Science fiction or Science fact?

What I'm going to say can I'm sure have no basis in fact and yet I can't explain it. As many of you will know I have been the first to criticise TI 11 for it's buggy software when compared to the previous version TI 10. So much so that I have re-installed TI 10 on two of my three PC's. However, I left TI 11 on my backup PC mainly because I didn't have time to uninstall it and it was on this PC that TI 11 performed the worst. Anyway to cut a long story short I have continued to use it on this PC for backing up. Now this seems bizarre but after having been installed for around three weeks now TI 11 seems to be settling down and getting faster and faster at performing backups - around 18 minutes for 68 gig full backups. I have even tried a couple of restores and they too have worked without incident and again have been very quick though I do use VistPE for this.

Now how can this be, how can something that was very flaky after install now be working so well? Are we all perhaps being to quick at uninstalling this software when it doesn't do everything it says it should on the tin straight off?

 

Am I to take it that I am the only one to experience this phenomenon or is it that others haven't given TI 11 a second or long enough chance to bed in?

 

I have now re-installed TI 11 on my main PC, (as an experiment) done a backup, took a deep breath and tried a restore as well - lo and behold it has worked flawlessly.

However, I did try something that I hadn't done previously. When I uninstalled TI 10 I then checked everywhere on my system for any remnants of TI 10 plus I also ran regcure before installing TI 11. I think another common denominator in this apparent success is the fact that I use VistaPE for restores rather than using a rescue disk thus leaving out of the equation the Linux environment. For me at least it is the Linux environment that seems to cause all the issues.

 

I have NO problems with Acronis TI 11.
I use it with the Vista operating system and the
latest sp. I also ONLY do a Full Backup and Restore.
I NEVER use any of the other frills in TI 11.
So the TI 11 works flawlessly for me and has bailed
me out of trouble several times.
Maybe Acronis needs to isolate a TI 11 version to
ONLY do a Full Backup and Restore. Then those
who want or need to play with the others goodies
can experiment to their hearts content.

 

I think it has been widely held that, it you only use ATI11 do do Fulls, and ignore or don't use or any of the alerts or other features, and your can restore from the bootCD on your hardware setup, then ATI11 works okay, that is, if you avoid most of ATI11, you can oavoid most of it's bugs.

It's like the old joke:

A guy goes into a store to buy a suit and the clerk has him try one on:
Guy, "Hey one lseeve is longer than the other."
Clerk says, "just shift your shoulders like this and it wil look fine."
Guy. "But the pantlegs are uneven"
Clerk, "Well, jsut shift one hip up a little higher, yes, see it looks fine."
Guy, "But the collar rides low on one side."
Clerk, "Here, hold that side in place with your chin against your chest. Voila!"

This goes on for bit and the guy, for some reson buys the suit and wears it out of the store and down the street., with his chin clamped to his chest, and one leg sort of dragging and his shoulder cocked, etc.

Two doctors walk past him and one say, "Oh that poor fellow." and the other says, "Yes, but he sure had a nice looking suit."

 

I have to say that my main reason for using backup software is for exactly that i.e. to backup my entire system so that I can recover said system in the event of a failure. Therefore I only use Acronis for full backups and restores in an emergency, so for me by and large Acronis does do what it says on the tin. For day to day backup of data I rely on the backup software that came with my Maxtor OneTouch 4 - pretty basic but does seem to do the job.

Again though, Acronis has been elevated to a whole new level since MudCrab and Mustang pointed me in the direction of making a VistaPE disk - seventeen hours of restore purgatory have been reduced to minutes thanks to VistaPE.

One application I cannot quite understand in TI 11 is the system state backup and restore. What exactly does this do and what would ones desktop look like following a restore just using this application?