My Acronis Experience

I must say Acronis True Image 8.0 proved to be a wonderfully easy program to use and I was very impressed with the way I was so easily able to navigate through it.

My only problem with it was that when I needed to restore an image it showed itself to be a pretty piece of software that for me anyhow proved to be completely useless.

I had numerous freezes of my computer when I specified the image I wanted to restore.

When I did manage to get beyond this point by trying it several times using a slightly different way of telling it I wanted to restore an image I found that after putting in my password that I used to protect the image it repeatedly refused to show me any partitions I could restore giving me a box with the word empty in it.

I figured that maybe the image was corrupt or that I had used the wrong password so I got Acronis to check the image and the password I used was correct and the image was OK.

No problem I thought I’ll restore a second image that was smaller than the first one I tried to restore and made with only a small number of programs installed. Surely it ought to be able to restore that?

Of course the same things happened as with my earlier attempts at restoring the other image-repeated freezes and when I got around that problem showing me a box with the word empty in it rather than a partition I could restore.

No worries I thought I'll try and restore an image I burned to a DVD. Problem was it couldn't read the image and I got a message suggesting that it was a bad DVD. It wasn't because I got Nero to check its integrity after I burned it.

I wound up formatting because a virus had made it impossible to boot into Windows and decided after reinstalling all my basic programs I'd give Acronis one more go. I made an image and decided to test if I could get to the point where I was one mouse click from restoring the image I had made just so that I knew I could rely on Acronis if I needed to recover from a disaster like the previous one where a virus made it impossible to boot into Windows.

The first two times I booted into Acronis I had no mouse cursor and found it impossible to navigate my way through the program. No worries I installed Logitech Mouseware and then tried again. This time there was a mouse cursor so I pointed Acronis to the image I wanted to restore. It began analyzing the partitions on the drive and my computer froze completely just as it did with my previous Windows installation.

I tried one more time and the same happened. Yes it's a nice looking program with an easy to use interface. The only slight problem is that it doesn't work but who needs a piece of software that does what it's supposed to do? After all it looks nice and is easy to use!

Now where did I put my Norton Ghost CD?

 

Hopefully you asked support for help in case it is a bug that needs to be looked at.

No program is perfect. As a matter of fact when I first installed ATI 8 build 663 did not even work with my promise SATA controller if I used startup recovery but then I upgraded to 774 and works great. Not one problem. I think Acronis is doing better now that they visit the forum here more and possibly with assistance from them you can figure out what is going on with it on your system. Just a suggestion and I hope whatever program you use it works for you.

Thanks,

Chris

 

Hi,

You must ask Acronis for support then everithyng get better. I can explain my situation which was terrible. In the past I have non-stop problem with opened files and SATA controlers. Then I write to Acronis support and we send ich others a few messages with explaining what to do. Fist they send me special piece of software and I do what they say to me. They solved my problem and the problem was in my software which I have installed on my PC. Whit the new build 744 I try three different SATA controler and all three work fine (Promise, SIL, 3Ware). I must say that Acronis support go MUCH BETTER now like in the past. All my problem i solved with Mr. Anton Sherkhonov from Acronis support.
You must speak with the support and firs of all you must good look if some of your installed software is maybe problem for working with TI.

Slavko

 

Hello mareke,

Thank you for choosing Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/products/trueimage/).

Please contact support@acronis.com. We will definitely reply to your request if it was sent to support@acronis.com.

Thank you.

--
Best regards,
Andrew Berezovsky

 

And just what do you do when you've asked support for help and they've failed to give you any? After a month of runaround from Acronis Support, I was told that my RAID controller isn't supported by ATI 7.0 and won't be supported in the future. Game over, you lose.

 

Hello Splitting Image,

Can you please provide me with the Acronis # of the problem you have pointed to?

Thank you.

--
Best regards,
Andrew Berezovsky

 

Unfortunatly this happens with cutting edge software. They do offer a trial that should be able to let you know if it will work or not. I am absolutly positive that not any imaging/cloning software will work on every system everytime without a hitch and it's not always the software manufacture's fault as you are aware from what they told you before in this thread https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=49252&highlight=nvidia[/http]
"as nVidia provides neither the driver nor an open specification for their RAID controllers. I am sorry, but we cannot help you in this case."

Thanks,

Chris

 

Copy 'n' Paste:

I got the official word from Acronis support that TI7 ( and probably TI 8.0) will not support NVRAID. I have an MSI K8N Neo Plat with the nVIDIA 250GB chipset and I've been corresponding with the support group for about a month. After trying several half-assed solutions from Acronis, I received this final terse message:

Dear Paul,

Please accept our apologies for the delayed response.

Unfortunately, nvRAID is not supported, as nVidia provides neither the driver nor an open specification for their RAID controllers. I am sorry, but we cannot help you in this case.

Acronis True Image would work with this controller in non-RAID mode, i.e. each drive would be detected separately. I am not sure that RAID mode will be supported in the nearest future.

--
Best regards,
Michael Gilkin

Acronis, Inc.
395 Oyster Point Blvd., Suite 213
South San Francisco, CA 94080 USA
http://www.acronis.com/

Acronis support department
e-mail: support@acronis.com


I've tried the new version (Build 638.) and it doesn't work wtih my system. The rescue disc will boot to ATI but it doesn't recognize the RAID volumes.
However, if I boot with the "Safe" rescue CD, then the drives are seen by ATI and I can successfully restore an image.

As a further note here, let me say that I'm unimpressed with Acronis Support. The time I spent gathering and sending data and experimenting with ISO files made me feel that I was nothing more than an unpaid Beta tester for them. That, coupled with the fact that their responsiveness is poor at times (8 days without a reply at one point!), makes me feel that I've been "used and abused."


Chris12923--Cutting edge software, maybe, but not cutting edge support by any stretch...

 

Chris,

As I understood your problem is concerned with Acronis bootable rescue media... The thing is that Acronis rescue media (the full version) is based on Linux and we need open source linux drivers for new devices on the market in order to be able to support them. I will ask our linux developer if we have found these drivers.

Thank you.

--
Best regards,
Andrew Berezovsky

 

If this is true it appears they gave you support but it is out of their control.

Looks like they are still tring to give you support. I also notice you did not supply them with the support number they asked for...I have answered your questions so I will not help any further to take this thread off topic.

Thanks,

Chris

 

Not me but spitting image.

Thanks,

Chris

 

Andrew, I'm at work and I don't have access to the ticket #. Is it possible to track it down using the email from Michael Gilkin that I posted?

 

Splitting Image,

I contacted our Linux developer. We regret to inform you that we won't support nvRAID in the nearest future cause we need the open source drivers. As soon as nVidia provide an open specification of their RAID controller we will definitely support it.

We are really sorry for this inconvenience.

Thank you.

--
Best regards,
Andrew Berezovsky

 

Today I had my first look at the responses to my original post that started this thread off. I was so angry after the experiences I had with Acronis and while I wrote the original post that I had to resist the temptation to use crude expletives to convey my feelings describing my experiences with Acronis and I wanted to calm down before I looked at my post again. Thank you to the people who responded with helpful suggestions.

No I haven't contacted support mainly because my experience with Acronis was so negative and there were so many different problems I thought that Acronis is never going to work on my system. I will consider contacting support to see if the problems can be sorted out but I first want to ask one question that will clear up if it's worth persevering further with Acronis.

I use an Asus P4C800 motherboard with a 3 GHz processor overclocked to 3.6 GHz and 2 Western Digital 36 GB SATA drives in a stripe raid setup (raid 0, stripe). I use the motherboard's onboard Promise Raid controller so the two WD 36 GB WD Raptor drives look like 1 large drive (drive C) of almost 70 GB.

The 2 Acronis images I made that I couldn’t restore were stored on a separate drive; a single 74 GB Western Digital Raptor drive (drive D) which was not part of the raid setup. I use this drive solely to store backups of important data and the Acronis Images that I tried to restore and repeatedly failed to do despite numerous attempts.

Does Acronis True Image 7.0 or 8.0 support a Promise Raid setup such as I use?

 

Hello mareke,

Acronis True Image supports your RAID configuration under Windows. It also does support it under Linux (when booting from Acronis bootable rescue media or using Acronis Startup Recovery manager) starting from the 774 build for the 8.0 version and from the 638 build for the 7.0 version.

Thank you.

--
Best regards,
Andrew Berezovsky

 

Thank you for the reply. I have installed Norton Ghost and tried to make an image and it failed just as Acronis failed. I don't think Ghost could see the raid from Norton's version of PC Dos so perhaps my system is just too difficult for Disk Imaging.

At least Acronis is made to work with raid even though it repeatedly failed on my computer. Ghost couldn't even make an image whereas Acronis could but could not restore the image it had made. I suspect that my raid setup might be the cause of the problems I have had even though Acronis is supposed to work with raid. Acronis not being able to see the raid from bootup when using the Acronis Boot CD could be why I got a box with the word 'empty' in it instead of one that showed C drive which I could then choose as the drive to restore the image to.

The next time I am forced to format I may stop using raid and see if I still get the problems I got with Acronis on my current setup.

 

Trust me, I did try Norton Ghost 9, and it was much worse - with errors, etc. The online knowledgebase was also nothing more than a repeat of the user manual as it contained no problem resolution entries at all. Also, their support is much worse to non-existant. Perhaps Acronis could be slow to get back to you, but Symantec never did on a couple of my support tickets. Not to mention they didn't even show in their reply what I had emailed (in their form) as a problem, and they have no online place to go and check on the status of your ticket. They are pretty quick and responsive about providing refunds though. They have a pretty much automated way to submit them.

All in all they sucked, and I told them so in about 3 emails with recommendations. It should have been a great product, and PC Mag online had a very positive review of it, but it sucked.

Don't blow off Acronis so easy they are about the only game in town.

Bill

 

Hi mareke,

I had about the same experience as you about a month ago. The image I was trying to restore was done with v6.0, since then I have upgraded to v8.0

It was frustrating, my image was on (3) CD's, I would get about to 3/4 done with the last CD and I would get a message the CD was corrupt. It was the only time I have ever needed to restore a drive.

I really have faith in True Image, I can't say yet for sure that it is a good product, I'm hoping it is and that the next time when I need it, being with v8.0 and new CD's, I won't be disappointed.

 

I will persevere with Acronis. I never bothered to register it (I don't think I've ever registered any software I've bought and used over the 10 or more years I've used a computer) so I'll do so and see if I have the latest build of version 8.0.

Perhaps all I need is an update to make it work with raid and if I don't need an update I'll try contacting technical support as I would very much like the program to work. I would be willing to bet it's my raid setup that is causing the problem of not being shown C drive to restore. For ease of use Acronis beats any other disk imaging software I've seen but that counts for little if it doesn’t work.

 

Hi can Acronis Support confirm if this will work then?

As there is no dos/linux/whatever drivers, can the image be restored within windows? eg: load a basic OS with true image installed to a seperate hard drive, then from within windows and with the RAID0 array working (no OS) restore it.

Then shutdown, remove the temp HDrive and set the RAID array as bootable.

Now Iam guessing True Image will see the image as bootable and refuse to do it within window.

Thanks for any advice.

 

Hello CAMS,

Acronis True Image should be able to restore the image in the way you have described without rebooting.

Thank you.