10 and since then, mine acts just like yours. It reboots, Acronis goes through the steps, and after 60 seconds or so, says the transfer is complete and press any button to restart. I know it takes much longer than 60 seconds to clone a 120gb disk with 40gb on it. After the reboot, I swap the cables to the drives like directed and of course, the new drive is still blank so it won't boot. I have tried this several times and have emailed tech support and received no response. I am very disappointed since 8.0 worked so well and 10 does not. I am using the other backups for emergencies, but I still like to have that cloned disk to start with like you do.

 

I have had no problems using XP - I used clone the same way as my backup.
I have now installed Vista and it drops out at the same time as yours..........
Oh well, I'll try again and report back.

 

Re: True Image Disk Clone doesn't work...

I think I'm having the same problem. I bought TI 10 last night to help in migrating my XP O/S and data from an old drive (40 GB WD) to a new drive (160 GB Seagate). System is Dell 2400, XP SP2, 1 Gig RAM. Two partitions - one FAT with Dell diags, one NTFS for O/S, apps, and data. I unplugged the CD-ROM drive and put the new Seagate on there. BIOS recognized it. I've tried running TI with the same partition layout, with automatic re-size and with manual layout. Each time it reboots, goes to 100% on "Analyzing Partitions", 100% on "Locking Partitions", on "Checking Partitions" it goes immediately to 50% and after about a minute it goes to 100% and flashes the next screen telling me to disconnect the old drive upon shutdown. When I disconnect the old drive, move the new drive to drive zero on the primary controller, and turn it back on I get a beep and boot failure. If I put the old drive back on and start it up - it boots fine. I've got about 25 Gig on the old drive and I can't believe it's copying any of it - it goes way too fast.

I figure I'll try it from a recovery CD tonight. This is the only reason I bought the product. I'm a bit frustrated. Sent e-mail last night and got canned auto-response. No response yet.

Eric

 

ecm56,

This will work. I understand your hardware limitations with the Dell 2400.

Have both HDs in the computer. Boot to WinXP and from Disk Management partition the second HD into three. The first partition will be 50 MB. Your choice of sizes from here but the third partition needs to be 40 GB plus. I'd make it 100 GB as a future data partition. Run True Image and create backup images of your Utility partition and the C: drive, writing the images to the third partition on your 160 GB HD. Remove the 40 GB HD from your computer and install the 160 GB HD in the master position. Dell use cable select. Boot to the TI CD and restore the backup images to the first and second partitions. Restore the Utility image first. Then restore the WinXP image. Boot to WinXP.

Edit.... Number of partitions.

 

Software plugs removed. Let us please keep the subject matter in the Acronis Support forum more or less centered around Acronis.

 

Dear All,

Here is why clone disk sometimes doesn't work (most of the time) from Windows: when acronis reboots from the windows environment, it loads windows services, etc... for some unknown reason, there is a collision of things windows services (or whatever) and windows components that acronis needs do not load properly. Then Acronis clone disk fails.

The rescue disk loads everything acronis needs so acronis clone disk always works from the rescue boot disk.

When acronis works, and you do a clone disk, the entire disk (all of the partitions including the Dell "funny maintenace partition) is supposed to be cloned. If the entire disk is not cloned, you have other problems, maybe even acronis problems.

I do not understand why acronis can't make clone disk work from windows (just like the rescue boot cd).

The most frustrating thing is emailing acronis tech support. Forget about it. They will make you do a ton of crap (generate nfo file, take photos of the screen, etc...) and then after all that, sorry we don't know... Phone instead and hopefully you will get someone who knows something. In any case, this isn't the first report, but when you call in, acronis tech support will act as if it were. The most disappointing thing is that this is still busted - and acronis had well over 1 year to fix it.

yep, I'm not too happy about this.

ciao,
johnny.

 

Hi,

I'm currently using Acronis Workstation 9.1 (it uses the same engine as True Image) to attempt to CLONE my original 40GB HDD in my IBM Thinkpad T41 laptop running Win XP Pro SP2 to a new 160GB HDD installed in the removeable Ultray Bay Slim carrier positioned in the place of the CD-ROM drive. As described many times in this thread; having chosen the CLONE option and selected either the 'automatic' or 'manual' mode (it made no difference) and then 'reboot': the PC did indeed reboot and Acronis loaded and indicated the the cloning was 'successful'. However, NO CLONING TOOK PLACE. I tried 1) disabling my Zone Alarm Security Suite 6.5 - same result 2) uninstalling and reinstalling Acronis Workstation 9.1 - same result.

I have a 4 port USB 2 hub connected to 2 devices: 1) Samsung Writemaster DVD Writer and 2) Western Digital 250GB external HDD. I decided to DISCONNECT the USB hub - and thus all devices - from my PC and re-run the Acronis Workstation CLONE option again and.... BINGO!!! On the reboot process - for the 1st time - the original drive was completely cloned to the new drive! I've tested the new drive for both booting and functionality of all the programmes - including internet connections - I'm writing this feedback via the new cloned drive. So for me at least, it was the USB external devices that were causing the software to fail. The sad fact is that no error message was originally produced by Acronis - it simply kept declaring that operation was 'successful' when it obviously was not. So, you may wish to ensure no USB devices are connected to your PC before attempting a disk clone.

Hope this helps

 

Hello all,
Just to support what Barry said, I have spent all day trying to clone a WD 80GB IDE drive to a WD 250GB SATA, with no success - same symptoms as described, although not even reaching 50% on step 3 half the time.

Found this thread on the forum, disconnected the USB links from my front panel memory card reader, and off it went. Straight through, no hiccups, and I am now posting having booted on the new drive.

Nice one, Barry

 

Hello all,

First post here...I found this thread while trying to diagnose the same problem.

Removing USB devices does not help if the drives you are needing to clone are USB drives.

I cannot get TI to clone my drives from within the windows environment, however, it is currently cloning from the boot-disk anyway. This is a acceptable solution for me, what is not acceptable to me is Acronis total disregard of this problem. Several times in this thread references to other software was made (and deleted by mods) - once, someone was even chastised and told to "keep the subject on acronis software" -- well, when your software does not seem to be working it is normal to ask for something else that might.

Acronis should apoligize for treating customers this way - we know they are reading the posts, just refer to something they don't like!

Anyway, so far the clone operation seems fine in the linux enviro. -- of course it has 7 hours to go, so I will post later tonight and let you know if it worked.

On an interesting note: A sales person from acronis called several weeks ago (on my cell phone number provided during product reg) to thank me for my purchase and see if they could sell me any of their other products....OK....so we can pay sales people but won't give customers a tech support number to call? After spending 60 dollars on a program it really chaps to have to spend anoither 30 just to have the privilage to call someone for help. I know I am only one customer, but if they lose me they also lose all MY customers...and any software company is built up one customer at a time.

lets hope they start acting like they value us soon....

 

What version and build are you using? Are you trying to clone a bootdisk to another drive thats a USB attached drive or are you trying to clone an attched USB drive?

 

Hello,

I cannot check the build, but it was the latest off of their web. I will check as soon as it is done running this clone operation (currently at 6 hours remaining)

I am cloning an external to external over usb 2.0 - hard drive has about 460 gig of data. I use cloned drives because I acccess music on them and the file path names have to match excatly or I have to reload the library in my music player - something you just can't do in the middle of a show! Restoring from a backup is also simply not an option at that point - however, if my main drive dies, all I have to do is plug in a cloned usb drive, change the drive letter to M: and everything is back to normal.

I looked at another software solution (not allowed to say the name here apparently...) that keeps a current backup but it insisted on placing the files under a subdir first - that messed everything up.

I am going to play with microsofts synctoys later this week however...

 

Stop right there. Cloning is intended to allow you to replace the current boot drive with a new larger one not clone one drive to another that is just data. If you have that much data and they are music files which are already compressed that is why it is taking so long. There are better ways to back up your data. Have a read of these guides Need Help? These Beginner's Guides May Fill That Need!. You may want to look at different software to backup these large data drives. Search the forum on backup strategy or approach not cloning and you will find some discussions of different approaches such as this one https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=164175&highlight=backup+strategy.

 

Thanks Tom,

However, I am not trying to make a backup, but a replacement.

**Stop right there. Cloning is intended to allow you to replace the current boot drive with a new larger one not clone one drive to another that is just data. **
Who says cloning is only for moving to a larger dirve? re-read your statement, that makes no sense "cloning is...not clone one drive to another"??

I have used cloning for years to keep a exact replacement on hand - I only update it once a month, I keep my backups more current than that.

as far as the music files and it taking so long, I never complained about the speed, it always takes over night.

BTW - when you are cloning a drive -- music files, data files or other files do not mater as it is just moving data, not trying to re-compress it.


This is for a customer of mine who is a DJ, if a drive dies he does not have time to restore from backup in the middle of a show (as my post stated -- please read a post before you tell someone they are using software incorrectly) If I was to do your medthod he would be left standing there in the middle of a show while his backup *restored* or worse yet calling ME at midnight to walk him through the restore process -- not a fun place to be!

The clone operation worked fine from the linux enviro - I have always done it that way anyway, but for some reason this time I tried running it from within windows.

Regardless of what some people will say about "proper" backup plans, if a piece of software is supposed to do something then it should do it. This software thinks it is cloning a dirve in windows when in reality it only sometimes does.

It is a bug and should be recognized and fixed.
Or at least recognized!

Joe

 

I have been using True Image 10 very sucessfully for several months.
I have 2 indentical 295 Gbyte drives and i regularly do clones and backup.

Recently my clone procedure acted just like some of the posters indicated,
the clone procedure would speed thru analyze, check etc and indictate the clone was completed, and this only took 2 minutes and no data was transferred.

Acronis gave me a snapapI file to try and it did not help, so I sent a log to them and am waiting for their response.

This is discouraging for what i thought was a great product and POW, it just stopped working.

I have reformatted and looked at other things I was doing but have no more ideas. I am not an advanced user but i am resoably savy. and if I get the issue solved I will post it.

 

My True Image software via win XP still wont clone my c drive,
From this Forum I read of the method of using my Boot rescue disk to clone and it worked.

This looks like an acronis problem as my system and its disk check out Ok.

 

You can add me to the list. I have Windows Vista 32-bit and two WD Raptor Stripe RAIDs (Nvidia). I tried to do a Raid 10 with all four drives, but Vista kept trashing the Raid, so I clone the C: Raid to the other Raid. It was working great until about a week ago, and now it will not clone from within Windows. I have to use the boot recovery disk in order to get the cloning to work. I sent my email to tech support, but based upon what I am seeing on this forum, it is probably a waste of time. Norton Ghost was a piece of crap in terms of cloning drives, so I went with Acronis TI v10.0 with the lastest build. I thought I made the right decision, but it looks like Acronis has some problems that they are not able to or are unwilling to resolve. At least I can clone from the Boot Disk, but they should have been able to fix this after several version updates. Would be nice if someone from Acronis at least let us know they were working on it. Updating to a new version, if they come out with it, certainly wouldn't be anything I would jump on unless they fix this.

 

Hello guillame,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Could you please let us know your Acronis request number (e.g. [Acronis #123456]) which was sent to you in autoreply to your letter? We will find out how the investigation of your issue is going. If you have not received an autoreply then please send us a Private Message containing your e-mail address.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov