SP2 Incompatibility? Add me to the list

TI 6.0 and 7.0 always worked well for me in Windows XP up to now. However, maybe its a double whammy but the combination of SP2 and TI 8.0 is causing much much grief. Here's an explanation as I sent it to support via email...

True Image Version 8.0 Build 763 Registration XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, purchased upgrade yesterday, using Windows XP Home (SP2 version, sadly, with all critical updates)

Having never had a problem before with True Image, I am very suspicious of SP2. At any rate, I am unable to use the latest Version on this computer. Up to now, I have either used a separate partition on my hard drive, or backup to DVD or external drive for imaging. DVD burner support has always been flaky, though I have two DVD drives. But backup to partition or external hard drive worked up until yesterday, the first time I have tried to do so since upgrading to XP SP2 and upgrading from TI 7 to TI 8.0. At first I tried several times to add incremental images to the image partition. Nothing happened for about 15 minutes at which time I got an estimate that it would take 1 day and 8 hours to do the incremental backup. I tried again and got an estimate of under 1 minute to do the same job, but nothing happened for 20 minutes. Then I reinstalled 8.0, shut the computer down, restarted and tried again, and again nothing happened. I tried backing up to DVD with four different types of media then on an Iomega Super Drive and a Pioneer A04 DVD drive (both 4X recent), each time received a message of disk full or or poor quality (though these are high quality – and tried both DVD-R and DVD+R top brands). When this failed I tried to backup to CD-R. It seemed to work, but it took 15 cd’s. I tried to check the archive and the images are said to be corrupt.



In the process of trying to back up to the partition, I also tried imaging a full set rather than incremental, forcing me to delete all my recent backups, this did not work either.



I then tried to use the Acronis Secure Zone method – this seemed to work properly, but I have no way to archive this in case I have a hard drive failure…



Any help very much appreciated as I have important data on this computer, and do not feel secure until I am able to back it up…



Many thanks for any assistance….

 

I posted a similar thread a few days ago, but after a lot of testing, I think in my case it's not an SP2 problem, but maybe it's just the version 8 software. I have been getting some good images and some corrupted images......and was very frustrated wasting all of those CD's. Someone replied to my problem and said he had a "workaround" of burning a good image to a hard drive partition first, and then burning a set of CD's. That way you don't end up wasting a bunch of CD's. I'm going to try this.

 

I am using XP Pro SP2 with TI 7.0 634. Except for restoring/verifying over the network or from CD/DVD it works pretty good.

 

Maybe you should back up that important data to CD or DVD - just to be on the safe side. Even though TI 7.0 seems to work fine for me, I still back up my more important data to an external USB drive every other week.

 

Yes, good suggestion, I certainly have continued to back up key data to removable media...even more than usual...

Playing with TI 8.0 more tonight, I have the similar experience of occasional images that appear okay mixed in with no go, error messages, or corrupt data reported only after you go back and check the image file...

This is PRECISELY the situation one does NOT want with imaging...Near complete unreliability and unpredictability...

I'm still not sure what it is, just that I seemed to have had very dependable imaging for a long period with TI 6.0, 7.0 and before the XP SP2 "update"...not any more...

I'm running a bunch of system utilities at present just to be sure...

 

Here's the official response from technical support as I continue to have Acronis crashes and unreliable backups despite having the latest build:

Is it just me or is it time to look elsewhere for reliable imaging...

"Hello Larry,

Thank you for taking the time to contact us and for using Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/products/trueimage/)!

Please make sure you have registered Acronis Ture Image 8.0 at:
http://www.acronis.com/registration/

Then please download the latest build from: http://www.acronis.com/support/updates/

Also please read the FAQ article conerning DVD-writing http://www.acronis.com/products/trueimage/faq.html#20

We are always at your service should you have any further questions."

 

I installed SP2 and I used TIv7 successfully. The problem is with version 8.

It works fine as long as I dont change the filename that is automatically generated at creation time. If I change the filename (to include the date) it then says that it will take less than 1 minute (isn't that fast !) for the backup.

If I try to make it anyway I receive error messages and it stops.

I used build 763 but I'm currently downloading build 771 and I will post the results.

 

My concern is with such flaky behavior, how does one trust that any of the images are good...? I can sometimes get it an image to seem to work too, but clearly there is something major wrong. Why use an imaging program for backup if it's unreliable on a regular basis?