Nightmare restore fail of windows 8.1

Shilpa: Hello! Thank you for contacting Acronis Customer Central. My name is Shilpa and I will be glad to assist you. Please allow me 3-4 minutes to review your message. If you already have an existing case number on this issue, please let me know. Otherwise, I will create a new case and provide you the case number.
You: It's hardly live chat if I have to wait 3-4 minutes for you to read a message.
Shilpa: Thank you for your patience.
Shilpa: The case number for your reference is 02315894.
Shilpa: As I understand, you are facing difficulties with restoring the backup using Acronis True Image 2014. Am I correct?
You: Refund your product, I bought True image 2014 last year. Now that I've come to try and restore from it, I've ended up wasting the weekend jumping through your poorly designed softwares holes.
Shilpa: I understand your concern Daniel.
Shilpa: I apologize for the inconvenience caused.
You: This isn't a concern I have a webserver down, it's losing me money. I've had to hire someone to come in and fix it.
Shilpa: May I know if you are trying to perform recovery within Windows or using Acronis bootable media?
You: I performed a recovery it simply left my system unbootable.
Shilpa: Do you get any error message?
You: /BCD/Boot it won't boot into windows 8.1
You: I should have been able to restore, and boot. Instead your software completely screwed my systems ability to boot into the OS.
Shilpa: Acronis software doesn't affect the operating system or any other programs.
You: DOn't give me that rubbish
You: I backed up a 100% booting system
You: when I restored it, it no longer booted.
Shilpa: May I know have you validated the backup?
You: it was validated when it was created.
You: It restored with no errors
You: then windows didn't boot
You: it's that simple
Shilpa: Could you please enable legacy mode and check if it boots?
You: Look, if boots fine from a clean install of Windows 8.1 which is now installed. There is nothing wrong with the hardware.
You: the only point at which it wouldn't boot is when it was restored from YOUR SOFTWARE.
You: When I made the image, the machine was freshly installed, setup, and running with all the correct software. There was no issues with windows at the time.
You: When I restore that same perfectly working image via your software, it renders windows totally unbootable. Theres no settings that'll solve this, the hardware is fine. Now issue me a refund.
Shilpa: I apologize for the inconvinience you have faced with Acronis True Image 2014 Standard. Unfortunately, refund is applicable only within 30days of product purchase. Since you have purchased product on 13-05-2014 refund is not applicable.
You: Ok, so your logic is as follows. When it comes to the point where I need to use your software. You get to keep my money providing my system doesn't need restoring within 30 days?
You: No way in hell mate.
Shilpa: But we will investigate on this issue and assist you in recovery.
You: Are you going to magically edit my existing recovery so it suddenly works in the next 3 hours?
You: When the time came to use your software to restore my system it faile.d
You: therefore it has not done what you advertised, refund me.
Shilpa: In this case I suggest you to please perform recovery using bootable media.
You: Have you actually been reading what I said?
You: I inserted YOUR disc
You: I booted from YOUR bootable DVD
You: I restored YOUR image using YOUR software
You: rebooted AFTER restoring from YOUR software
You: the system wasn't bootable.
You: The image your damn software restored, failed to boot.When I made the image, it was of a fully booting system. when I retored it with YOUR software that image was no longer bootable.
You: I Imaged with YOUR software, I restored with YOUR software. YOUR software failed.
You: refund me
You: now
Shilpa: I apologize Daniel.
Shilpa: As per the refund policy of Acronis, refund is applicable only within 30days of product purchase.
Shilpa: Please refer the below article for refund policy of Acronis products:
https://kb.acronis.com/content/21242

Basically their attitude is following:

If you don't need to use our product within 30 days for a restore.

They get to keep your money.

doesn't matter if their software actually does what it claims or not.

Daniel,
From one user to another, I'm sorry your experience with Acronis hasn't been a positive one. We are all here to help each other. Your first post was helpful, the second outlining interaction with support does nothing to help you solve your problem. The product does allow you to back up to DVD, it is also possible to restore back ups from DVD. 12 DVDs means you were probably backing up about 60GB of data. Using DVDs for a back up this large is not a good idea. You are introducing 12 points of failure since the back up could fail if any one of the disks could not be read for any reason. Media issue, your DVD drive, anything.

Second, back up software is only as good as the operator. Its your responsibility to test your back up solution prior to catastrophe. Acronis recommends this and so does every forum user here. You didn't do yourself any favors waiting until you needed to test your solution without knowing for the entire past year whether it would work or not. I know its what you wanted, but It would have been a good idea to perform at least one dry run to confirm all was well.

Its also important to have multiple back ups of any data that is important to you. All hardware fails. DVDs can degrade too. Having only one back up basically means you are putting all of your eggs in one basket so to speak. You have no protection should the back up become lost, damaged or broken, again for any reason. I'm sure I speak for everyone here. We would like to help you have a positive experience with the product. So my first recommendation would be to buy a storage device with enough capacity to back all of the devices and data you want to protect. This includes accounting for growth... more pictures, more documents and enough extra space to grow as new programs get installed.

Of course you can chose to walk away and try something else, but the same recommendations will apply regardless of the product you choose as a solution. This is a user to user forum, but I'll say again that I'm sure people here would be happy to try and help.

What the actual hell dude?

1) I have other backups of important buisness data. That wasn't lost.
2) The purpose of True Image 2014 was to give me a medium by which I could restore the fundamental systems without having to manually restore everything. This includes:

Webserver software
database frameworks
API
Custom web interfaces
bespoke server to client software
various development environments such as python, ruby, C++ etc
SVN
Cloud systems

On average it takes me about 12 hours to reinstall from scratch and set all this up. Then another 24 hours to tune the stuff, bug fix and get the system deployed. That's a 36 hour working day.

3) Given that it takes 36 hours to restore this machine to it's base configuration level, would you go and run a restore on it "just to see if it works?" this is a mission critical system. At no point this year has this server not been used, I can't simply take it down for a couple of days.

4) You might have the budget just to have a random PC laying around where you can just randomly test restore solutions from, but I sure as hell don't.

The fact is that True Image did image the drive. Where it failed was in producing a working booting machine. The DATA was all there, but the BOOT systems where so royalty f***ed up.

Check this forum, there's Windows 8.x errors all over it. This is a fundamental issue with the software.

I recommend we start a petition, this 30 day money back system is an epic cop out, they have SUCH little confidence in their product that when it comes to use it in a disaster situation, they know it's not going to work. This is a con, they are a bunch of con artists, and they don't deserve our cash.

End
Of
Story

Daniel,
Even attempting to restore 1 file would have been enough to test your probability for a successful restore.

My back ups avg. between 80-120GB. Bare metal restore takes about 45 min which includes installing a new drive (and removing the old). The whole idea behind OS back ups are to completely avoid the headaches of reinstalling programs and updates. If a restore takes 36+ hours for you, you are not using the product to its full potential. I respect your opinion. If the product doesn't work for you, I understand. My experience has been different. Fortunately, I've only needed it a handful of times, but it truly saved me. Both in time, and from losing data. Its also made many of my clients happy. Its really nice when all I have to do is purchase a new disk and within an hour have a customer back up and running. I hope you find a solution that works for you.

Do you have the ability to read?

The process of restoring my system FROM SCRATCH, WITHOUT TRUE IMAGE takes 36 hours. God learn to read.

The REASON I bought TRUE IMAGE is to avoid that down time.

TRUE IMAGE FAILED TO RESTORE A BOOTING PC.

Do you get it now?

The point that was trying to be made is that the reason for this product failing is MY FAULT, because I should have BACKED UP, then RESTORED to the same MACHINE thus BREAKING it, and costing me another 36 HOUR rebuild time, just to BACK IT UP, then have it FAIL AGAIN.

That isn't a reasonable point of view. You might have spare computers laying around where you can do that, but I don't.

I used TRUE IMAGE 2014 to BACK IT UP, and I VARIFIED the blasted BACKUP.

Then when I came to rely upon that backup TRUE IMAGE CLAIMED WAS OK.

UTTER

TOTAL

FAIL.

I want my god damned money back, and I'm registering a complaint with the trading standards association.

Read the god damned post before you post your bull opinions.

Validation is only the first step. I'm sure you will test your next solution before you need it.