Lost all my Parents data with Acronis True Image 2011

I take care of my parents computers because they are pretty much computer illiterate. I've been making backup images for them using ATI 2011. I don't like using differential or incremental backups. I always run backups on-demand, and create full backup images every time, and I save my backup images to an external hard drive. I usually keep my last 6 to 8 backup images, and delete the rest. I save all my important data to external drives so I don't need to create backups very often. So I chose the option to make a full backup with ATI 2011 each of the two times I made a backup image for my parents, and saved the images to an external drive. The first backup image was about 7 months old, and the second I had made for them was only 1 month old so I decided I would delete the older backup image. I then began trying to restore their desktop using the newer backup image I kept. I tried restoring their desktop form within Windows, and using the media recovery CD I create using ATI. I tried several times, and the image restore failed. I got some message saying the recovery partition could not be found. I browsed to the exact path were the recovery image was located at that I created many times. It kept giving me the same error stating the recovery partition could not be found. So I looked at the image from within Acronis, and then saw that it was not a full backup image. It was only a differential backup image!! I would have needed both backup images to restore their desktop computer. So i'm 100 percent positive I chose to create a full backup image both times I created a backup image for their computer. It seems Acronis is no longer dependable, and I have lost my parents data because of it.I have not got in touch with Acronis yet to ask them why ATI did not create a full backup image like it should have. I went to their forum, and list their most recent products, but I did not see where to post about ATI 2011. I have to say i'm very disappointed, and also upset after spending two days restoring their computer.

Has anyone else had this problem with Acronis 2011-2013? I have Acronis 11 installed on some old XP machines, and it works flawlessly. I use Shadow Protect on all my computers except for the two older XP machines I have. Shadow Protect has never let me down. I will need to find a replacement for Acronis now. It seems I wasted my money purchasing the 2 license I have for Acronis 2011, and have wasted 2 days of my time having to reinstall 5 years of updates. This is not even including all the other software, and custom configuration I have to do for their computer. They have a slow internet connection so its been two days now, and i'm still not completely done with restoring everything. I can't afford to buy Shadow Protect right now because it is ridiculously expensive for their consumer license compared to all of the options. Their using Vista 32bit. I'm thinking about using Macrium Reflect. Do they support restoring from an external drive? Would you say they are dependable? I'm looking for something simple to use, and very dependable. IMO, ATI looks bloated, and more confusing than it should be anyways.

 

I haven't used the version you mentioned but I have used their product in the past and had nothing but trouble with it. I received error after error. The last straw was when I tried to restore and it would not do it. I had to reinstall everything because my Acronis backups wouldn't work. That did it for me. I purchased Shadowprotect and used it for several years and now I have Macrium Reflect. I also use external drives and they work fine with this program.

 

From personal experience I'd recommend both Drive Snapshot and Macrium Reflect (Standard Edition). Both have worked flawlessly for me on multiple occasions from an external HD.

You can download and try Drive Snapshot for 30 days. (It doesn't need to be installed, you can run it off a small executable file of under a half meg.)

 

Have you tried to un-erase the full backup that you removed?

 

Macrium is extremely dependable. I abandoned Acronis to move to Reflect and it has proven itself multiple times even when upgrading to new hardware.

However lately, I have adopted AX64 Time Machine. I like the automatic hourly backup and automatic management of snapshots. And restore always worked for me.

 

Cutting_Edgetech,

Sorry, but I suspect you didn't pay enough attention to detail in using TI. Just comparing the file sizes of the images should have made you suspicious that one wasn't a full image.

 

Actually the differential backup it created was right at 14 GBs. So I would say that was not the case. I'm sure I chose to create a full backup. I'm positive.

 

No I have not. I could give that a try, but not sure it would be worth it now that I have spent so much time updating it now.

 

I'm not sure drive snapshot would be what i'm looking for. Is it only a snapshot software like Rollback RX, or can you create full image backups each time? I want to use something that is going to allow me to copy an image over to a new drive in the case that my drive fails.

 

You can make full or differential images. Best to refer to their website (or email the developer, they generally respond within a day in my experience) for any further technical questions as I haven't had to restore to a new drive or disk.

http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/

 

Can you mount the backup with a drive letter or explore the backup?

 

I don't know since I don't have Acronis installed on their computer now. I use Shadow Protect on my Laptop which is what i'm using right now. I already started updating, and reinstalling everything that their computer came with from scratch. Their computer is about 8 years old so that is a lot of updates plus all the other software they use. I can look into it for you once I get everything back the way it needs to be. I don't want to use ATI anymore after this experience. I 2 license for it so unless I find some good reason to change my mind then i'm out of some money. I specifically remember checking, and double checking to make sure that I chose the correct settings to create a full image backup instead of a differential. I may test ATI on my test machines when I pick them up from storage this week to see if I can find any user error on my part. 14 GBs seems really big for a differential backup. I wonder if it could be reading the image as the wrong type. I tried using it with the ATI media recovery disk I created. I also tried using the image from within Windows. Both ways failed.

 

Good idea. See if you can mount the image on your test computer.

What was the OS?

 

The image was created for my parent's desktop which has Vista x32. I have Windows 7 x64 installed on all my machines except for 2 which have XP Pro x32. I will be switching my XP machines to Linux soon since XP will no longer be supported soon by Microsoft.

 

I just realized you have TI installed in a WinXP computer. Can you mount your parents' image in that computer? Or explore it in TI?

 

ATI 11 is installed on my XP machines which are in storage at the moment. I'm going to go get them on Thursday. Will I be able to mount images created by ATI 2011 on Vista x32 with ATI 11 on XP x32? ATI 11 is quite a bit older than ATI 2011.

 

You might have to temporarily install the latest ATI. I'm not sure.