True Image 11 Unreliable?

Is it only me or do others find that True Image 11 is unreliable.
I have only had the software a couple of months and bought it because from several sources I learnt that it was regarded as the best backup software available.
I don’t want to do anything fancy just backup the system and my data files on a regular basis so that if I hit problems I can recover lost information. My problem with the software is that I thought once I had the software set up to do the backups I wanted I could leave it to run automatically, with only an occasional check to see that everything was functioning OK.
What I find is that I have to spend time each day monitoring what is happening and then having to run tasks manually when they have failed to complete. I have set up 9 tasks one for the system, one for application settings, one for e-mails and the other 6 for various categories of my data, e.g. pictures, music, data, etc. Some of these tasks are set to run on a daily incremental basis with a full backup every week, some on a weekly incremental basis with a full backup every month. I have set all of these to run at various times in the early hours of the morning, then first thing of a morning I switch the PC on and then when I am ready to use in theory all the backups should have been completed.
What I am finding is that some of the backups appear to stick with anything from 0% to 100% complete showing, although the activity on the external hard drive sometimes shows that something is happening. Sometimes if I look at the log it says that the task has completed satisfactory but according to task manager it is still running. Other times it just appears to have stopped working. The only way I can stop the running task is to reboot the PC, stop running task is ignored.
I have recently hit the state where my quotas for number of backups or size are exceeded. In some cases this appears to be ignored in others the deletion works but the task then runs for 2 or 3 hours before it completes.
Is it just me or do others have similar problems. The software is ideal for me in that its functionality gives me the backup flexibility I was looking for but I will have to move to something else if I can’t get it to work reliably, I haven’t got the time to monitor the software each and run tasks that haven’t completed manually.

 

It is not just you. TI 11 definitely has problems with running scheduled backups. Acronis have been made aware of the dificulties and users who have stayed with TI 11 have had to put up with it though not all users are so affected.
The big failing as I see it is that Version 11 was pushed out far too soon with far too many problems outstanding. What is particularly galling is that all the previous versions worked just fine as far as scheduling and reliability was concerned. I am lucky in that I just had to run a full restore to kick the mess of V11 off my computer and get back to a solid V10.

My advice for you is to insist that Acronis provide a free copy of version 10 as Version 11 is not fit for purpose on your computer. I think you will find that V10 will give you most if not all the flexibility that you want.

Xpilot

 

Some of the probs only occur on some set ups. There are set ups where, using the barest of functions, the Windows Scheduler instead of ATI's, and doing only Full Backups, ATI 11 consistently backs up and restores, uh . Well, restores have the "safely Remove Hradware" glitch -- but otherwise consitent and reiable, uh, well also you have to ignore the silly alert banner feature in the ATI program window, but otherwise, uh well, also there's, . . .

I'd rate ATI 10 the best of the breed. I'd rate ATI 11 as undoubtedly the worst, not because it has the same probs all the image backup programs have--difficulty with some hardware set ups -- linux driver issues, etc, but because of all the added probs/bugs that ATI11 brought to the table.

It is a terrific example for software vendors of what not to do. ATI 11 is selling on the reputation of prior versions. What one wonders is how will future versions sell will ATI 11 having preceded them?

Did 11 come to market too soon? Way too soon if it should have ever been released in a form anything like it, considering that it's has been half a year since it was released and the major critical probs haven't been fixed yet. I think 10 is a gem. 11 remains, as it has for six months, an embarrassment.

 

Hi TonyFalla,

I have just gone back over your post a second time and please take this suggestion as trying to be helpful and not to belittle what you are attempting. Of course TI should work as advertised. However once I hit a brick wall the first thing I do is to find an easy way round it.

I have my backup procedures as simple as possible. Creation of a images of the main hard drive partitions or even a single image of the whole drive avoids the need to backup systems or data in different categories.
The need for example to save program settings disappears because the programs themselves, their installation and settings would all be included in the backup of the C drive. The same principle applies to emails, sent and received, address book etc would all be included in the one backup image.
So my backup security consists of daily images of the whole of my main drive. This is done from a single schedule so only one item needs to be checked to make sure that all is well. I keep several days worth of full drive images on a seperate hard drive should there ever be a need to go back in time.
That deals with the extent of my backup images. The next stage is to ensure that the images actually work and give the facility for storage outside the computer or even off site. I have my main drive in a removable drive caddy so all I need do is withdraw the current drive after it has been imaged and replace it with yesterday's and run a restore. In real life I may not actually run a restore every day sometimes when all is stable and quiet I may only do it once a week.

If you have large collections of already compressed data such as music, video files and photos. It may be that TI is not the best engine for safeguarding such data. I would much rather keep them in native Windows format and use a program such as Second Copy to provide automatic duplicates on seperate media whch would be updated with changes as they occur.

Xpilot

 

Well, this scheduling of backups must be brand new technology that Acronis is developing. Scheduling certainly sounds convenient, but I guess nobody ever tried to implement it before; so it's up to Acronis to break new ground.

 

Thanks for all the replies I have to say that I am extremely disappointed in True Image Home. I found the reply from Xpilot interesting, as he says True Image should work as specified, I have always worked on the basis of backing up only the information that I cannot restore. My concern with backing up everything is how much space is the backup going to require, I have 2 x 500GB hard drives.
I will persist with True Image for the moment but as soon as the Easter holidays are out of the way I will download trial versions of other software and prehaps assign True Image to the dustbin


Tony Falla

 

Schedulers are not anything new, nor even ones that will wake a pc from standby (consider, for example Raxco's scheduler for PerfectDisk). And virtually every backup/image program includes scheduling and has for quite some time. I fear that the scheduler probs are more like many of the other probs in ATI 11, that is, things that used to work in prior versions but are problematic in the new version.


What ATI has that the other backup/imaging progs don't, where ATI is till the cutting edge, so to speak, is the automatic backup file management function.

 

Hi there,

I have to admit I fell for the recent "upgrade to V11" mailshot - I had given up on V10 as I found a number of the functions didn't work as published (MS Outlook backups for instance) - also when I tried a restore for real, I couldn't find a file backup that I knew should have been there - so with little or no confidence in the product I switched to Norton as at least that worked. But I fell for the Acronis V11 super new features and believed that they MUST have moved on from V10 .... but no, in fact worse, I can't even get a simple backup to complete without it hanging in exactly this way - anything from 5% to 90% and on a manual backup and needs a PC reboot to clear the task.

So I've uninstalled True Image, gone back to my trusty Norton and asked Acronis for my money back. Why on earth do they do this - get some quick bucks or what ??