Acronis True Image 2015 Experiences

It looked good when I started. I keep having unexpected (and inexcusable) problems, some of which I am writing here:

1. Time remaining is useless

2. I did a test of one file differential backup to understand the process:
-- apparently supposed to get one full and 5 diff in a chain (as I setup) with
Full denoted with _s1_b1_v1 and diffs with _b2_ ... _b5_ for first chain
Second chain full _s2_b1_v1 etc.
But I got a full _s1_b1_v1-1 and no diffs, then it began the _s2 chain
Deletions of chains more than one older (per my settings) worked as expected except that the _v1-1 is never deleted.

3. I did a full backup one night and checked the shut down when done. It did, but started another full backup when I started the next day without my requesting it -- with the minutes remaining sooo wrong.
This real backup was scheduled the same as the file test, so if it did start when computer started (not per the setup) it should have done a diff.

4. When backup is running, the performance of doing real work suffers tremendously. I am still using Win 7 32 bit on this machine with 4GB memory. Perhaps I will need to install a 64 GB OS just to have acceptable performance. It would help if Backups followed the setup and did not just start unexpectedly and did a diff per the setup instead of starting a new full backup.

5. The documentation explains that diff takes more disk space than an incremental backup. However, I do not need to keep all of the diffs. Suppose I have a full and 8 diffs. If I am pretty sure that the first 7 diffs are not significant, I can delete them and the 8th one still works. Or, any other deletions such as 2, 5 and 7 can be used. With incremental, you must start with a new full and then the disk space gets much larger than for the diff. Also, if any one of the increments are corrupt, you must start all over. So, my recommendation is to always use diff. So far, I am using limited sizes of chains as I described above, but I am thinking I will change and just do a new full when I decide to do so.

6. 2015 broke the ability to open a file directly from the backup file. They say they are working on it. How does anything like that happen with correct software development processes such as regression testing? Did nobody notice this during Beta testing? Is there a checklist of features to test during Beta testing? Wouldn't this file opening be an important one to include there?

Overall, this has been consuming a lot more time than what what I had been doing of scheduling (with Win scheduler) of SyncToy to do what I wanted. I was not getting file version recovery if I used the contribute option.

I am clearly not happy with the software or the documentation of it. Having to run a prototype backup of a single file to find out how it really works (or does not work) and then getting different results when I used the same scheme on large folders. Not to mention the problems I was having with a partition backup and reverting to Folders.

I will keep on "using this" for a little longer and see if it is more trouble than it is worth. Or I may give up and go back to SyncToy where I can sync, echo, or contribute (the latter keeps all past versions of files, which can be easily opened, saved again, or deleted).

Malcolm
310 821-3081