Excluding Files and Folders taking a LONG time

Alright it finally stopped processing, about 10 hours later. I hit the "next" button and it has had the True Image box with the spinning clock icon going for about 30 minutes now. Am I just super impatient? Or should getting to the next step be a little quicker?

I would have thought some action would have happened by now.. Also I have no way of checking my build number. When I go into Help -> about it is no where to be found there.

Joe, take a look at your C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Logs\ folder and open any of the recent log files in Notepad or any other text editor, and you should see XML text similar to that shown below which will tell you the build number of ATI that you have installed.  You may also find some clues as to what is happening with regard to your problem in these files too.  If needed, you may wish to clear or move the current logs then start the backup task again and look at the new logs that are created.

<log uuid="" product="True Image" version="19.0" build="6027" >

Note: Above data is taken from ATI 2016 at the latest build version.

Thanks for the response. To clarify I am ok with waiting, I just want to make sure it is actually going somewhere. I can restart the process if I have to, but it took over 10 hours just to understand which directory to exclude... I just want some clarification that these wait times are (or at least can be) normal?

Edit: There is no way for me to hit cancel. Other than force quitting it through the task manager I can't stop it. I really shouldn't have to do that though... 

build="4251"

I attached a picture of where it seems I am hung up at.

Joe, the latest current build for ATI 2015 is #6613 as shown in image attached.

You should be able to download the latest installation file by logging in to your Acronis Account or by creating an Account and registering your copy of ATI 2015 if you haven't done so already.

What type of backup are you trying to perform here?  
Are you doing a Disk / Partition backup or a Folders / Files one?

The process of excluding specific files / folders should be almost instantaneous, a matter of seconds not hours!

I would recommend installing the latest build and seeing how that improves this issue.

Awesome Steve! That is just the type of response I was looking for. I am actually cloning a disk. I just got a new SSD and I want to take my existing C: drive (which is apart of my current partitioned HD) clone into it. For some reason thought it is taking extremely long. I will try downloading the new build and see if that helps.

Joe, have you read Chapter 7 of the ATI 2015 User Guide http://www.acronis.com/en-us/download/docs/ati2015/userguide/ which gives an indepth level of information on Cloning including manually selecting partitions on the new target disk for the layout.

Well not so awesome.

I upgraded but now it's asking for another product key. When I enter my original product key it says "This number corresponds to other Acronis Product, not Acronis True Image 2015". I have tried numerous times to resend verification through email and I have yet to recieve anything...

This whole process is becoming incredibly irritating.

Basically I am at a loss for ideas. I downloaded the newest build, but it doesn't register that I can actually use it. I have registered my original product key, but that brings me no where. Do I really need to purchase the product again? I am starting to loose any appeal I had for this software...

Hi Joe, sorry that you are having a further problem with the latest build - I don't understand why that should be.

When you registered your original product key to your Acronis Account, what product did it show you have?

You should be seeing something similar to what I get in my account in the image attached, that shows a list of products registered to your account, including links to download updates, documentation, keys etc.

So I took two screeners to hopefully help illustrate the issue.

The first one shows the application running and what it looks like when I have account selected. When I go to enter my serial number is gives me the error "This number corresponds to other Acronis Product, not Acronis True Image 2015"

This is where I downloaded the original software from: http://www.acronis.com/en-us/promo/tihd2015-download/?utm_medium=third_…

It came with a PNY 480gb SSD

The second screener shows what my products and downloads looks like. It seems kind of messed up if I really need to go through PNY for this.

I have been getting my serial numbers from the Get All Serials button on the top.

Ok, Joe, I was under the assumption that you already had ATI 2015 by virtue of your posting in this forum, whereas in fact you have an OEM licensed version that was provided with your PNY SSD.

Please see post: https://forum.acronis.com/forum/109560 which discusses this same situation and says that you can use your original key with an upgrade to a later version, but you would obviously need to purchase that upgrade.

The alternative would be to uninstall the trial version of 2015 and then run the Acronis Cleanup tool - see https://kb.acronis.com/content/48668 before doing a clean install of your original OEM software product.

Ok I have fresh installed the OEM version and it's back to being incredibly slow. 

So after all is said and done I guess that with this old versions it is expected?

It shouldn't be 'incredibily slow' as you put it - I have been using Acronis True Image for many years (since version 9, around 2007 or earlier) and have never had that sort of performance issue.

What happens if you try to do a straight one for one clone of your installed drive to your new one, without trying to exclude anything?  Or is that not an option if your source drive far exceeds the capacity of your new SSD drive?

The alternative method here is to create a simple backup image of your C:\ Windows drive partition, including any required system partition(s) that your version of Windows needs - store this on your second partition (D:\ drive) and then use Acronis to restore this backup image to your new SSD.  This way you are only including in the backup image the Windows components using a Disks / Partitions backup, and this is all that will be written to the new SSD drive.

I have used this method more often than doing a clone if truth be told.

Ya my current HD is about double the size of my new SSD, so I can't one for one copy. It's just the Clone Disk Wizard is incredibly slow. I just tried tried to see how long it would take to exclude my C: drive, and it was about 20 - 25 minutes. I now understand why it took around 10 hours to try and see if it could exclude my D drive.

So for creating the backup image the main issue I am having is that I don't have the original Windows disks to install the OS.  So if I create a backup image, will that copy my OS info as well? (currently my D: drive is just extra storage; games, songs, movies, etc... while my C: drive has everything else.)

Edit: because my D drive is the same physical drive as my C drive, I am unable to create an image backup and store it on my D drive.

This has become my life.

Joe, you should not need your original OS install discs if everything is working fine before you create the backup image of your Windows C:\ drive - the image will include everything needed to run Windows on the new SSD when you restore it to that new drive.

If you are running Windows 7 at present, assuming your system hardware is compatible, then you also have the option of doing a free upgrade to Windows 10 where you can download the installation ISO image and create your own OS install media DVD.  Once you have installed / activated Windows 10 you do not need any license keys as the OS is then keyed to your system hardware signature and you can reinstall from the downloaded media if needed.

Thanks for all your help Steve.

Unfortunately I just ended up using Macrium Reflect, as it was free and got the entire job done in under 30 minutes.

But really thank you for trying so hard to fix my problem. If Acronis isn't paying you they damn well should be.

Hi Joe, I am glad that you have resolved the issue, even if you chose to use Macrium Reflect instead - that is a good product but the free version has a number of limitations (none too serious!).  

I am just another user who enjoys trying to help other people in my spare time and retirement, helps keep my brain active and is rewarding when I meet people like yourself.  

All the very best, Steve

Unfortunately, I am in the same situation as Joe above.  "Processing" the exclusion of files and folders seems to be hanging up or taking a long long long time.  

I am upgrading a relative's software over the holiday break and therefore don't have time to wait 10 hours.  

Looks like I will be forced to find another software solution to clone the system drive over to the new SSD.  

I have a similar issue. I have the OEM version from buying a Toshiba OCZ SSD. I'm trying to go from a 4TB HDD to a 960GB SSD. Even after selecting well over enough files to shrink the C partition, nothing actually shrinks. I've even run scandisk and it found nothing.

Chris, welcome to these user forums.

What exactly are you trying to do and how are you trying to do it?

If your source drive is 4TB, how much of this is used space and how much free?

I don't understand your statement "Even after selecting well over enough files to shrink the C partition, nothing actually shrinks."  Acronis True Image doesn't shrink anything when dealing with partitions other than doing resizing of partitions to fit with larger or smaller disk drives, but then only within the constraints of available free space.

If your 4TB HDD has too much data to fit on your new 960GB SSD drive, then you need to reduce this using other means before trying to migrate the OS from the HDD to the SSD.

Just about to give up on ATI & starting searching forum for help and stumbled upon this thread.

I'm having similar long "Excluding files & folders" process in ATI 2019 that I just purchased to clone 2TB HDD to smaller 0.5TB Seagate SSHD drive.  In actuality, I only have about 0.2TB data to clone & have identified this 0.2TB data.  I've been doing trial & error to exclude folders for past 24-hours (started 9/15/18 ~4:00pm) because the ATI 2019 folder/file exclusion process is excruciatingly slow, >20-minute each time folder is excluded/include - Joe, you're not impatient. ATI really slow. Worst is the Clone Disk Wizard doesn't tell you the size of files/folders to know how much is included/excluded.  [DEVELOPER ALERT!]

I excluded an infinite loop, "C:\ProgramData\Application Data", which speeds up the exclusion process down to about <20mins each change, but it's not enough because ATI keeps telling I'll need to exclude over 1.5TB more.

Anyways, thanks to Steve's hint to look in C:\ProgramData\Acronis, I decided to exclude this directory altogether thinking that ATI is constantly rebuilding a looping database. That did the trick & brought my clone data size under 0.5TB.

Moving on now. Hope clone works. If not, will trash ATI and try Macrium Reflect.

"Disk cloning failed. Please see log files for details." - Thanks, Acronis, for nothing. 

At least tell me which log file to look in.  Geeze - crappy SW & technical support.  Hope everyone else has better luck.  Moving on to try Macrium Reflect.

Good luck guys!

Searched around for "log" files & found this C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Logs\ti_demon\ti_demon_*

Looks like ATI has internal scripting bug. Acronis really needs to pay either Steve & me or it's engineers to get job done right.

[Contents of ti_demon_51FDC42A-47BB-4F80-A9CD-AAD1F59BECE2_1B674C21-0708-4223-9355-E741FAC46961_2018-09-16-19-09-51.log]

2018-09-16T19:09:53:202-07:00 9124 I00640002: Operation Clone Disk started.
2018-09-16T19:09:53:202-07:00 9124 I00640000: Operation description: Clone Disk<bold>1. Clearing disk </bold><endl/><indent value=4>Hard disk:    <indent value=10>2</indent><indent value=4><endl/></indent>
<bold>2. Clearing disk </bold><endl/><indent value=4>Hard disk:    <indent value=10>2</indent><indent value=4><endl/></indent>
<bold>3. Copying partition </bold><endl/><indent value=4>Hard disk:    <indent value=10>1 -> 2</indent><indent value=4><endl/>Drive letter:    <indent value=10>-</indent><indent value=4><endl/>File system:    <indent value=10>NTFS</indent><indent value=4><endl/>Volume label:    <indent value=10>Recovery</indent><indent value=4><endl/>Size:    <indent value=10>450 MB</indent><indent value=4><endl/></tabpoint></indent>
<bold>4. Copying partition  (<bold><textcolor value=0xff0000>Reboot required</textcolor></bold>)</bold><endl/><indent value=4>Hard disk:    <indent value=10>1 -> 2</indent><indent value=4><endl/>Drive letter:    <indent value=10>-</indent><indent value=4><endl/>File system:    <indent value=10>FAT32</indent><indent value=4><endl/>Volume label:    <indent value=10></indent><indent value=4><endl/>Size:    <indent value=10>99 MB</indent><indent value=4><endl/></tabpoint></indent>
<bold>5. Copying partition  (<bold><textcolor value=0xff0000>Reboot required</textcolor></bold>)</bold><endl/><indent value=4>Hard disk:    <indent value=10>1 -> 2</indent><indent value=4><endl/>Drive letter:    <indent value=10>C:</indent><indent value=4><endl/>File system:    <indent value=10>NTFS</indent><indent value=4><endl/>Volume label:    <indent value=10></indent><indent value=4><endl/>Size:    <indent value=10>1.819 TB -> 0.454 TB</indent><indent value=4><endl/></tabpoint></indent>
<bold>6. Copying MBR </bold><endl/><indent value=4>Hard disk:    <indent value=10>1 -> 2</indent><indent value=4><endl/></indent>
.
2018-09-16T19:32:04:804-07:00 9124 E000A0001: Error 0xa0001: Failed to prepare operations. Error code: 3 'Internal error: script is inconsistent' 
| trace level: error
| line: 0x5fac360a470d39fa
| file: c:\bs_hudson\workspace\544\processor\diskadm\da_native_batch.cpp:133
| function: DaProcessor::DaNativeBatchImpl::_Prepare
| line: 0x5fac360a470d39fa, c:\bs_hudson\workspace\544\processor\diskadm\da_native_batch.cpp:133, DaProcessor::DaNativeBatchImpl::_Prepare
| $module: ti_demon_vs_13660
2018-09-16T19:32:05:015-07:00 9124 E013C0005: Error 0x13c0005: Operation has completed with errors.
| trace level: error
| line: 0x9f2c53c72e8bcee4
| file: c:\bs_hudson\workspace\544\products\imager\demon\main.cpp:750
| function: main
| line: 0x9f2c53c72e8bcee4, c:\bs_hudson\workspace\544\products\imager\demon\main.cpp:750, main
| $module: ti_demon_vs_13660
 

16/09/2018 19:09:53 :202  Operation Clone Disk started.
16/09/2018 19:09:53 :202  Operation description: Clone Disk
1. Clearing disk Hard disk: 2
2. Clearing disk Hard disk: 2
3. Copying partition Hard disk: 1 -> 2 Drive letter: - File system: NTFS Volume label: Recovery Size: 450 MB
4. Copying partition ( Reboot required ) Hard disk: 1 -> 2 Drive letter: - File system: FAT32 Volume label: Size: 99 MB
5. Copying partition ( Reboot required ) Hard disk: 1 -> 2 Drive letter: C: File system: NTFS Volume label: Size: 1.819 TB -> 0.454 TB
6. Copying MBR Hard disk: 1 -> 2
16/09/2018 19:32:04 :804  Error 0xa0001: Failed to prepare operations. Error code: 3 'Internal error: script is inconsistent'
16/09/2018 19:32:05 :015  Error 0x13c0005: Operation has completed with errors.

 Sorry, but doing any cloning from within Windows of an OS drive can be risky when a reboot is required to complete the action, as indicated by the log details.

Given the amount of exclusions you are looking to make here, I would strongly recommend using Backup & Recovery instead of cloning, where you can setup all your exclusions in the backup task and test that this works.

try initializing the new ssd...worked fine after that..

I'm experiencing the same problerm,

cloning an HDD to a SDD 1TB and excluding a data partition of HDD or fitting the SSD space.

Acronis true image OEM downloaded today from kingston webpage link www.kingston.com/cloning.

The clock is turnig already for 6 hours.

Shall i await tomorrow moringn, or forcing the stop of the procedure and restart after moving to another disk the data partition?

Marco, welcome to these public User Forums.

Did your clone complete successfully or did you have to stop it?

Personally, when needing to exclude whole partitions, it is better to use Backup and Recovery instead of using Clone, and always doing this by booting from and using the Acronis Rescue Media and with the new SSD installed in place of the original HDD drive.  The HDD can then be stored safely away from any possibility of error or damage etc.

Apparently this has been a problem since 2016. Most of us here probably got the software from buying an ssd and want to move the windows installation to the ssd, I was running acronis clone and was waiting for 6 hours on the 'exclude folder' step and found out that other was experiencing the same thing. So I tried macrium reflect based on the previous suggestion and I was done and rebooted on the ssd in less than 15 minutes. I probably going to suggest adding a progress bar instead of a spinner so the users know that it's processing even though it would take hours.

I wonder how the problem such this could still so long. It's just a simple type of operation to clone the disk most users do. The most widespread scenario is to clone Windows "C" drive on to a new SSD from the old HDD and it's getting hours to do it with Acronis True Image 2020 now. I want to say that I well experienced PC user and helping others for over two decades. Also I used a plenty of Acronis products and their versions for years.

Typically I used Acronis True Image as backup and restore scenario to save a fresh and clean Windows setup for further use to shorten time to install OS/drivers/updates again if user will broke his OS while using it. And it has always been as simple and quick as it should be. You just choose all partitions that are boot related and a compression ratio for the image and just go for a can of beer and that's all. Restoring the partitions from the image also is very fast and simple. Also I always used a USB stick with Acronis installed on it or CD/DVD in earlier years to eliminate all the issues from installing and starting backup software from the drive I want to backup.

But what I've got here yesterday was the nightmare.

The task is to use fast SSD drive instead of slow HDD one. We have a new SSD from Crucial with 240GB on it. Also we have a 1TB Hitachi 7200RPM HDD with three partitions: 1) System Reserved (100MB); 2) Drive "C" - with Windows 7 Pro on it and some user's files (200GB and about 70GB is used); 3) Drive "D" - just user data without any Windows or bootable related data (800GB with up to 600GB used).

With all that I tried to use Acronis True Image x64 Clone Disk feature. All was almost the same as a topic started stated above.

1. Choosing source disk was pretty quick and lasted about 3-5 seconds.
2. Choosing destination disk was quick too and lasted the same time aproximately.
3. Then I clicked the Next button and got into a files and disks exclusion menu. This is where the nightmare begins. Anything you want to change will now take a huge time. Any operation is takes me to rhose years when trees was greener, PCs were bigger and you was young and patient to wait something easy to be done slowly. I tried to choose every option to exclude to see how it is works and how long it will take. So now I know that to exclude a 100MB (Windows Reserved) partition it will take about 10 minutes or if I want to exclude a 200GB Windows partition it will take at least 30-35 minutes. But I want to exclude a 800GB partition with 3/4 used space on it - it took 1 hour and 40 minutes for Acronis to do it and when it done I was so happy to press Next button. But as you already know Acronis has something to do more to get me to the next menu and this was a little window with clock on it. This operation took about 3 hours more. Three hours just to get to the next menu not to do all the job. It was look like Acronis brings every small file in his hands and looks at it for hour and then go to the next one.
4. Ok. Now we at chenge partiion sizes menu. I don't know how partitioning algorithms work in Acronis but when I excluded the "D" partition in the previous menu I was wonder to see the Acronis reserved the space for it on my new SSD. It reserved 100MB for Windows Reserved partition, it reserved about 80GB for Windows partition with disk "C" (its label is "System") and for some its own reasons ti reserved about 130GB for my disk "D" partition (with label "Data") that I excluded at all on the previous step. So I hit Change button to adjust these setings and it took me about 30 minutes just to get into the menu that allow me to change the size of the first small partition (100MB) cause the selection bar was on it when I pressed Change button. So I pressed a Cancel button and it took me about 30 minutes again to return to entire screen and to selsect a proper partition to change its settings instead.

And that was enough for me. I spend about 5-6 hours just trying to adjust settings to do the main job and even not finished to do it. is it Ok?

So now is a half an hour that I write this post and it's about 90% done of backup disk operation. I used backup and restore scenario instead of clone disk to do the job. It works as it should be. I even choosed the maximum compression ratio to save an image of drive "C" using a drive "D" on the same HDD as a destination and it is still the best performance ever.

Now we can see, it takes about 30 minutes to save an image with 2 partitions (100MB + 200GB) with maximum compression ratio (should use more CPU) into about 45GB image file stored on the same physical HDD as a sourced partitions. Restoring the saved image onto a new SSD took just 16 minutes at all. And it is a 46 minutes for entire job to be done instead of over a 6 hours to just trying to start cloning process not to clone at all.

The system is Intel Core2 Duo E4500 2.2GHz with 4GB DDR2 RAM and SATA2 3Gbit/sec integrated Intel Matrix Storage controller all the drives connected to. So you can see that the Acronis is still able to do the job on a circa 2006 specs PC in less than an hour if you choose a tricky way of course if you can.

Good luck for everyone.