changing timeout when backing up to DVD's

Your best bet is not fight it but work around it; make the backups in splits to a harddisk and then burn them to optical at your leisure. You can get a free burner prog to that is more flexible and more forgiving than the one built into ATI -- like Imgburn, e.g.

Or get yourself an external harddisk or two and make your backups to hdisks -- hdisks are very cheap now and you can fit many backups on one hdisk.  It's much faster than optical,generally as or more reliable and has about the same duration for archival purposes.

I actually have an external HD, but I am on the road a lot & like to have DVD's in my laptop case, just in case.

It's a matter of personal preference. But Optis tend to be problematic with ATI and are especially troublesome if you have to restore and have more than on opti disk in a backup -- the swapping will drive you nuts. In that situation, I (and not everyone) would prefer a pocketsized usb hdrive--maybe 500GB or so.

I have the same problem as Paul, but not using DVD as backup media but external hard disks.
My problem is that the backup of about 1.5 TB will take some time and I am using 2 external HDD of each 1 TB to back the data up.
While leaving True Image working overnight the backup always terminates when I am not changing the external HDD after 10 min. the promt request is comming.

Where can I modify the timeout periode or where can I take this periode out totally?

Is there any .ini file where I can do this?

I am also having an issue with the 10-minute timeout.

I recommended TrueImage to a family member for DVD backups having only used 2009 myself. Unfortunately it is unsuitable for the purpose thanks to this 'feature'.

There needs to be an option to disable this timeout altogether, if only for removeable media.

I agree 100% there needs to be an option to disable this.

I just installed and attempted to use ATI2010 on my new Windows 7 machine. Started a large (60GB) burn to DVD so I could get rid of it from HD. As I always to with these kinds of processes, I went off to work on something else....ate lunch, etc, figuring as soon as I got back and saw the DVD had popped out, I would just stick in another and continue.

Imagine my surprise when I see this "backup has failed" type message. Then when I tried it, again, I saw the "10-minute timeout" message.

What kind of !@#$%^&*() crap is this? Who would come up with such a stupid, non-configurable option?

I also can't believe the comments I am seeing here about "just forget DVD's and go get external USB drives!". Are you joking? I have 5-1.0-1.5TB external drives and they are not enough. DVD's I can buy at $0.15 each or roughly 425GB per stack for $15.00 Even the cheapest external HD isn't going to get down to $20/500GB! Also, I have had quite a few external HD go bad. Once I have written on a DVD (and verified), I am certainly not going to have it crash on me.

For this kind of aggravation, I don't know if 2010 is worth what little I paid for the upgrade. I had a choice of upgrading 2-other backup products I use but chose ATI. Now I am beginning to wonder if I made the right choice, based on other comments I am seeing about it.

Since my problem was only with being around for the first DVD on scheduled backups, I thought I had cracked the problem; all I needed to do was to run a pre-command to pause the operation until I pressed a key.

I started with a batch file to just press print a message and then wait for a keypress and added it to my scheduled task. On starting the task, it just hung with no output. I improved this by writing a windows application to display a dialog box with Start and Abort but this just hung in the same way. I tried various types of windows program types but none of them would work.

I then went to the schedule settings for the task and turned off the scheduling. Every single one of the methods I tried above then worked.

To prove it wasn't me, I set the pre-command to be wordpad. As soon as the task was added to the schedule, it would hang instead of starting schedule.

Useless.

Tyler Knutson wrote:

I am also having an issue with the 10-minute timeout.

Yup, same here. Option to disable would solve the problem.

Thanks.

(deleted incorrect observation)

Hello everyone!

First of all thank you for all your comments and many thanks to Paul for bringing this question up.

Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience you have faced with the software. I completely share your concerns and entirely understand how upsetting this situation is.

I regret to inform you that this is not a bug, but a feature - it was introduced in the latest update of Acronis True Image Home 2010 only.

This feature was added in order to make sure that all the future tasks run even if the current does not get a customer response on the prompt window. The thing is that our Scheduler is designed in such a way that it never starts the second task before the first is ended. Thus should one backup plan get stalled, this feature allows to cancel it and provide the second backup plan with the ability to run. It is important not only due to the safety of the data (in case of one task failure you will have the backup created with the second one), but due to the snapshot technology as well:

when we create the backup, we make a snapshot of the hard drive, and after that start backing up the HDD itself, verifying the existing sectors with the sectors captured in the snapshot. There is a possibility for the snapshot to crash in case there was no backup

To be honest, we in support weren't aware of this before you notified us. Unfortunately yet there is no way to eliminate this feature. I would like to thank Scott Hieber for his reasonalble comments, and confirm that the only workaround available is either to change the media within 10 minutes after the first one is full - or store the backups to any other location. I entirely understand how inconvenient it is, and be sure we are doing our best to provide you with the improvement for this situiation in the shortest timeframes.

I have already raised this question with the Management team, we have contacted the developers, and currently are identifying the best solution for this problem. We were guaranteed by the Development team that this issue will be eliminated in the next build, which is currently in production.

Thank you for all your comments and be sure I will forward them right now to the development team so that they could be aware of your preferences and could find the best solution.

Sascha, Tyler, Ray, Zforray, Paul and William, I entirely understand how upset you are, and that this situation is not acceptable. From my end I will be glad to provide you with any assistance you need and answer all your further questions - do not hesitate to ask.

Should you need any further assistance - do not hesitate to leave a comment here, we will be glad to help you!

Thank you for your patience and cooperation.

I demoed True Image 2009 and found that it met my needs. Finally I purchased TIH 2010 and find this issue. I understand your rational for putting this "feature" in place but really, not optional? Are you kidding me? This is the functionality that put Acronis at the top of my list! Now you broke it? Did I say are you kidding me!

Here are my suggestions. I'd like to have a configurable value for this timeout, including a way to disable it.

In my situation, I am not backing up to DVD. I am backing a laptop up through Wifi, destination is a NAS device mounted as a remote drive. Once in awhile it will give an error about unable to write, and I click retry (twice) and then it's on it's way as if there was never a problem. ATI-2009 worked fine because I just had to click Retry when I noticed the popup. ATI 2010 doesn't, because it cancels after the 10 minutes. So, my point is - this problem is not specific to DVD backups, it is a general problem whenever ATI is prompting the user for a response. I like to run my backup over night, but I can't because it rarely works.

So, I'd also like capability for it to automatically retry, in my situation, if I could have it keep retrying by itself, instead of waiting for me to click the button, it would make the product PERFECT for my needs. Maybe another configuration for Automatic Retry X times every X seconds. So, I might configure it to automatically retry 10 times, sleeping for 60 seconds between each retry attempt.

Hello Tyler and Steve!

Thank you for your comments and feedback! We beleive that every customer that complaints or shares his suggestions with us is giving us an opportunity to make things right. And since we incorporate this feedback into our approach, we will be better able to meet clients needs and thereby be more successful in our venture.

Steve, I completely understand your concern. Unfortunately currently there are only 2 options available in this case : downgrade to Acronis True Image Home 2009 or wait till the next release of the product and meanwhile backup to another location. 

Let me know whether you would like to downgrade, I will be glad to help you with it.

Tyler, thank you so much for your reasonable suggestions! This functionality would be really useful. Meanwhile I would suggest you to use "Silent Mode": In the Backup Options you need to choose "Do not show messages and dialogs while processing" - this will cancel all pop-up messages and you won't have to sit near the machine awaiting for the messages.
You can find more details in chapter 9.4.1.7, p.80 in the User's Guide.

Be sure all your comments were already forwarded to the Management team and taken under consideration. We really appreciate your cooperation and feedback, it is highly valuable for us.

Should you need anything else or have any further questions - feel free to contact us at your earliest convenience, we will be happy to help you!

Thank you!

Unbelievable. Gotta love those bright bulbs who add "features" without thinking them through.

Well, I don't want to pay go to the next version after this experience. Ever hear the term "good money after bad"? I would like a downgrade to 2009 please. I'm not sure what I'm losing but at least I might be able to get some use out of it. That's better than what I'm getting now.

I just tried a dvd backup and what a freakin' nightmare, by nature no one is going to babysit a program to avoid the 10 minute termination. this is a showstopper for anyone that backs up to dvds. Unbelievable, somebody needs to crawl out from behind a rock and take this issue by the horns. if i was director for development i would be looking for a few seats to fill as the developers and manager for this piece would be 'terminated' in less than 10 minutes. This problem has been on the books since 2009 by reading the support threads. i bet you the real problem is they probably will have to rewrite a lot of code and will be penalized through some employee performance metric to fix it. Maybe, to solve this, Acronis should consider hiring some real programmers. I have been a customer for a while but i will be looking for a refund later this week as expect to get stonewalled like the rest , talk about bush league.

Very unhappy long time customer...

Dear Customers,

We're glad to inform you that settings for timeout feature were finally introduced in the latest update for Acronis True Image Home 2011, build 6597.

Please find the details instructions with step-by-step screenshots in this KB article.

Should you need anything else or have any further questions - feel free to contact us at your earliest convenience, we will be happy to help you!

Thank you!

Yana,
What about the new build 7154 for the 2010 version. Does the new build include the fix for timeout. I thought I saw such a statement but am unable to confirm as I do not have the 2010 version installed.

Please confirm.

Hello Grover,

Thank you very much for your question.

We have indeed included this option in the latest build of Acronis True Image 2010 Home.

More information about it is available in this Knowledge Base article - Acronis True Image Home 2010: Timeout Settings.

If you have additional questions, please let me know.

Thank you.