Acronis True Image Wishlist

I have and am using ATI for some of my backups and am performing some incremental and differential backups.  I really don't want to copy my backups outside of the backup software.  On some nights, I have 4 or 5 backups that run.  I don't want to have to manually copy things around because it gets too cumbersome and time consuming.  

David Lukenbill wrote:

I have and am using ATI for some of my backups and am performing some incremental and differential backups.  I really don't want to copy my backups outside of the backup software. 

,,,  I don't want to have to manually copy things around because it gets too cumbersome and time consuming.  

It's certainly reasonable that you add your request to the wishlist, but understand that Acronis is under no obligation to add the function to ATI, and if it does add it, it may take years.  I believe Ian was saying that, if this function is important to you, you can have it now while you wait for it to be added to ATI.  And for the manually copying the backups, you can sort of add that into ATI by having ATI pre/post command processing kick off the copies.

Patrick, Yup.  I Agree.  Just wanted him to know that the options discussed don't meet my needs.  If I'm not mistaken, the pre/post commands are considered part of the backup operation.  That would prevent other operations while the copy takes place.

ATI might not meet my needs, but I figure it doesn't hurt to ask for the enhancements.

David Lukenbill wrote:

  If I'm not mistaken, the pre/post commands are considered part of the backup operation.  That would prevent other operations while the copy takes place.

I have to admit I've never used post processing commands - just pre. I suspect you are correct; the current task would not terminate until the invoked command completed.  But I think you can use a ATI post processing command to invoke an asynchronous task.  Hopefully someone with strong scripting skills will comment.

On the scripting issue, a post command could be used to set a flag via creating an text file to indicate that the backup action has completed, where you have another background process checking for the file being present in order to perform the copy operation away from ATI.

The background process could be launched via the normal Windows Task Scheduler a short time after the scheduled Acronis backup task has started, then that process check for the flag once a minute until detected then exit when the copy has completed.

One item for the wishlist that I would like to see is related to the Acronis Rescue Media, that this would offer an option to automatically save the log(s) for any operations being performed, i.e. to the USB media booted from if used, or else at a location prompted from the user.

The reason for this request is that too many users don't realise that all logs are lost on leaving the rescue environment.

I have a single line batch file which does this for my WinPE rescue media:

copy X:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Logs D:\Capture

where D:\Capture is a folder on my USB stick that I also use for screen images (using the tools on the MVP version of the media).

Restore the "mount archive" feature, please! I do a lot of Windows beta testing and this is a key feature for me to streamline system repair/recovery. Now, I have to scrounge up a spare drive and restore the image to that.

GregK wrote:

Restore the "mount archive" feature, please! I do a lot of Windows beta testing and this is a key feature for me to streamline system repair/recovery. Now, I have to scrounge up a spare drive and restore the image to that.

While it would be nice if Acronis adds this to the .tibx support, you don't have to wait for that. You can use Windows' File Explorer to do much that can be done by mounting a backup. Just browse the .tibx or .tib file. Note that this can be a very slow process; there can be a long delay while the ATI Explorer extension processes a directory ... with the delay repeated for each level of the directory. On the other hand, a Mount in previous versions of ATI could take a very long time, too, so maybe the time is about the same.

The ability to Nonstop Backup the Users directory to the cloud. What blocks this, I believe, is the Windows Libraries in each of the user directories.

See nonstop backup limitations here.

Since ATI knows that this will not go well, it should select the main underlying directory, instead of the library (for instance the Documents directory, instead of the Documents library).

Since I can't do this myself, it may be that it is impossible for ATI to do it either. Apparently it can be done with a disk-level nonstop backup, but a disk-level nonstop backup cannot be backed up to the cloud, or mirrored there. At the least, I would suggest either a warning when selecting a library, or that the option be grayed out. 

I suggest that this would be a good issue to address because the Documents directory is the main place where an average user is going to save their most important written documents. What else do you really want backed up on a nonstop basis, other than the directories that MS has incorporated into libraries, and thus made off limits to nonstop cloud backup? (Not like the Documents directory changes enough to need it backed up every 5 minutes, but I'd like that when there is a change, it gets backed up right away.) 

Since I am no longer able to delete image files, please add the version to the file information displayed in Cleanup.  I I often can't remember which date I want to delete but I'll remember the version. 

Ability to archive older backups.

The objective would be to store:

1. Daily backups for one month.
2. Monthly backups for one year.
3. Yearly backups for say 5 years (or with manual cleanup)

It is currently not possible in a single backup job.

I'm using the terms "monthly" and "yearly" for simplicity and clarity. If the objective could be achieved using multiples of weeks, that's fine.

Make it possible to create backups more frequent than once per hour (current minimum). It may not be very usefull in normal situations  but for testing purposes it is (I'm now testing various backup strategies and have wait 1 hour each time to see what happened).

bushmaster, not sure if it will work with what you are trying to do, but would nonstop backup be a potential solution?

Ian

bushmaster wrote:

Make it possible to create backups more frequent than once per hour (current minimum). It may not be very usefull in normal situations  but for testing purposes it is (I'm now testing various backup strategies and have wait 1 hour each time to see what happened).

All you actually need here is a small Windows batch command script and you can run your backup through as many loops as you wish at the time interval you want.

Example: LoopATITask.bat

@echo off
set ATI="C:\Program Files (x86)\Acronis\TrueImageHome\TrueImageLauncher.exe"
set task1=D2F09C35-2428-47FD-A8AA-1A4E23DFEAF2

set loopcount=9
:loop
echo Launching ATI Task %loopcount%
%ATI% /script:%task1%
set /a loopcount=loopcount-1
if %loopcount%==0 goto exitloop
timeout /t 600
goto loop
:exitloop
pause

To use the above, find the unique script ID (uuid) for your task for the set task1= line - which you do by opening the C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Scripts folder and looking for the script .tib.tis file for your task.  Each file can be opened in Notepad where you will see lines similar to below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<batch>
    <version>1.0</version>
    <uuid>D2F09C35-2428-47FD-A8AA-1A4E23DFEAF2</uuid>
    <display>My Backup</display>
    <priority>low</priority>

The task name above is My Backup and the task ID is  D2F09C35-2428-47FD-A8AA-1A4E23DFEAF2 that needs to be copied into the batch script.

Set the number of loops in the line:

set loopcount=9

And set how long to wait in seconds between loops in the line:

timeout /t 600

So the batch script as shown would loop 9 times, with an interval of 10 minutes (60x10).

Note: Run the bat file as Administrator.

What would I like?  I would like Acronis to finally fix the "Preparing Data" bug that has plagued TI since many years.  Forget about all these ":nice to haves" and do that now.  Now.

True that a number of solutions have been proposed including the VSS Doctor.  They don't work.  Don't work.

Gleason Pace wrote:

 Forget about all these ":nice to haves" and do that now.  Now.

Just a short comment about this:  One person's "nice to have" is another person's "critical".

I've never run into the "preparing data" problem so it doesn't even rate a "nice to have" on my list, but I recognize it must be important to Gleason.  Hopefully Gleason will grant the same recognition to the other items on this list.  But it actually doesn't matter much since none of us set the priorities.

I would suggest that demanding Acronis take immediate action on any one of the items on the list is probably not productive.

Probably not productive, and probably not even noticed by somebody who has the power to do something about it.  However, your experience with the bug should be taken relative to the many posts in this and the previous support forum from frustrated users who have experienced it.  Actually it wouldn't be very hard to get a lot closer to making the situation manageable.  TI does notice when it is stuck in a loop like this, and eventually (30 minutes?) will kick itself out and give a completely useless error message.  Better would be a much shorter endurance of the loop and a clear message telling the user what file is causing the problem, or some other useful information.  This is not too hard.

Even better would be for it to be possible to get the message and then continue the backup skipping the file or whatever.

Of course, since I am not an Acronis employee on the inside of product development, there are things about the situation that I can't know.  But still, there is a way for this to be done.  I suspect it was a cost relative decision by management to do otherwise.

Gleason Pace wrote:

Probably not productive, and probably not even noticed by somebody who has the power to do something about it.  However, your experience with the bug should be taken relative to the many posts in this and the previous support forum from frustrated users who have experienced it.  Actually it wouldn't be very hard to get a lot closer to making the situation manageable.  TI does notice when it is stuck in a loop like this, and eventually (30 minutes?) will kick itself out and give a completely useless error message.  Better would be a much shorter endurance of the loop and a clear message telling the user what file is causing the problem, or some other useful information.  This is not too hard.

Even better would be for it to be possible to get the message and then continue the backup skipping the file or whatever.

Of course, since I am not an Acronis employee on the inside of product development, there are things about the situation that I can't know.  But still, there is a way for this to be done.  I suspect it was a cost relative decision by management to do otherwise

A solution for me was to have a dual boot system.  Two win 10's.  Each can back up the other's c: drive, since they can't do their own. 

I run regular backups to a NAS, from both mine and my wife's PCs. I would also (for added protection against ransomware attacks) like to have scheduled backups to a removable USB drive, which we only connect when a backup is due to start. The workflow needs to be seamless; my wife is not tech-savvy enough to interact with Acronis itself, and although I am I really don't want to have to. 

So a selectable option for each backup definition would be really good to have. If enabled, then when Acronis determines a scheduled backup is due to start but the drive is not accessible, it would prompt the user with a pop-up dialog to connect the drive? Once connected you press OK, and off it goes! 

Barry wrote:

a selectable option for each backup definition would be really good to have. If enabled, then when Acronis determines a scheduled backup is due to start but the drive is not accessible, it would prompt the user with a pop-up dialog to connect the drive? Once connected you press OK, and off it goes! 

While you wait for this to be implemented (which could be anywhere from a long time to forever), you can approximate this right now.  Define the backup schedule as "Upon event - When an external device is connected".  Then define a Windows task to remind you (or your wife) to plug in the external drive.  (I don't know how to make Windows present a popup window, but I assume it can be done.)

Patrick O'Keefe wrote:

While you wait for this to be implemented (which could be anywhere from a long time to forever), you can approximate this right now.  Define the backup schedule as "Upon event - When an external device is connected".  Then define a Windows task to remind you (or your wife) to plug in the external drive.  (I don't know how to make Windows present a popup window, but I assume it can be done.)

Th easiest way to get a popup is just use a .bat file that echos the message and then pauses. It's not formatted as pretty but works.

Option to set the threshold for the "running out of space" alerts

I use about 75% of my 500GB cloud account.  I keep an eye on things, it doesn't grow, and it's all good. But every day I get alerts that "Acronis Cloud is less than 30% free.  You will not be able to use Acronis Cloud soon".  Annoying.

It would be great to have a feature to either let me turn that alert off, or let me change the % free to something besides 30%.

Thx.

I would like to see a means of importing previous Nonstop backups. As it is now after a format I have to start a new nonstop backup loosing any previous versions.

I agree it the behaviour of nonstop backup is annoying. I have never been able to get a strait answer to the question: is this intended or a bug in the software. I have found it is possible to access old non-stop backups (although not sure how granular it is) by copying the folder to another location before deleting the old task. Just click on it in explorer and it opens; you just cannot add it back.

Ian

Steve Smith wrote:

bushmaster wrote:

Make it possible to create backups more frequent than once per hour (current minimum). It may not be very usefull in normal situations  but for testing purposes it is (I'm now testing various backup strategies and have wait 1 hour each time to see what happened).

All you actually need here is a small Windows batch command script and you can run your backup through as many loops as you wish at the time interval you want.

Example: LoopATITask.bat

Steve, I would suggest using the Task Scheduler for this. It can run jobs at an arbitrary interval, and allows for quite complex schedules.

It has a GUI interface in MMC, search for Task Scheduler in the Start menu. From the context menu select  Create Task, and it opens a dialog box with multiple tabs.

In the General tab, change the identity. I think that "Local Service" could work, but this can also be set to the the "Administrators"  or "SYSTEM" if it does not.

The Triggers tab allows adding events that start the job. One option, if you want backups at exact hour, is "On a schedule", for example, Daily, start time 0:00, and check "Repeat task every" box, and select the granularity (the drop-down with presets is actually editable, so, for example, you can change it to "2 hours" or "20 minutes"). "For a duration of" can be set to "indefinitely".  This option sets more precise timing, but the first repetition may occasionally  fail if it coincides with the boot, and ATI services are not started yet.

Another option is "At Startup". It's a good idea to delay start for a few minutes, while the system settles down after boot and all delayed-start services start, or the ATI won't be available yet. The repetition options are pretty much same.

In the Actions tab, the TrueImageLauncher.exe may be specified with the full path, and its command "/script...." in the corresponding field.

This is better than a batch file loop, since it runs completely unattended, and keeps the task execution log.

There is also a PowerShell interface to it, which can create or delete a task, enable/disable it, or pull its log records.

Ekaterina, please please please keep the option to store incremental backups in immutable files without merging. Either using the tib format will work, or tibx without merging the incremental files.

This has been already requested in the comment #130, item 8, but without further elaboration. My use case is uploading backups to Google Cloud Storage (GS) from the home NAS server. I'm using a schedule of one full and 7 incremental backups, once or twice a week on different computers around home. The files end up in the GS Archival storage, which is very low-cost, but has a minimum storage duration of 360 days. It has a steeper retrieval price than other options, but is perfect for a disaster recovery offsite storage, which, fingers crossed, never needs to be retrieved. GS does not have a concept of file modification; a file is just a blob which can only be created, read or deleted.

Another issue is my cable service uplink bandwidth. I simply do not have enough to upload full backups at this rate. The cable does not offer much bandwidth upstream, and I have to limit the speed to 8MBps for my connection to remain responsive. Uploading one full 100GB backup file at this speed takes over 28 hours (and it has become worse with the epidemics, as people work from home and use Internet more in general). I strategically time the backup schedules of my computers to avoid a large upload queue.

These two points would make ATI a non-starter if it could not keep backup sets immutable. I upgraded to the version 2020, because v2019 stopped working after Windows 10 1909 update, and is no longer supported, but so fortunately my existing jobs continue to use the immutable .tib format. But if this is taken away from me, I won't be able to offsite at all, and will have to look for a different backup solution--and I invested a lot of time into my current disaster recovery setup, so that this would be a real disaster.

ADD: There are also #137, #138, #141 in addition to #130 with the same request which I missed before posting this FR plea, but also not quite specific about use cases, so I'm leaving my post here.

On the Acronis UI screen I see a 'Backup Now' button 
How about adding a 'Full Backup Now' button?

Useful when you see that Microsoft wants a restart to apply an update ... forcing a full backup on demand would guard against the chance that a Microsoft update would brick your PC

Martin Diehl wrote:

On the Acronis UI screen I see a 'Backup Now' button 
How about adding a 'Full Backup Now' button?

 

There have been requests made for the ability to explicitly start a new chain in a backup. Hopefully it will be implemented... better sooner than later.

Patrick O'Keefe wrote:

Barry wrote:

a selectable option for each backup definition would be really good to have. If enabled, then when Acronis determines a scheduled backup is due to start but the drive is not accessible, it would prompt the user with a pop-up dialog to connect the drive? Once connected you press OK, and off it goes! 

While you wait for this to be implemented (which could be anywhere from a long time to forever), you can approximate this right now.  Define the backup schedule as "Upon event - When an external device is connected".  Then define a Windows task to remind you (or your wife) to plug in the external drive.  (I don't know how to make Windows present a popup window, but I assume it can be done.)

Thanks for this, and BrunoC also. I've been experimenting and homed in on an alternative solution, as I wanted something managed wholly within the ATI configurations for both my and my wife's laptops.

I've set up email notifications for each backup that has a removable USB drive as the destination. Had to fiddle quite a lot with the settings as some of the behaviours are rather counter intuitive. So for instance I leave UNchecked "Run missed operations when an external device is connected". If you check it, then an error notification is not triggered, and no email is therefore sent to warn that you need to connect the drive! 

With this notification mechanism, I uncheck any repeat attempts if the backup fails, because that would be pointless and flood with emails.

This strategy seems to be working OK, though it is horribly clunky. It would also have been nice for the email notification setup to allow me to define a specific email message. Seems such an obvious and simple little nicety. Instead the only distinguishing text is the name of the target folder - if I had realised the significance of this earlier then I would have made the folder names more informative. In principle the solution should be simple, just rename the target folders, but in my limited experience of ATI, and on advice/warnings form others in this forum, that is the road to hell with ATI, seems to trigger very buggy behaviour that is hard to pin down. So now if I need to change a destination name I just bite the bullet and recreate another backup from scratch. Infuriating.

ATI has the *potential* to be a really great fit and forget consumer product, and with a bit of development effort could be. But instead it is really hard work to get it up and running reliably, even for someone like me who is pretty computer savvy. If Acronis put the effort in to make this viable for people like my wife to use, with just a few initial setup wizards to run through initially, and to easily tweak if things change, then it could be a killer consumer product. I think Acronis are missing a big trick by not doing this.
 

Just a small whish:

A backup job has the option shut down after finishing.
I would like to expand that with hibernate or sleep after finishing.

Regards,
Paul

It's regarding USB backup/restore media, when ATI is loaded from USB.

There is date and time selection (point of time) during restore process. If backup was Full, then possible point of time is one only. So, it seems useless.

If it is problematic to remove this option for full backups, then let us choose date using keyboard only (without mouse). Thanks.

It seems comments are not saved in backup process when ATI is loaded from USB media. I am using 25700 build (Linux).

It is a pity ..... The backup task name is not displayed in the systray while backup is in progress. This indication was available on TI 2019, and is removed on TI 2020....Pity...

Jean

Using bootable media, 25700 Linux at least, ATI scans all image files on a disk and it takes up to 1 min. It's pity to wait 1 min (SSD drive) if backup/restore takes also 1-2 mins. Especially there is no need for all backup files if I am going to make a new backup. I personally prefer to browse a backup file by myself.

I'd like to see more multi-threading, and in particular, support for more than one backup task running at a time.  Right now, I've got a cloud backup running that is expected to go for several days.  So my daily backup to my local NAS is not running.  There's no reason both of those can't run concurrently.  And I'd actually like to see concurrency between multiple cloud backups. As it is, that single cloud backup is nowhere close to saturating my upload link.  (On another topic, I'm not sure why that should be unless Acronis is either throttling receive speed at the datacenter, or there's a lot of latency associated with each of the many small files that are necessarily included - another reason for multi-threading to do parallel processing of the prep work for each file).

I suspect there is quite a lot of "overhead" in the cloud backup process. It also takes time to do the local processing, which slows down the average speed. There may also be load balancing at the server end, but I am only speculating. I have a relatively fast internet connection (96/36 Mbps), and I think I have seen peaks of over 30 Mbps, but not recently. It complicated by my having 4 or 5 PC any of which may be doing a cloud backup - I am doing a lot of extra backups at the moment as part of ATI 2021 beta testing which will have an impact; also my wife's business is in mothballs at the moment due to the pandemic, and she spends a lot of time streaming Netflix and the like.

I too would like to be able to do multiple backups at one time - the PCs I use most of the time have either 6 or 8 cores (and one supports 16 threads) and they all have 16gig of RAM.

+1 for multiple simultaneous backups, especially where there is no overlap on either source or destination locations.

It would be nice to have Lite version of Acronis True Image.

Just simple backup options for local computer to share/external drive.

Newest version of 2020 is very slow on my not so old laptop (2-3years) even after clean install.

I don't need any of those antivirus/ransomware options and non backup / mobile backup functions.

I've installed old 2013 version (oldest I have available with license) and it's way faster and does only what I need.

Maybe instead of the lite version it would be nice to choose during install what options do we need.

Hello, I fully agree to Piotr Brzezicki.

However I would not call it True mage Lite. I would call it True Image Core.
Take a look at TI 2014. Realy fast startup and way less Install-Footprint.
I and my customers don't also need this bloatfeatures.
There are 3 (4) things wich are relevant in terms of backup and recovery:
1. backup (TI is the best you could get, exception tibx)
2. preparation for restoring bare metal: Partitioning
3. recovery
(4) post processing like cleanup/deleting old disks
All other things can be done and are done by other software like
- Anti-virusscanners
- cloud servies for sharing, syncing, notarization...
- Archiving
Me and my customers will use the right product for every usecase. Nobody will uninstall the Anti-Virusscanner because of Acronis. And nobody want's to risk interference between components like Active protection and the upcoming Antivirus-Engine and the other systemsoftware.
There is only one way: A Thing like Acronis Core
I am watching what is going on. And if all the things that Acronis announces are coming, i have to stop using and selling TrueImage.
To be clear: I love the corefunction of Acronis. There is no better software for backing up data and the restore is very reliable. But this blowing up of the software the last years is really really annoying.

As an Alternative I would also agree to the suggestion of Piotr to choose the appropriate options, when installing the software without patronizing by the Installer.

Best regards and in hope Acronis finally again listens to the customers

PS: and just because no one is complaining about certain features in the Forum, doesn’t mean they are good and wanted.
My customers are calling me, they are not on the forum. And with many other people it will be the same.

Support for proxy servers for Activation/subscription/product updates.

Just discovered the hard way that this is not a feature still in 2020.

In Acronis True Image 2020, the Activation Protection Icon, seems to be missing.

Windows Tips for the Acronis True Image 2020 Icon, shown is missing.

You can remove the Acronis Icon with Windows Settings for the Notification Area by turning it off.

Ability to automatically delete old backups as space is needed for new backups.  This concept seems so simple, and I'm having a hard time figuring out why this program doesn't have it yet.

Jimmy, please see my reply on this topic to your separate new topic you raised.  This is available now when the automatic cleanup options are understood and used correctly.

this conversation is difficult. Thaks for your advice anyways.

Please make the Unsubscribe link on your emails work.

My 2 items for this wish list ... 

1. Backup Now button

2. Configure as TIB or TIBX backup -- a choice

--MGD

Please Stay Safe

Martin Diehl wrote:

My 2 items for this wish list ... 

1. Backup Now button

2. Configure as TIB or TIBX backup -- a choice

--MGD

Please Stay Safe

 

+1 

A few wishlist items from me:

• Re-introduce the ability to set the backup filename format (with date/time, etc.). I still find that useful, and the manual script ‘hack’ is unsupported.
• A ‘Restart the full+incremental cycle on this job’ button (as requested elsewhere, I think.) 
• Also, a ‘pause all backup scheduling’ button - i.e. don’t start any new backup jobs until I un-pause (while I do this bit of maintenance, for example). As far as I can tell, at the moment I have to edit each backup job to set scheduling to ‘none’, then go and change them all back when I’m done. I imagine there’s something I could do with the scheduling process (?), but a supported control In the tool would be nice.

Peter Chalmers wrote:

A few wishlist items from me:

• Also, a ‘pause all backup scheduling’ button - i.e. don’t start any new backup jobs until I un-pause (while I do this bit of maintenance, for example). As far as I can tell, at the moment I have to edit each backup job to set scheduling to ‘none’, then go and change them all back when I’m done. I imagine there’s something I could do with the scheduling process (?), but a supported control In the tool would be nice.

+ 1

Ian 

I'd like a Validate function I can trust. 

I've asked technical support on several occasions why a backup can be Validated as good but immediately shows a problem when I try to restore it. Whatever check is performed at the start of a restore should be performed by Validate.

Second, I'm afraid I lost track, but did we get all the tib functionality back that tibx broke?