Acronis failed me!

Just when I needed it, and it rarely happens, Acronis (v.9 - most recent build) has let me down. I wanted to restore my C drive, but although the image was valid, every time I tried to restore it, the PC rebooted, got several minutes into the operation, then froze up completely, leaving no working O/S at all. So I had to reinstall XP, Acronis and try again: finally gave up and it took me hours to restore my drive 'by hand'.

Any ideas what went wrong (too late to troubleshoot this now as I am clearly not messing around with the C drive again (very delicate to set up, including a very fussy Dell MediaDirect application)? A bit worrying, if that's the word, not to have the secure backup one thought one had (and has paid for)!

Martin

 

You may have been unfortunate in having the one particular Dell system that is not TI friendly.

There have been posts here about problems with a certain series of Dell's.

Colin

 

welcome to the club homie

 

Try PARAGON hARD dRIVE bACKUP OR dRIVE sNAPSHOT

 

Whenever restoring your system partition, it is best to boot using the TI Rescue CD and then perform the restoration. This gives you an opportutnity to see if all your hdwe is recognized before proceeding with the restore.

 

The machine is a Dell XPS M1730. Just my luck if TI isn't going to work with it!

M.

 

From reading this forum for some time now, I'd say there is a lot of Dell trouble with TI. I get the impression Dell is relatively quick to put new HW on the market and the TI rescue Linux can't handle it. Just my impression, not a scientific study!

 

Hello martinlest,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please be aware that Acronis True Image 9.0 Home is quite old version, and it may not have necessary drivers for modern hardware.

We recommend you to download and install the free trial version of Acronis True Image 11 Home to see how the software works on your computer. With the trial version of the product you will be able to fully use the Windows version for 15 days. The bootable rescue media will be limited to restore function.

You can find the detailed instructions on how to use Acronis True Image 11 Home in the respective User's Guide.

Please visit Acronis online store to purchase the full version of the product. Notice that as you already own a previous version of Acronis True Image, you can purchase an upgrade installation package at reduced price (as compared to independent installation package).

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

I've upgraded to paid versions in the past. I can't keep on paying extra like this to keep up to date with software that's not doing its job - certainly not willing to pay another $29.99 (!) on top of what I've already paid for this software I'm afraid. It makes the total cost of the software very expensive.

M.

 

No cost to try the TI11 trial. I don't think it is totally fair to expect old versions of software to always support new versions of hardware. You can buy TI 6 times for what it costs to buy the Home/Student version of MS Office.

If the problem is the lack of needed Linux drivers you could try making a BartPE CD for your existing version; there is lots of info on how to make one on this forum.

 

To be fair to me: a free trial is not going to help, as I will obviously need to buy the software anyway if I want to make any use of it in the future. The point I was making is that I have already bought the software once, with v.8. If I then upgrade each time, v9, v10, v11, at some $30 a time (may have been less for previous versions, I am not sure), I am ending up paying $90 PLUS whatever I paid for the software originally - a total of some $140 (very approx) to have the pleasure of having TrueImage v11 on my system. Those buying v11 afresh will pay way less than that, so why am I penalised for being a regular customer? Your upgrades for existing customers are way overpriced.

You may say I have had the software on my system all that time, whereas new customers have not. Given that I make regular backups, but need to restore once in a blue moon (this occasion was the first I think since I bought TrueImage v that's hardly an issue. In essence I have paid all that money - and when it comes to trying to restore a valid image, the process continually freezes up my machine and I have to reinstall my system from scratch anyway.

So why not get a second-hand copy of Norton Ghost v12 from eBay for $15 and save myself all that cash? That's what I have done. Not saying Ghost is any more reliable than TrueImage, but it makes more financial sense.

M.

 

My thoughts:
a) if the version you already own has proven itself to work with your existing hardware then your already exactly where you want to be. I wouldn't upgrade just for the sake of upgrading. If a new version has features you want, then of course shell out the apx $30 and buy it. However if that isn't true and you have no intent of wanting/needing/using the new features then the upgrading is really all risk for no benifit. In that situation the very best you can hope for is you don't waste too much time proving the new version works as good as old had worked.


b) If you get a new system, its reasonable that software which interfaces with hardware might also need new upgraded drivers. This is a perfect example where new software has new features you want/need/require so bite the bullet and upgrade.

c) If you value your data at all, having a backup (or several) is critical. Beyond that, the confidence one has in the restore process and the ease of that restore process is what seperates the backup vendors. Use what works for you, for me having just recovered from a HD crash, thats TI.

 

Well let's hope Norton Ghost is OK. I did a test restore and it worked fine.

To be honest, and I mean no disrespect to Acronis, I doubt that there is any imaging software that you can 100% rely on in the event of disaster: on Amazon, the user comments for TrueImage are appalling. On another site, TrueImage is praised more than any other similar software.

My PC setup has been so highly 'tweaked' over such a long period of time that I back up every day, pretty much: I'd never get things back the way they are if I started from scratch, so in addition to a drive image I wrote a batch file that, once all my folders have been copied to an external drive, keeps them up to date. This was invaluable when Acronis wouldn't restore my drives> Of course I had to start again for the C drive - you can't just copy over the programme folders, needless to say - but the bulk of the work was done by installing the programmes again, then overwriting them with my backed up folders. All working perfectly now: no thanks to TrueImage, but as I say, I don't expect any other imaging software is any more reliable.

Moral of story (if there is one!): Don't rely solely on Drive Images to get you out of a hole!!