in my case it would be a bad idea to include data in the same images as the OS image which is why its kind of pointless debating backup strategies. to each their own as each has their own needs
My daughter's images were huge. I found she had 50 GB of iTunes files in the C:drive. iTunes is one of my pet hates but I was able to create an iTunes Junction Point in the D:drive and her C:drive image was then about 50 GB smaller. Just another way of creating smaller OS images. This doesn't cause restore issues.
Ah, that's not what I would call having data on my c: drive. I keep all my business documents, etc on my c: drive. I do have a few videos and music but that I keep on my other internal drives.
I have been looking into backup/restore software for the past week, more so software that does both, rather than just one... (eg: ViceVersa Pro) Just did a restore with ATI'15 after booting from USB via Rescue Media Builder and selecting a Backup from my external HDD. Very nice to see the first attempt work successfully. I was a bit worried that it asked to scrub the HDD and start from scratch. But all was well because I ended up making a 2nd partition just to test VVPro and ATI, so it saved me muck around work afterwards. I can't see why people hate this product. Fair enough I have only been using it for a couple of days... and it did what I wanted it to do, and then some! Exclude recycling bin, system volume information, temp directories, and one is on ones way. Just wondering do I bother trying others, like Macrium, ShadowProtect, etc...
opinions of people here are not always representing the reality. Most people here install an imaging product on their system and use hot backup/restore. That's when problems are more likely to occur. I use the boot USB of Acronis for ~10 years and never have a problem with ATI. In fact, you may see more complaints on the internet on ATI than other products. Why? because ATI is so popular, it has a huge, much larger user base, therefore more bugs are found and fixed. it's the most tested product. WD and Seagate both use ATI as their OEM imaging software, which speaks for itself about ATI.
Hi oliverjia, the problems with ATI arrive from the way it performs the incrementals. When it creates incrementals it does not scan the entire partition for changes but it relies on the file table to determine what is changed. (Macrium reflect uses a similar approach too). Most of the time it will work but in some scenarios it can lead to problematic images... and the larger/longer the incremental chain the higher the probability to encounter such problems. And some versions of ATI had a verification problem, the user would verify the state of an image, ATI would report that the image is good when in fact the image was corrupted... Since you only use cold backups full (and maybe? differentials) it's logical that you never encountered a problem and never will. The fact that WD and Seagate give ATI as OEM imaging software means that ATI gave them a better deal than other companies... nothing more and nothing less... Panagiotis
I have been a longtime Acronis user, and I was always very happy with the older versions up to version 11 from 2007. (Works even on Win7 64-bit, no UEFI, no GPT) The versions starting after this sported a new user interface and became more and more packed with features which had nothing to do with the core functions. And on top of this there were bugs which in some cases even caused complete data loss. The current version 2015 is a major redesign, a lot of features were scrapped in favor of ease of use. Of course the company got a lot of flak for this, probably from the same people who previously complained that the software was bloated and cluttered their hard drives. Personally I do like this version 2015, I did not experience any problems so far. And the fast hot incrementals are a strong point for Acronis IMO, I never had a problem even with long chains up to 20 incrementals. The alternative would be AOMEI where an incremental takes almost as long as a full backup. In these days where HDD space is extremely cheap this does not make any sense to me, I would rather do full backups all the time. Cheers manolito
LOL your are right, yes I only do full cold imaging/restore, using ATI boot USB. For me, the real strength of ATI is its speed and compression in full backup/restore, both top 1 or 2 in my test on ~ 5 of my computers. Since I only do full image, naturally ATI has been the best choice for my way of backup/restore an OS. The reason I don't do incrementals/differentials is because I only image and OS right after a fresh/clean install with all updates. the key word here is "clean" means I only image an OS when there is least chance of virus infection/system glitch. After about 6 months, I restore the initial image, update immediately, then image the OS again and delete the original image. This way I know I have a clean image that I can use in case of virus infection, system glitch etc. I am not very confident there will be Always no virus infection in the course of using an OS in long term, therefore I don't do incrementals/differentials. Well in regards to being OEM app for WD and Seagate, you may be right, that Acronis may have offered a better deal. That maybe the reason why AIT was selected by both WD and Seagate. However, the results are the same no matter what reasons - ATI gets much larger user base because the OEMs are free. And this will help bugs being identified and fixed.
I have been using the 2015 Recovery CD I built to do a full image and I assume it is backing up the full SSD! What I do not understand, however, is that it shows 3 partitions when I choose to backup the WHOLE drive. It is a 512GB SSD. In Win 8.1 Pro I see 4 partitions using PARTINFO. Recovery, System, Reserved, and Primary. So, If I wanted to restore the WHOLE SSD from an Image I made, will ALL 4 be there? I hope it will but do not know why TI 2015 only shows 3 Partitions when I tell it to backup the whole drive.
MPSAN, How many partitions do you see in Disk Management? What is the full name of the System partition?
It's normal. Many other imaging apps do the same (one such example is Symantec System Recovery) - they only backup 3 out of 4 of the GPT partitions, leaving the MS reserved partition unseen. the MS reserved partition is actually a RAW partition, and will be automatically re-created in the correct locations upon restore. I've done many such whole disk imaging using ATI 2015 and restore, no problem at all.
oliverjia, Did your restores include restoring an entire drive UEFI image to a new, blank HD? Just curious.
I normally only restore the images to the original SSDs (all my computers are using SSD as OS drive now). I think if restore to a blank HDD it should still work. Edit: My memory does not serve me as well as before. Anyway, I can recall I did recently restore an image that I took from an Win8.1 UEFI on 128GB SSD to a new blank 500 GB HDD using Acronis TI 2015, on my office PC. The process went well and the used space on HDD is 128GB, and the rest is raw space. So Acronis does work well in this aspect. I saw your other post regarding Drive snapshot failed to produce a bootable OS upon restoring to a new HDD. Looks like Acronis is rather robust.
Not necessarily. https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/new-drive-snapshot-build-released.288597/page-30 See post #750 A few months ago I restored an image (MBR system) to a new blank HD and the OS didn't boot. I can't remember the name of the software at present but it will come to me. I reported the event in this forum. The concern is most of our restore tests are to the same HD. But what if the HD fails and we have to use a new HD? Have we tested a restore to a new blank HD? (HD or SSD)
Brian, not sure about Drive Snapshot, but please see my post above, I did recall I restored an SSD image to a new HDD using ATI 2015 boot USB (same computer) after I took out the SSD and used it in another computer. It works well. I think this does indicate that ATI is a well tested apps that works in most scenarios.
Well, I am still having trouble with my DVD Writer. It reads OK but will hang the system on a write. SO, I know the drive is OK as I had 2 of them and if I connect to my SATA to USB cable it works great. So, after I call ASUS (MoBo and Drive) I can try to go back to an image I made with Win and Office activated. Then I can add the burning sw and see if this ever worked from Intel SATA. In that way I can see if somehow something I installed broke CD/DVD writing! Reads were always OK. I guess what I am saying is that I will let you all know if these Full Drive image(s) I have made from the 2015 Rescue disk work! Cover me, I'm goin in!
oliverjia, I'm in restoring mode today so I tried Acronis TI 2015. Restored a Win8 UEFI entire drive image to a new empty HD. No problems. Win 8 booted and all 4 partitions were present in their correct order.
Thanks Brian for the info! Acronis TI has always been a solid product, at least for me. Used it in various scenarios and different computers, it always get the job done. Oh I only use the boot USB of Acronis TI and do cold, full backup/restore.
NO, I cleaned them. I also had done this when there were 2 partitions as I tried a re-install and it did not create GPT partitions. Both times TI 2015 worked well.
