Reflecting on a Post-ATI World
Note the interaction on Reddit with Bagaudin S., “Acronis Community Manager/Global Community Evangelist.”
reddit(dot)com/r/homelab/comments/papg61/solution_for_migrating_my_wifes_phone_from_icloud/ha7xmw3/?context=3
Thank you very much for sharing that, Bertel.
Kudos (and my upvote) to Knurpel, particularly the "Rant" in which he advises Acronis with wisdom, and praises the heroic Steve Smith.
The whole thing makes me so sad (I guess that's why we're paying attention still).
There's no software I value more than backup software, and it's very painful to see our best option self-destruct. There were always things (like documentation and support) to be strongly criticised, but you heros banded together so we could all benefit from ATI. And now after all your effort to make ATI work for Acronis' customers, Acronis thanked us by taking it away by ruining it.
I don't know about Knurpel's "The biggest threat to your data these days is ransom ware, the second is disk drive failure...". I've had about 80 HDDs fail, and have so far never been hit by ransomware.
I do give Acronis credit for not censoring such a discussion.
" I've had about 80 HDDs fail, and have so far never been hit by ransomware."
I do have a small collection (not 80) of dead HDDs, and I never have been hit by ransomware. Probably because we ride our drives hard, and because we never have unprotected intercourse with the Internet. I do, however, have a few friends with good hard drives, who occasionally want me to help them because they got attacked "and my backup-drive with it." All I can recommend to them is pay to get their family photos back, and then do a completely new install of Windows and a good backup software.
Be it as it may, dead disk or ransom ware, good backups save the day.
"I do give Acronis credit for not censoring such a discussion"
I have the feeling they don't even read it.
GaryG45 wrote:I received an email today stating the new version of ATI will be rebranded Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office. Looks like Cyber Protection is now the number one objective over reliable backups, but we knew that was coming.
OMG. With backup, Acronis had a nice niche for them, which they dominated. And now they want to enter the extremely crowded field of cyber? Good luck, I'm out of here,
Good bye and good luck, Acronis
The news that Acronis is shifting from being the premiere backup to being one of the sundry companies dabbling in the cyber field should give anyone who cares cause to finally close the door on them, and to put backups in the hands of someone who makes backups its core business.
I am not in charge of Acronis’s corporate strategy, and I’m not getting paid to give advice. However, unless they have hired a new cadre of brilliant programmers, and unless their new CEO can perform miracles, Acronis may be lacking the technological and managerial depth to survive in the security field.
Good luck, Acronis, for trying to make cyber your core business.
If Acronis wants to become the all-in-one anti-cyber-backup Swiss Army knife, then they better learn how to do that without eating into our computer resources, and without draining the precious network bandwidth we have paid a lot of money for. See my 10GBE tests above. It is simply intolerable to have half your precious bandwidth taken by a backup program that wants to be big Anti-Cyber when it grows up.
The cyber war is dangerous, winners and losers come and go. Checking the same file over and over for a malware signature is security theater, a placebo. In general, providing add-ons to Windows and iOS always has been a game of “picking up pennies in front of the steamroller” as the saying goes in the Valley. Microsoft isn’t stupid, and the much-maligned Defender now is a very capable product. I am running the Windows 11 beta, and I like what I see. Frankly, there is no more reason for a 3rd party virus checker.
Expect problems with Acronis and W11. Acronis already has indicated on Reddit that it may not immediately support Window’s core isolation, or rather in corporate double-speak that “Core isolation compatibility is under separate review.”
Windows Defender is tightly integrated with Windows, and it does its job without costing too much bandwidth. Windows on its own already takes too big a toll. Windows 11 will be one stop closer to be as secure as Linux, and eventually, the cluttered security business will dry up.
If you still want the fuzzy feelings of an anti virus program, and you want it without too much impact on network speed, get Kaspersky, if you can live with the idea that they are Russian. If you can’t, you should dump Acronis also. Don’t be flummoxed by their “incorporated in Singapore and Switzerland.” I had a company in Switzerland without an office, and I was incorporated in the Caymans without ever having been there. The main development hub of Acronis is in Russia. Russia never bugged me, they have great coders, and I happily run Kaspersky.
These days, it probably comes down to whether the FSB or the NSA is going through your files.
Bertel's discussion of the issues with antivirus are exactly what I've been hinting at all year.
Once upon a time, I used to make sure I was running the very best security software.
But for years, for reasons like Bertel mentioned, I use Windows Defender on W10. Expert advice I've heard is that any other antivirus is too likely to provide the opposite of security: an exploit through which one's PC is compromised.
This explains my previously-hinted statements that Acronis has made a terrible choice in linking backup to something that, as I understand it, people are best advised to not use any third-party version of.
But perhaps they can make more money with that. [Shakes head in sadness.]
coyote wrote:Expert advice I've heard is that any other antivirus is too likely to provide the opposite of security
You are absolutely correct, and you are talking to the right experts:
AV can turn into a backdoor into your computer. The AV must have full root access, and therefore can read and write your most sensitive data. Some AV programs even have access to your SSL transmissions. AV enlarges the threat surface of your computer. If you want to see something scary, check out kb.acronis(dot)com/brandmauer. It lists more than 30 (!!!) firewall ports that need to be opened for Acronis Cyber Protect to work. The documentation does not specify whether these ports have to be opened for outgoing or incoming traffic. Non-experts most likely will not know the difference, and will open both, thereby breaking their firewall down. "Brandmauer" is German for firewall, sloppy, sloppy.
Privacy expert and activist Rob Braxman has a very informative video on "The Big Antivirus Lie in 2021" youtube(dot)com/watch?v=EqI-7w8AYGg He also explains that Defender is all you need, and that AV pioneer John McAfee never used an antivirus program - for a reason. He also says what I mentioned several times: The AV program slows your computer down.
For anyone interested in Macrium Reflect, today I received an email for a 22% off sale of Macrium Reflect 8 Home. The single license is $54.56 and the 4-pack license is $109.16. The sale is supposed to end on Sept 13th. Not a great deal, but better than paying full price.
GaryG45 Please note that posting "discount links" for competing products is explicitly prohibited in the Term of Use of this forum.
The 10th bullet point in the Terms of Use states:
- Keep you posts to Acronis related discussions. E.g. no discount links for competitors of Acronis.
I'm not sure if it has to literally be a "link" to be a violation of the ToU, but I just wanted to alert you to this. I just want to avoid giving forum admins a reason to shut down this thread.
The fact that posts like Gary's are not immediately taken down indicates that nobody at Acronis is giving a damn
I thought a direct link would cause a problem, and I thought if the moderator didn't like my post they would delete it.
For everybody's edification, below is a link to a Reddit discussion, in which the "Acronis Community Manager/Global Community Manager" demonstrates that he has little interest for this forum, because it "is covered by Support. I lurk it from time to time but do not have a strong grasp of what is happening there."
I'd say he's perfect for the job.
reddit(dot)com/r/homelab/comments/pk1azo/im_getting_half_my_internet_speed_on_only_my/hc91sq8/?context=8&depth=9
"It "is covered by Support"" is a sad statement, given that if he really does "lurk [here] from time to time" he would know that people loved ATI despite that it's Acronis support was bad.
It would be interesting to get an inside view into what constellation of corporate structural factors have led to a company driving a beloved top product into a ditch. There must be someone(s) in the corporate hierarchy that is not at all competent.
Harold Shipman wrote:If Acronis wants to become the all-in-one anti-cyber-backup Swiss Army knife, then they better learn how to do that without eating into our computer resources, and without draining the precious network bandwidth we have paid a lot of money for.
Acronis (and other companies) rely on scaremongering like "there is always someone lurking in the shadows to destroy your data, so buy our product or else" when in fact people should be more concerned of the so-called "cyber protection" software as they not only take over your computer but slows your system down (as you mentioned).
Back up software and anti-virus software shouldn't be combined and thankfully all the other companies have common sense and my money goes to Macrium for their Reflect program not Acronis, who have destroyed what was once a great piece of software.
When Windows Vista was launched, it was also resources eating like more than minimum 1GB Graphics memory was required to run smoothly. After, some time Windows 8 is more better then Vista. Windows 10 was launched also, We will see Windows 11 will be better than 10 as technology gets more advanced. Windows Vista resources eating issues solved in the next Windows Versions.
So, like wise Acronis cyberprotect home office, is loaded with cyberprotect feature s which may be needed more refinement in areas like computer resources and network bandwidth and slowdown of computer system, which may be solved in the following updates.
When Windows Vista was launched, it was also resources eating like more than minimum 1GB Graphics memory was required to run smoothly. After, some time Windows 8 is more better then Vista. Windows 10 was launched also, We will see Windows 11 will be better than 10 as technology gets more advanced. Windows Vista resources eating issues solved in the next Windows Versions
Don't get your hopes up re Windows 11, Been running it for more than a month, and there are no huge differences with W10.
As far as the speed impact goes: I you want to check all incoming and outgoing data for bugs, then you must hook into the connection and painstakingly check every byte coming down the pipe. Of course this has a speed impact. Windows10/11 isn't such a speed demon with 10GBE as it is (I never got more than ~7.5 gbps under Windows10/11 (iperf3) when Linux on the sane hardware bring 9.8 gbps) and connection speed must suffer under additional load. Even dedicate security gateways often have a big impact.
With no headroom available, it needs excellent programmers to minimize the impact as much as possible, programmers Acronis does not seem to have. Kaspersky, written by Russian coders just like Acronis, seems to have the least impact, also because Kaspersky uses hardware virtualization, when available.
Thanks for all the great input from many people. I'm in the process of migrating to Macrium Reflect from ATI 2020 and will be getting the 4 license package. Hopefully, they will have a discount before I make the purchase. I just installed the trial and created the rescue media. Now I just need to create the actual backup, before I do this I want to read more of the UG.
Good luck. There is an excellent community support forum as well, where you can ask questions or seek assistance (forum dot macrium dot com). With purchase, you will also get access to the official tech support, but most questions can be handled by the community forum.
Harold Shipman wrote:John Terdik wrote:Thanks for all the great input from many people. I'm in the process of migrating to Macrium Reflect from ATI 2020 and will be getting the 4 license package. Hopefully, they will have a discount before I make the purchase. I just installed the trial and created the rescue media. Now I just need to create the actual backup, before I do this I want to read more of the UG.
I am waiting until Black Friday to purchase Macrium Reflect and it is only one payment. Plus you get great software with a decent forum with actual Reflect developers helping people on there.
Acronis on the other hand doesn't bother fixing issues most of the time and now shafts their customers after 12 months, if you don't pay their ransom (subscription) fee but there must be hell of a lot of mugs emptying their wallets to Acronis as who rents disk imaging software? This would be like renting a web browser, email client, media player etc.
I'll be doing the same thing after being with ATI for years. It's now just massively bloated malware with features that I just don't want or need that can't even be properly disabled.
So the general consensus is that Macrium Reflect is the nearest replacement? Workstation seems to be £55 at the moment and my ATI sub does not finish till February.
I wonder if Macrium have sales outside of usual sales dates like Black Friday?
Waiting for black Friday is a great option!
Black Friday this year falls on Friday, November 26, 2021. Cyber Monday is on Monday, November 29.
John Stock wrote:
I'll be doing the same thing after being with ATI for years. It's now just massively bloated malware with features that I just don't want or need that can't even be properly disabled.
So the general consensus is that Macrium Reflect is the nearest replacement? Workstation seems to be £55 at the moment and my ATI sub does not finish till February.
I wonder if Macrium have sales outside of usual sales dates like Black Friday?
Guys, don't cheapen out on your data. My Acronis sub also runs until; some time next year, and I'm letting it go. I sent Macrium the full price. It's worth it.
And don't think that shaming Acronis in their own forum will make a difference. As we have found out, they don't read it.
Bertel Schmitt wrote:John Stock wrote:
I'll be doing the same thing after being with ATI for years. It's now just massively bloated malware with features that I just don't want or need that can't even be properly disabled.
So the general consensus is that Macrium Reflect is the nearest replacement? Workstation seems to be £55 at the moment and my ATI sub does not finish till February.
I wonder if Macrium have sales outside of usual sales dates like Black Friday?Guys, don't cheapen out on your data. My Acronis sub also runs until; some time next year, and I'm letting it go. I sent Macrium the full price. It's worth it.
And don't think that shaming Acronis in their own forum will make a difference. As we have found out, they don't read it.
Nobody is cheapening out, it's the exact same software just at at discount. It's being smart and efficient, especially like me when my sub does not run out till next year anyway and I can afford to wait without compromising the safety of my data. I'm not sure what your logic is there really.
It's not about shaming Acronis, it's about likeminded people trying to find a solution to replace a product and company that has essentially failed us. Sure, there's frustration in there too, but that's to be expected.
Hello,
I'm running with ATI 2018 and I decided to upgrade to ATI 2021. But I discovered that perpetual licences were removed. I don't want to pay each year.
So now I'm reading this forum about differents products like Macrium or Paragon.
In ATI, I'l love this function Try and Decide. But I can't see if it exists with Macrium or Paragon ?
Another solution for me if I can is to upgrade to ATI 2020 ?
BR
You may be able to find ATI 2020 (or possibly ATI 2021) on Amazon or eBay. Just did a quick check and could find 2021 on Amazon but not 2020. Check carefully as some sellers appears to be price gouging. Price differences are extreme; some offering single user at same price as others sell 3 user.
Ian
Yann METAIRIE wrote:
In ATI, I'l love this function Try and Decide. But I can't see if it exists with Macrium or Paragon ?
Macrium has a (limited) free version, and a 30 day free trial of the full version. I tried it, liked it, and sent them my one time payment for the lifetime license. Extremely good results. No slowdown on networking than with the misguided Acronis ant-virus. No creation of one huge backup file with incremental backups. Very good forum that is actually read, and quickly responded to by well-informed representatives.
Yann METAIRIE wrote:In ATI, I'l love this function Try and Decide. But I can't see if it exists with Macrium or Paragon ?
Yann, if you have a PC that supports using Hyper-V or VMware for running virtual machines, then that is probably an easier / better method to use for testing / trying new applications etc than using Try and Decide.
I switched from using VMware to Hyper-V recently because the former didn't support the new requirements for Windows 11 with TPM being enforced whereas Hyper-V does, so am testing 11 in that environment. I make a copy of the VM to an external disk before testing new stuff and just restore that copy if I see problems. I use a sync program for the copy.
Just adding my voice to the already established discontent.
I understand some businesses have challenges and none of us know the reason for this change, but, it's a change that simply does not suit my needs or philosophy.
I understand that making money off these products can be challenging when someone may buy the software and use its basic functions and then never upgrade for 10 years. I am one of those people, still using ATI 2017. I mostly just needed a backup program to do simple manual backups at my discretion into a compressed incremental format.
Maybe Acronis is tapping into a bigger market and losing customers like me is a small collateral damage price for them to pay and I don't hold anything against them for it. May they build a cyber security empire and become richer than Bezos.
IMO, the better strategy would have been to just keep the products separate, or even start a new child company example CyberPatriot by Acronis. It's possible this decision is just laziness on their part, instead of getting creative with new products while maintaining the stability and trust of ATI.
The big problem with the route they have taken, is, in many backup situations (such as my own), We are actually backing up on offline systems and also doing archive - things that might not get re-opened for another 10 years. Or 50 years, or 100 years - My great grandchildren might need to access these files... Who is to say Acronis will be around in 100 years and there is no way to get a license to open the TIB files?
So to be honest, it doesn't really make sense, and bundling Cyber services into as well, annoying, seeing as my workstation is offline.
I'll be looking at Macrium Reflect for image backups, and BackupChain for mass uncompressed raw file/folder backups.
So, this is goodbye Acronis, no hard feelings. Good luck with your direction.
Peteza wrote:
The big problem with the route they have taken, is, in many backup situations (such as my own), We are actually backing up on offline systems and also doing archive - things that might not get re-opened for another 10 years. Or 50 years, or 100 years - My great grandchildren might need to access these files... Who is to say Acronis will be around in 100 years and there is no way to get a license to open the TIB files?
Just answering the above point. If you create the Acronis Rescue Media for the version of ATI that have created your backup archives, which can be done as physical CD / DVD or USB media else as .ISO files, then this can always be used to access or recover your backup images. This would also apply to other backup applications, so it is a case of keeping a copy of the recovery media alongside the backup files, and trust that your disk drives or other storage media will also last for the period of time the data is being stored!
Peteza wrote:Just adding my voice to the already established discontent.
I understand some businesses have challenges and none of us know the reason for this change, but, it's a change that simply does not suit my needs or philosophy.
I understand that making money off these products can be challenging when someone may buy the software and use its basic functions and then never upgrade for 10 years. I am one of those people, still using ATI 2017. I mostly just needed a backup program to do simple manual backups at my discretion into a compressed incremental format.
Maybe Acronis is tapping into a bigger market and losing customers like me is a small collateral damage price for them to pay and I don't hold anything against them for it. May they build a cyber security empire and become richer than Bezos.
IMO, the better strategy would have been to just keep the products separate, or even start a new child company example CyberPatriot by Acronis. It's possible this decision is just laziness on their part, instead of getting creative with new products while maintaining the stability and trust of ATI.
The big problem with the route they have taken, is, in many backup situations (such as my own), We are actually backing up on offline systems and also doing archive - things that might not get re-opened for another 10 years. Or 50 years, or 100 years - My great grandchildren might need to access these files... Who is to say Acronis will be around in 100 years and there is no way to get a license to open the TIB files?
So to be honest, it doesn't really make sense, and bundling Cyber services into as well, annoying, seeing as my workstation is offline.
I'll be looking at Macrium Reflect for image backups, and BackupChain for mass uncompressed raw file/folder backups.
So, this is goodbye Acronis, no hard feelings. Good luck with your direction.
Then (in my opinion) they should have made a second separate product for cyber security and owners of ATI could get a discount to it in order to buy it. Or an optional module that you could buy for ATI.
I was already (and still am) a subscriber to ATI mainly for the online storage space, so they got a constant revenue stream from me anyway.
In fact if I could just simply *completely* turn of everything unrelated to cyber security in ATI I might still continue with it, but I can't.
Changing the functionality of the product so radically was a silly choice and after 1-2 years of this, with this year getting worse I'm jumping ship.
But to be fair, ATI was never meant to be a extremely long term storage solution on the scale of 50 or 100 years. The fundamental underlying technologies in electronics will have changed in those timescales and you'd need hardware level emulation anyway. Even large enterprises are scratching their heads as to how to store data on those timescales and still have the ability to access it without the hardware being obsolete decades before.
Peteza wrote:We are actually backing up on offline systems and also doing archive - things that might not get re-opened for another 10 years. Or 50 years, or 100 years -
If you really are planning to be restoring your backups 50 - 100 years on out, then better wrap up the hardware that goes with it, along with the apps that read the data. Remember, 50 years ago, pretty much the only long time storage was reel-to-reel tape. Try to find the drive elsewhere than the computer museum. Try to read Wordstar docs you stored 40 years ago - good luck. Also, remember that hard drives don't keep their data forever. 50 to 100 years from now, you'll be experiencing serious bit rot if the data aren't refreshed at regular intervals.
10 years ago, I had the incredible luck to be invited into the inner sanctum of Lexus LFA production, the 100% carbon fiber sports car, limited to a run of 500. They had a 3-ring binder for every car made..thetruthaboutcars dot com/2012/07/the-making-of-the-lexus-lfa-supercar-an-inside-report-chapter-4-balance-of-power/ On many pages of paper, it documented every detail of the car, down to the torque of every nut and bolt. I said: "What, haven't you heard of computers?" Whereupon Chief Engineer Tanahashi said: "This car will last for 50 years, or longer. We want to be able to get to the data in 50 years, or later." To be sure, the data were printed on acid-free paper.
Bertel Schmitt wrote:Peteza wrote:We are actually backing up on offline systems and also doing archive - things that might not get re-opened for another 10 years. Or 50 years, or 100 years -
If you really are planning to be restoring your backups 50 - 100 years on out, then better wrap up the hardware that goes with it, along with the apps that read the data. Remember, 50 years ago, pretty much the only long time storage was reel-to-reel tape. Try to find the drive elsewhere than the computer museum. Try to read Wordstar docs you stored 40 years ago - good luck. Also, remember that hard drives don't keep their data forever. 50 to 100 years from now, you'll be experiencing serious bit rot if the data aren't refreshed at regular intervals.
10 years ago, I had the incredible luck to be invited into the inner sanctum of Lexus LFA production, the 100% carbon fiber sports car, limited to a run of 500. They had a 3-ring binder for every car made..thetruthaboutcars dot com/2012/07/the-making-of-the-lexus-lfa-supercar-an-inside-report-chapter-4-balance-of-power/ On many pages of paper, it documented every detail of the car, down to the torque of every nut and bolt. I said: "What, haven't you heard of computers?" Whereupon Chief Engineer Tanahashi said: "This car will last for 50 years, or longer. We want to be able to get to the data in 50 years, or later." To be sure, the data were printed on acid-free paper.
It's not really a valid point imo, just because something was in invented that was an improvement on previous inventions, doesn't mean something new is again going to be invented. Electricity isn't going anywhere, and neither is digital storage... The methods might change.
I never mentioned anything about harddrives (or maybe I did but you're putting to much emphasis on it) and am well aware that hard-drives whether SSD or Disc, have a shelf life both in terms of mechanical repetion wear and atmospheric deterioration.
Ironically, the professional IT archival world is still depending on magnetic tape for long term high density archival storage in many situations... for various reasons.
My point is, even if futile (the Earth might explode next year), I'd expect any professional IT backup/data storage company to at least take these things into consideration and anticipate what variables people could encounter in the future - and contriving a business strategy to narrow their mechanics down to a McDonalds happy meal bundle of forced Cyber security on a subscription probably in an attempt to nudge their customers to also paying for cloud storage.... isn't it.
The same thing angered me about Adobe - - - - maybe - I don't want - to be connected to the internet... Maybe I don't want your constant updates and background services running... Is that not an option in life anymore?
The same thing angered me about Adobe - - - - maybe - I don't want - to be connected to the internet... Maybe I don't want your constant updates and background services running... Is that not an option in life anymore?
There are still many and varied options for users to choose from without them needing to be tied in to subscription services or software!
If a PC is not connected to the internet, then there are still options! Everything depends on what the PC is being used for, where it is being used, how often etc. An older PC might still be able to use software such as Ghost or other perpetual, stand-alone applications. Newer PC's can opt to use Clonezilla by booting from a CD or DVD....
I have a friend who refuses to have Internet access and who has been running an ancient Win XP system for many years purely to use for word processing & printing a few times each week. It continues to boot quickly, gives a brief nag about having no antivirus etc, then gets to work. The PATA disk drive is a teenager at least and it has an equally old copy of ATI installed to make occasional backups (on demand) to a second PATA vintage drive.
I've been using ATI since 2013. I usually renew every 2 years and always buy the 3 PC pack, but sometimes sooner if I like the feature set. That said, I loved it when it was a BACKUP product. The current frankenstein it has become is annoying but not so much so that I would've stopped using it. That was until the subscription fiasco. ATI 2021 is the last version I'll be using and will do like others and find a viable alternative. They did send me a "halloween special" offer through the adware component of ATI (which I also loathe) for $27.49 for 3 PCs. Sorry though, even that price is too high to be locked into the subscription model. So long, Acronis. It's been good while it lasted.
I've been an ATI Windows user for a few years. I would upgrade just to stay current but never used any features in an upgraded version. I'm retired and no longer even build my own machines. I had to replace my Microsoft Surface after many years. My new 2in1 came with Windows 11 pre-installed. I thought my biggest problem would have been transferring my ATI 2021 perpetual license from the dead Surface to the new machine. Dream on. First I had to investigate what happened to Windows Defender. OK it was just a name change. Then I wanted to create an image in case I did something really stupid on the new 2in1. I've been running ATI 2021 licensed for 5 machines. I had no knowledge of Cyber Security Home Office. That chewed up more hours. After I concluded (incorrectly) it was another name change, I installed Cyber Security HO trial. When I went to add a perpetual license key, I got the message that it wasn't for this product. More head scratching. This forum has been invaluable after I found so many people like me who just wanted a backup solution and already had a working anti-virus solution. Finally, I realized it was the end of my relationship with Acronis and the beginning of a new relationship with ... I don't know what yet. For those of you wondering what to do after retirement, you won't have much free time after seeing doctors and keeping up with technology - especially after bad business decisions as Acronis has done. I no longer wonder why people pay big bucks for Apple products!
Robert Petrie wrote:I've been an ATI Windows user for a few years. I would upgrade just to stay current but never used any features in an upgraded version. I'm retired and no longer even build my own machines. I had to replace my Microsoft Surface after many years. My new 2in1 came with Windows 11 pre-installed. I thought my biggest problem would have been transferring my ATI 2021 perpetual license from the dead Surface to the new machine. Dream on. First I had to investigate what happened to Windows Defender. OK it was just a name change. Then I wanted to create an image in case I did something really stupid on the new 2in1. I've been running ATI 2021 licensed for 5 machines. I had no knowledge of Cyber Security Home Office. That chewed up more hours. After I concluded (incorrectly) it was another name change, I installed Cyber Security HO trial. When I went to add a perpetual license key, I got the message that it wasn't for this product. More head scratching. This forum has been invaluable after I found so many people like me who just wanted a backup solution and already had a working anti-virus solution. Finally, I realized it was the end of my relationship with Acronis and the beginning of a new relationship with ... I don't know what yet. For those of you wondering what to do after retirement, you won't have much free time after seeing doctors and keeping up with technology - especially after bad business decisions as Acronis has done. I no longer wonder why people pay big bucks for Apple products!
A few of us have been discussing this over the months and have all came to the conclusion that Macrium Reflect is the way to go. It has all the features we need, does just the backup and does not require a subscription. It should be going on sale very soon for Black Friday and there's a free trial too.
I've seen other parts of the internet complaining about the way Acronis has been going and shafting it's customers. It's a shame considering ATI was wonderful product and I used to sing it's praises on a lot of IT forums/subreddits.
The fact that are allowing us to talk about their direct competitor on their own forums shows they either don't care or don't even look here. I think they will only realise what the hell has happened AFTER everyone has already jumped ship
John Stock wrote:A few of us have been discussing this over the months and have all came to the conclusion that Macrium Reflect is the way to go. It has all the features we need, does just the backup and does not require a subscription. It should be going on sale very soon for Black Friday and there's a free trial too.
After Acronis brought the network performance of my Windows installation to its knees, I switched to Macrium Reflect with EXCELLENT results. Works perfectly and unobtrusively. I was on the Windows 11 beta,, and Macrium worked without any hiccups. With Windows 11, no 3rd party antivirus is needed, Windows Security is tightly integrated into the OS, and it does not bring the performance down.
The fact that are allowing us to talk about their direct competitor on their own forums shows they either don't care or don't even look here. I think they will only realise what the hell has happened AFTER everyone has already jumped ship
They don't know what's going on on their own forum, because they don't care, and they don't read it. The "Acronis Community Manager/Global Community Manager" admitted on Reddit that he doesn't read the Acronis forum. Say anything critical about Acronis on Reddit, and he will immediately jump on the thread and abuse you, so much that I had to block him. Clearly, they don't care about their customers, but care very much about their public image - in a very clumsy and unprofessional way.
Thank you very much for this topic. After 10 years, I am very disappointed with the latest Acronis product and new sell model. It is very hard decision for me because I was very content till 2019 version of Acronis True Image. The next versions of the program were no acceptable.
Black Friday has been started today on Macrium website and I am ready to buy Macrium Reflect 8 after previously using trial version.
Thank you for all information about this backup software.
Macrium currently offering 50% off in their Black Friday sale for MR Home 8 perpetual.
Steve, much thanks for the "Macrium currently offering 50% off in their Black Friday sale MR Home 8 perpetual" notice. Last night I made the purchase for the 4-pack. Now to install in my unique environment.
I too was a longtime user of ATI, to me it seemed with each new release some feature I used was removed and the focus was on the big customer.
I greatly appreciate all the SUPER support you have provided, I personally have benefitted several times.
John Terdik wrote:Steve, much thanks for the "Macrium currently offering 50% off in their Black Friday sale MR Home 8 perpetual" notice. Last night I made the purchase for the 4-pack. Now to install in my unique environment.
I too was a longtime user of ATI, to me it seemed with each new release some feature I used was removed and the focus was on the big customer.
I greatly appreciate all the SUPER support you have provided, I personally have benefitted several times.
I have to second this. Steve has been a huge amount of help on here over the years. Thanks mate.
Ditto. Thanks a million, Steve! I think Acronis owes Steve years of back-salary.
Just hopped in to say thanks for this very useful thread.
I ran into an error running my Acronis boot media on a new laptop and the support suggestion was to upgrade. That's when I saw the horrible new licensing scheme. I know recurring revenue is all the rage these days, but we're being subscribed to death.
So, even though I've been using ATI since 2008, other than accessing old backups, I'm done. Of course, if the are willing to go back to a perpetual license, I'll consider switching back. If I don't have any complaints with Macrium, though, I don't know why I would.
I can't recall if it was mentioned previously, but it's worth noting that Macrium Reflect doesn't make it easy to exclude files in image backups. You have to create some registry keys, which for non-nerds isn't exactly trivial. I hope they add a way to do it via their UI.
And I'm really, really glad it's Black Friday season. Just sayin'...
I want to also say "Thank You" to Steve Smith for all of his help.
cool stuff to all.
For those who have migrated to Macrium, do they usually have deals on Cyber monday ? I would ask in their forums, but I am not allowed to register unless I have a license key, and I haven't tried the program yet. I know they have a deal today, black friday, but I didn't get a chance to try the program yet, so I will definitely not buy it today. Might try it this weekend, though.
Julien, the MR sale discount ends on Dec 1st per an email I received.
Steve Smith wrote:Julien, the MR sale discount ends on Dec 1st per an email I received.
Thank you !
So far MR has been working great in the background with multiple tiered backups to various destinations.
The only small negative is I wish the UI was newer/cleaner/less cluttered, but that's a very minor issue.
Macrium should offer Steve a job.
John, after being retired from full time work for over 13 years am in no hurry to go back again! Helping in the forums is to help keep the 'little grey cells' active and stimulated (to quote Hercule Poirot). I agree that the MR UI takes a bit of getting used to but worth the effort in doing so!
I grabbed Macrium on the deal even though I've been too busy to test it. I trust y'all enough it didn't feel like much of a risk.