Reflecting on a Post-ATI World
Steve Smith wrote:Mr_Scary wrote:I had to come and post this.
What is Ransomware?
You pay a fee, If you do not pay the fee your files are useless. Correct?So lets say I have a subscription to Acronis, and I have multiple .tibx files of all my images and backups made with Acronis & I don't pay my subscription fee, are my files useless until I pay the fee? or do you have the ability to restore your files and images?
Will this even get posted? Will see.
See KB 63207: Acronis True Image 2020 licensing - where it details the way subscription works if you let it expire / don't renew!
Standard license is unlimited in time. Annual subscription means your license is limited for 1 year. You can renew your subscription and continue using the product.
After your Acronis True Image subscription expires, all product functionality will be blocked until further subscription renewal, however, the backed up data is still accessible:
- For 5 days after subscription expires you can continue making backups, including backups to Acronis Cloud storage.
- During 30 days after subscription expires you can restore data from Cloud Storage. Thirty days after subscription expiration the data in Acronis Cloud storage is destroyed.
- Local backups remain available for restore.
Obviously if you have your backup files stored in the Acronis Cloud then they will be lost after the 30 day period expires!
Thanks. Well that's good to know, so at least they give some extra time on cloud, and allow for restore of existing local files. I don't use cloud storage at all ever. So not completely bad there. They are not holding backups hostage so to speak, so good on them.
As for using an alternative, I asked questions at LSoft Technologies over a month ago, and have not received a response, so I will not be using them at this time.
I downloaded Macrium Reflect so I will be installing that soon.
Someone recommended Veeam so I have downloaded their FREE Veeam Agent community software to try as well. From what I read it may be my solution for free.
Either way I want to try Macrium first.
I'm in the same sinking lifeboat as everyone here. I have (or, rather, had) 5 licenses of ATI 2019 and kept a cadence of biannual upgrades for about 10 years. Because of W10 fast development pace, I started having problems with it, so I upgraded to 3-pack of ATI '20, as I have scaled down a bit. It's kinda a hassle to type on 4 keyboards at once, but 3 looks just right. :‒) So, I had been backing up 3 machines: a formidable workstation, a smaller desktop that I can use while the w/s is crunching data, and a notebook. My notebook started dying: the screen shows a light show of color stripes and flickering ghost images of windows on screen. The failure is on the mobo and repair is too expensive. It's only no longer portable, which is kinda the whole point of keeping a notebook. I have had no data loss, so that restoring from a backup is not the only option.
I decided to do a fresh install and keep only data; besides, the book came with W11 and is of a different brand, so a fixup after restoring the image would be quite a job anyway. I installed a 4th copy of ATI2020 on the replacement while transitioning. ATI warned that I'm over licenses, and gave me 31 day to fix this. I clicked on "remedy" thinking of topping off my upgrade rights to 5. Ha! As if! I'm not even offered a standard subscription as my promised upgrade, only the 2 most expensive options. Lose, lose! And the new ACHOO, which I trialed, produced a TIBX archive, a format that I'm unable to use: my upstream b/w allows me only one full backup of each computer every 2 weeks, the rest has to be incremental. A full backup TIB takes 2 to 4 days to upload offsite to Google Cloud Storage. I stopped the “unstoppable” protection service and removed 3(!) filesystem filter drivers, all this only to modify the fresh script from TIBX to TIB. That was required even with the doggone mal/ransomware protection “turned off” (as if!) in the UI. But this is an unsupported hack. I'm currently on a 31-day trial, and will transfer a 2020 license from the crippled machine (provided that Acronis will still permit that) to its replacement to buy me some time to ween myself off the former ATI. RIP, old chap. I need a backup solution, not an overbloated malware protection with added backup capabilities. It's sad, but Acronis has left the backup business, and their antivirus/antimalware solution doesn't measure up to waist height of existing sensible software. They've landed on the floor precisely between the two chairs with a thundering tushy thump, but it has become my problem.
The many in this thread recommended Macrium. I have a question about it. I installed a trial, but seem to have hit a brick wall. My notebook has a 1TB SSD with a single NTFS partition (and the EFI and a WinPE revocery one, but that peanuts). I liked it very much: it's a powerful, no-frills backup and restore machinery with all your options right at your fingertips, so you do not need to hack you way to edit the backup script—you just edit it with the UI editor or any way you want. The UI is fast and well-organized. My problem with Macrium is that I cannot find any way to set a list of exclusions. The work I do leaves an unholy buttload of cached files. To put numbers on it, after I used the new machine for only a week, ATI 2020 stuffed 112GB of data into a full disk backup while Macrium did 193GB, thanks to the ATI's exclusions. And the gap is gonna only grow over time. I can afford to lose these caches, they only offer a significant speed-up, but are rebuilt automatically if erased. Sometimes I trimmed them when my old notebook with a 512MB drive filled to the brim. If not for my low upstream bandwidth, I would not care: my NAS has 9TB of free space, I keep old backup sets only so long and don't care how fast is the backup running in background, usually overnight. But, alas, I have the chocking uplink problem.
So, here are my questions to the community of us thrown overboard by Acronis without a warning or a recourse and grasping on a lifebuoy that'll sink in 30 days:
- Have I overlooked the feature, or Macrium's Reflect doesn't in fact support excluding files from a partition backup? It has a file backup option, but I have a single partition for both OS and data, unfortunately. (Worst come worst, I'll try to shrink the single huge partition and create a second one; it's a GPT disk).
- What other software discussed here supports exclusions, best of all both by full path and by file wildcard, if Reflect in fact doesn't?
Thank you, my mates in this misery. Hope we'll survive these buffets of misfortune with as few scars as possible.
Steve Smith wrote: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.
Huh, that reminded me of something! I always use secure boot with TPM and encrypt with Bitlocker, which uses secure boot as attestation, which makes it much less intrusive (without a TPM it needs a key on a USB stick, cannot use PCR 7 as a trust root, and thus becomes more alert and may drop into the key recovery mode from such a common thing as Intel ME firmware upgrade). On notebooks, I also add a boot PIN, so if I lose or am forced to part with the machine, the data is undecryptable by the new “owner.” But that's another story. To keep boot safe the PIN is not necessary, TPM is. This virtually eliminates a possibility to start a rootkit, if the TPM is in the User mode—you can still technically catch a rootkit, but it will break the chain of boot trust (and Bitlocker's partial attestation is another security checkpoint). The next step up is W10 support for paravirtualization of kernel space, so that critical services, like LSA etc., where cleartext credentials are kept in memory, are "just not there," not anywhere in the address space even for kernel drivers, which used to be almighty before. In the UI the box is called Memory Integrity. The mechanism was there even before the Options UI gained a simple switch for it, so it required a group policy or registry tweaking, where it's called HVCI. Modern CPUs provide hardware support for it, so there is no perf penalty. My new notebook even came with an SSD drive doing encryption in hardware, and offloading encryption to hardware specially designed for it is good for battery life. This shows that vendors who really care about security do their part to support innovation.
With HVCI on, the ATI “cybersecurity solution's” TIB mounter driver does not load! It's not essential, you only cannot mount TIB files as drives; the Restore panel does show backup contents and allows extracting files. That's ATI '20. I thought they'll fix it later, no big deal. But. This driver was still rejected by the OS when I installed a trial of the latest ACHOO, literally past weekend! So this “cybersecurity,” my ass, is so shabby that it's not even allowed to run by the OS own security for security reasons. It began with a Windows upgrade while I was at ATI '19, but I thought they'll catch up; this was exactly why I broke my 2-year upgrade cycle and upped it to ATI '20 out of abundance of precaution. They had 3 years to fix the issue. I don't believe they even ever tried to even install their product on an HVCI-enabled system (which, I believe, at this age should be every system—hardware support is so extensive now that extended security comes free of any performance burden). The More Info button in the box popped up by the OS clearly explains that the driver's signature is incompatible with memory integrity requirements, and suggests trying to disable it as a last resort if you cannot live without that driver, but recommends updating to a supported one from the driver's vendor ASAP. Bwa-ha-ha! As if this particular vendor gives a bird about security. Luck has it that without this driver backup and restore still works.
Rebranding your thing a “security enhancement” does not make it one. But this lack of security awareness when you declare security your core business is just incomprehensible.
FWIW, since W10 took secutiry that seriously, all additional “cybersecurity” stuff only expands the attack surface, which the Acronis' faulty driver story illustrates so well. Defender is all that's required. It's developed by the very OS vendor, tightly integrated into its security core, and no one is really in a position to do it better. (UPD: And should a CVE be issued, I trust Microsoft to deliver a fix timely over a well-established channel as a critical update—a similar level of trust has to be earned by a 3rd party, and the channel established, which is also an important consideration.) Entering this tightly packed niche of selling snake oil at this exactly wrong moment in time at the cost of destroying the base functionalty of your formerly very good product and pissing off and losing existing customers is a truly schizzy decision.
For File & Folder backups, Macrium Reflect offers very powerful exclusion (and inclusion) filters. However, I believe you are interested in image backups. For image backups, Reflect uses the Microsoft VSS service, so getting the Shadow Copy Optimization Writer to exclude files requires editing the FilesNotToSnapshot registry key.
Replace each "dot" by a period (.) in the URL below to read the relevant knowledgebase article:
knowledgebase "dot" macrium "dot" com/display/KNOW80/How+to+exclude+files+from+a+Disk+Image
J K wrote:For image backups, Reflect uses the Microsoft VSS service, so getting the Shadow Copy Optimization Writer to exclude files requires editing the FilesNotToSnapshot registry key.
Wow, super, I'm totally migrating to it! That was the last hurdle. Thank you, J K!
kkm - Great, the more the merrier! Once you get your registration key, I would recommend joining the user forum (forum "dot" macrium "dot" com) for help with navigating the learning curve (or any issues that you encounter).
Found another one today, This is a very very simple imaging software that also makes use of Windows Built in imaging system. It just makes images.
What I really like is that it is portable and can be run from the snapshot64.exe and does not even require installation, however there is an installation setup.exe if want to install it.
It's called Drive Snapshot:
- snapshot.exe (Portable no install)
- snapshot64.exe (Portable no install)
- setup.exe (if you prefer installing)
This is not a robust backup suite. It's just a simple drive imager.
I like that you can just put the snapshot.exe files on a flash drive and make images.
It took 2 hours to make a 901GB disk image.
I've bought new 3-5 user licenses every year since 2007's v11. I also use their Server products to protect 3 servers and 6 Virtual Servers... and I use TIH at home to protect personal machines as well.
Today I came to check out the latest version (we have 2021 currently) as what we have isn't allowing USB recovery media to boot on a new HP laptop. Sometimes this is just a simple "get the latest version" fix. Instead I come here to see they've changed the purchase model to yet another freaking subscription model... and are pushing AV software to boot.
Can't echo the thoughts here enough... I've been a customer for BACKUP and RESTORE features, not for ransomware protection, not for AV protection, etc... Why do you not offer a basic backup software anymore?
Well... this marks the end of an era for me. I'll be trying out Macrium now. Our corporate contracts are up for renewal in 2 months, and I see Macrium offers similarly priced options... Time to look at those too.
The poor levels of support (tickets taking months to resolve), forcing users into product models they don't desire (no simple backup/deploy only), and forcing users into subscription pricing models is too much.
This reminds me of when LogMeIn went from $250/yr unlimited devices to $500/yr for 25 devices... with 7 days notice on the 2x price hike for renewing users. That was 7 years ago. That $500 is now $3,500/yr today. Intuit did the same thing with Quickbooks Enterprise going to a subscription model. It used to be $600/yr for us, now it's 3x that in a matter of a few years. THIS IS WHY SUBSCRIPTIONS SUCK and aren't trusted by users. The price control Acronis gets from this model is huge. No more resellers selling off old discounted codes or whatnot... If you want it, you pay full price and at whatever price Acronis sets, every year. So after you are bought into their ecosystem and have a library of TIBX files for various machines/models, good luck leaving without fallout. Every image will have to be rebuilt. They know they have you... so what's $20 more a year? What's $50 more?
Forget it. I'm getting off the train at this stop before it goes over the cliff. Sad day. I really enjoyed Acronis products.
Brent Pirolli wrote:I've bought new 3-5 user licenses every year since 2007's v11. I also use their Server products to protect 3 servers and 6 Virtual Servers... and I use TIH at home to protect personal machines as well.
Today I came to check out the latest version (we have 2021 currently) as what we have isn't allowing USB recovery media to boot on a new HP laptop. Sometimes this is just a simple "get the latest version" fix. Instead I come here to see they've changed the purchase model to yet another freaking subscription model... and are pushing AV software to boot.
Can't echo the thoughts here enough... I've been a customer for BACKUP and RESTORE features, not for ransomware protection, not for AV protection, etc... Why do you not offer a basic backup software anymore?
Well... this marks the end of an era for me. I'll be trying out Macrium now. Our corporate contracts are up for renewal in 2 months, and I see Macrium offers similarly priced options... Time to look at those too.
The poor levels of support (tickets taking months to resolve), forcing users into product models they don't desire (no simple backup/deploy only), and forcing users into subscription pricing models is too much.
This reminds me of when LogMeIn went from $250/yr unlimited devices to $500/yr for 25 devices... with 7 days notice on the 2x price hike for renewing users. That was 7 years ago. That $500 is now $3,500/yr today. Intuit did the same thing with Quickbooks Enterprise going to a subscription model. It used to be $600/yr for us, now it's 3x that in a matter of a few years. THIS IS WHY SUBSCRIPTIONS SUCK and aren't trusted by users. The price control Acronis gets from this model is huge. No more resellers selling off old discounted codes or whatnot... If you want it, you pay full price and at whatever price Acronis sets, every year. So after you are bought into their ecosystem and have a library of TIBX files for various machines/models, good luck leaving without fallout. Every image will have to be rebuilt. They know they have you... so what's $20 more a year? What's $50 more?
Forget it. I'm getting off the train at this stop before it goes over the cliff. Sad day. I really enjoyed Acronis products.
Well Said..
So far Macrium Reflect Home 8 is working out nicely. It feels much more professional as well, like a PC Software, not a Cell Phone app. This is a very powerful, and intuitive software. I will never look back. I like how they give the "option" to purchase cyber protection & ransomware protection, but do not force it on you. That's how they will keep my business. "OPT in" not Opt-Out, or forced in. Take notes Acronis.
I played around running a Windows 10 Image in a Virtual Machine. This is great.
What I'm getting for free from Macrium is more then I ever used in ATI all those years.
I've already setup the Bootable USB, I will probably start imaging all my machines and drives, and start deleting all the ATI images from my system, and be rid of Acronis. This is very sad.
I was a long time user of Acronis True Image and was absolutely disgusted when they tried to force useless bloated software and subscriptions on their loyal users.
So I looked around and found a program called R-Drive Image that does all the things the old Acronis True Image used to do, and it's inexpensive and comes with a perpetual license. I've had it for about four months now, and used it to backup and restore both NTFS and Ext4 file systems, and it works perfectly.
It's a shame that Acronis became convinced it's users were ignorant of reality and drove so many of us away. But evidently they're making more money that way.
Or at last think they will.
Robert Muncrief wrote:I was a long time user of Acronis True Image and was absolutely disgusted when they tried to force useless bloated software and subscriptions on their loyal users.
So I looked around and found a program called R-Drive Image that does all the things the old Acronis True Image used to do, and it's inexpensive and comes with a perpetual license. I've had it for about four months now, and used it to backup and restore both NTFS and Ext4 file systems, and it works perfectly.
It's a shame that Acronis became convinced it's users were ignorant of reality and drove so many of us away. But evidently they're making more money that way.
Or at last think they will.
I downloaded R-Drive as well it's on my list of softwares to try, and was going to try it out next. Using Macrium is solid so far, and the version I'm using is free not trial. The review I saw of R-Drive looked impressive. It's reasonably priced. I want to use each software as I would in real world. So I will just use each one until hit a snag, or find something I don't like. It really hurts when you've used the same software for so many years.
Mr_Scary wrote:....I downloaded R-Drive as well it's on my list of softwares to try, and was going to try it out next. Using Macrium is solid so far, and the version I'm using is free not trial. The review I saw of R-Drive looked impressive. It's reasonably priced. I want to use each software as I would in real world. So I will just use each one until hit a snag, or find something I don't like. It really hurts when you've used the same software for so many years.
I agree Mr_Scary . The more options the better, and I'm glad a found a forum that can compare and report on them. Heck, there might even be people who think the new Acronis model is better, and I welcome their experiences as well.
As for myself, I chose R-Drive as it was the first product I found that could restore both Windows and Linux filesystems, including boot sectors, special system and recovery partitions, etc. Unfortunately I didn't find Macrium at the time or I would have given it a try as well, so we're both in the same situation, except reversed :)
I can only report that after backing up my computer with my old Acronis 2016 first to be safe, and then R-Drive, I deleted and restored all the above mentioned sector and partition types successfully with R-Drive. R-Drive was about 20% slower than Acronis 2016 during backup, but the restores seemed about the same speed and worked perfectly.
But, like you, I wouldn't change my current backup software unless it lacked something I needed, or didn't work. In fact it's good to have competition among companies.
And Acronis is a great example. They had a near monopoly on quality PC backup software, and look what they tried to do - Force everyone into buying their cloud backup and antivirus software as well, with never ending subscriptions on everything.
However if Acronis ever comes back to its senses, and just sells backup software with perpetual licenses again, I'll be glad to evaluate it. And if it's better than all of the competition at that time I'll be happy to purchase it.
Did anyone else get the email, and afraid to install it? I won't be installing it for sure.
I've used the Macrium Free version now and backed up and restored several drives, and it's working amazing.
I'm removing Acronis from all my systems and will flash drive on hand if I need to restore one of my old backups.
Just uninstalled 2020, and took the survey, and left a long (Other) why I uninstalled it. Hey, they asked for it.
Dear Acronis user,
As you know, Acronis operates a global network of cloud data centers that are built to provide the highest levels of safety, security, and accessibility. To ensure that these standards are maintained, we are releasing a free mandatory software update for Acronis True Image (versions 2017–2021).
We highly recommend that you install this update before February 2022. Doing so will not only enhance your security, but is also necessary for all product features that use the Acronis Cloud to continue working properly. If you choose not to update your software, certain functionalities will be unavailable beginning in February.
Simply download the latest product version, launch it, and install it over your existing build. If you need help, you can follow these instructions <LINK REMOVED>
To learn more about this update and the product versions that require it, see this article <LINK REMOVED>
From Acronis in other forum posts:
Acronis Knowledge Base article:
https://kb.acronis.com/content/69830.
Versions 2017-2021 have new builds released containing necessary security updates.
Same notification message is now published at Acronis support page: https://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/.
The emails sent out to users wasn't the most clever from Acronis but is genuine though only really affects users using the Acronis Cloud or Online Dashboard services as far as we understand. It also doesn't offer any similar new builds for ATI 2016 and earlier versions.
Good to know, thank you very much Steve!
(I bought Macruim but haven't installed it yet, I'm still relying on my ATI 2020 Rescue Disc.)
Coyote, Macrium 8 Home is good and I have it installed and running just fine as a second backup application alongside ATI 2021. The GUI is very different but it works without needing any interaction for my scheduled tasks.
Macrium 8 Home is good and I have it installed and running just fine as a second backup application alongside ATI 2021. The GUI is very different but it works without needing any inHiteraction for my scheduled tasks.
Hi Steve,
I just wanted to chime in here. I'm trying out Macrium 8 Home Trial and it does everything I need. I intend to run it along side ATI 2020 for the time being. The only issue I have with Macrium is that it is kind of difficult to exclude files and or directories with an image snapshot. But, it is doable through the registry. And I'm not crazy about the naming process, but, you can attach notes before or after the backup, which is perfect.
Thanks for sharing your experience here.
FWIW, I found Macrium to be far slower for backups than ATI 2019, by a large margin. I could not resolve the client idling at the start of incremental backups for more than 15 minutes that caused the NAS to go to sleep Even if I manually forced the NAS to stay awake (not a practical thing to do when backups are scheduled at 2am), the backups took far longer. Both incremental and full backups took much, much longer with Macrium.
ATI 2021 is also a good bit slower than ATI 2019. I have not activated the 5-machine ATI 2021 boxed license I purchased from Newegg.
I gave up on both the Macrium trial version, and ATI 2021. Not sure what I will do when/if I ever move to Windows 11.
I ATI 2021 is also a good bit slower than ATI 2019. I have not activated the 5-machine ATI 2021 boxed license I purchased from Newegg.
I don't use a NAS, just an internal drive. I can backup a 48Gig image in about 6 minutes. That feels faster than Acronis 2020.
Edit To Add: I just did a few backups with ATI 2019 and 2020 and they were just about the same speed/time as Macrium Reflect Home 8.0 Trial.
madbrain,
Your experience (while undoubtedly disappointing for you) is not typical and is likely caused by some peculiarity of your specific set-up.
You wrote:
I could not resolve the client idling
Did you avail yourself of Macrium's tech support and the excellent user's forum for assistance troubleshooting the cause of the slowdown on your system?
Did you avail yourself of Macrium's tech support and the excellent user's forum for assistance troubleshooting the cause of the slowdown on your system?
I don't think you can post on the forum to ask questions without having the serial number of a paid registration. I could be wrong but I wasn't able to use my trial ser#.
Forum Registration
In order to register as a member of the support forum you are required to have a supported copy of Macrium Reflect Version 6 or higher.
Please enter your Reflect License Key in the field below:
I have an issue where I want to exclude a folder called E:\Backups\ *.* /s. I could not get it to exclude. But, I was able to get E:\Backup\ *.* /s to exclude. Weird! I was going to ask on that forum. So, I'll post it here. Microsoft says that this registry entry does not work 100%, but mostly due to too many exclusions.
This is the registry key and the key I am using. Acronis does handle exclusions a lot better.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToSnapshotMacriumImage
Here is the registry entry that works.
pl1 wrote:I ATI 2021 is also a good bit slower than ATI 2019. I have not activated the 5-machine ATI 2021 boxed license I purchased from Newegg.
I don't use a NAS, just an internal drive. I can backup a 48Gig image in about 6 minutes. That feels faster than Acronis 2020.
Edit To Add: I just did a few backups with ATI 2019 and 2020 and they were just about the same speed/time as Macrium Reflect Home 8.0 Trial.
Your 48 gig in 6 minutes is just 1.06 Gbps, which is not impressive, at least not for a local backup. It's something you might have achieved on a system running SATA 1.0 drives, 2003 vintage .
I collected a bunch of performance data, doing performance tests both locally (one drive to another), from one computer to NAS over 10Gbps Ethernet, and from one computer to NAS over Wifi (AC Wave2) .
Highlights :
For local backups, from an NVMe drive to a stripe of SATA SSDs, ATI 2019 achieved 15,652 Mbps . ATI 2021 14,697 Mbps, and Macrium just 4263 Mbps. There is clearly a hard bottleneck in Macrium.
For NAS backups over 10 Gbps Ethernet, ATI 2019 achieved 4301 Mbps, ATI 2021 was at 4256 Mbps, and Macrium at 4296 Mbps. But the Macrium backup wouldn't have completed at all if I didn't keep the NAS alive for more than 15 minutes. It would simply have failed, otherwise.
For backup from a single desktop SATA SSD over Wifi onto NAS, ATI 2019 achieved 549 Mbps and ATI 2021 569 Mbps. I know I tested Macrium too, but I somehow didn't record the results, and I don't remember them.
These numbers are the best results I could achieve using the respective programs; not necessarily comparable configuration. When using TIBX format in ATI 2021, for local backups, the performance drops massively from 14 Gbps with TIB down to 9 Gbps with TIBX. For NAS backups, from 4256 Mbps down to 2768 Mbps. That translates to a backup time of just under 5 hours with ATI 2021/TIBX vs under 3 hours with ATI 2019/TIB - a significant difference, that translates to both computers going to sleep 2 hours earlier with ATI 2019 than ATI 2021, saving a ton of electricity in the process
It's simply indefensible to have removed support for uncompressed TIB from the ATI 2021 GUI, when TIBX is so much slower on fast hardware. It's slower due to compression, in large part. Even on a very fast AMD 5950x CPU, the performance still went down from 14 Gbps down to 9 Gbps - cutting it by one third.
If you are backing up over a slow network (Wifi), or onto a single slow spindle HDD, ATI 2021 is going to be just fine. Even with a slow CPU, an i5-6400, the TIBX compression didn't seem to be the bottleneck over Wifi.
Note that the NAS had lz4 file system compression enabled on the ZFS drive. So, all backups are actually compressed on the server, regardless whether ATI has compression enabled or not on the client. I'm not actually wasting multiple terabytes on my NAS by using TIB.
I would post the direct link to the data, but somehow the forum won't let me post the URL. Or at least I couldn't figure out how.
Yes, registration on the user forum requires a paid license key. Access to tech support is possible if you're using the 30-day trial version, though.
Images are done on a block level, so exclusion of specific folders from the VSS snapshot relies on Microsoft's Shadow Copy Optimization Writer, which is not always able to finish its work within the allotted time limit, resulting in exclusion failures when the number of files or folders to exclude is too large. Out of curiousity, how many files are contained in E:\Backup and in E:\Backups?
Don't know why Acronis wouldn't be subject to the same limitations. Perhaps it switches to the Acronis VSS rather than the Microsoft VSS when exclusions are requested.
You have a quite exotic setup (stripe of SATA SSDs) that may indeed be subject to some rate-limiting in Reflect. As already discussed about a page ago on this thread, your hardware configuration is atypical -- most users of Reflect back up to USB-connected external SSDs and/or NAS systems, and usually report performances that are improved over what they were getting from ATI (especially when using the paid version of Reflect).
Your experience with "idling" when backing up to NAS is not typical among Reflect users, so there is an idiosyncrasy in your set-up that would require some troubleshooting to fix.
However, if your expectations are write speeds on the order 2000 MB/s, then you may be stuck with ATI/ACPHO for the foreseeable future (or you could trial some of the other imaging software alternatives that have been suggested in this thread).
J K,
Thanks for responding.
Images are done on a block level, so exclusion of specific folders from the VSS snapshot relies on Microsoft's Shadow Copy Optimization Writer, which is not always able to finish its work within the allotted time limit, resulting in exclusion failures when the number of files or folders to exclude is too large. Out of curiousity, how many files are contained in E:\Backup and in E:\Backups?
I have done some research on this, both from the Macrium KB and the Microsoft KB, and I have followed the instructions the best I can tell. One of the caveats is the folder can not be a shared folder. But, AFAICT, it is not set to share. This is a fairly clean install. The interesting thing is, I could get E:\Backups Livingroom\OLD Win 10 to exclude, but NOT E:\Backups Livingroom
And, when I created a new folder called E:\Backup it works fine! If I try E:\Backups it fails. Very strange, it seems like something about "Backups" is the issue. And it is working fine on a second computer, it worked first try!
E:\Backups Kitchen CLEAN Win10\*.tib /s
E:\Backups Kitchen CLEAN Win10\*.tibx /s
E:\Backups Kitchen CLEAN Win10\*.mrimg /s
As far as the number of files in the directory, for testing purposes I have been using just one small text file. I guess I can just leave it as is since it is working as E:\Backup. It's just out of curiosity at this point. I'm also thinking of creating a partition for my backups so that they are not recorded.
Don't know why Acronis wouldn't be subject to the same limitations. Perhaps it switches to the Acronis VSS rather than the Microsoft VSS when exclusions are requested.
That is a very good question! Originally I was thinking the default setting was Acronis Snapshot but looking at the settings, the default is set to VSS. I wonder why that is not an option with Macrium Reflect. Some have suggested it is because the VSS exclusion is not reliable, but if that is the case, why is Acronis able to do it successfully?
EDIT TO ADD: I wonder if the "block level" you mentioned is the reason. I think the default settings for Acronis has sector by sector unchecked. Is that the same thing as block level?
A few notes and questions:
- It's hard to tell from the screenshot of your registry entry, but did you follow the instruction that says you must press "ENTER" at the end of the last string in your multi-string value, so that there will be a final blank line?
- The "/s" option is supposed to also exclude subfolders, so I don't think you would need separate entries for "E:\Backup\Acronis" and "E:\Backup\Macrium" if you have already specified exclusions of "E:\Backup\*.* /s"
- It looks like you have inserted a space before "*.*" in some of your exclusion strings. There should be no space between the backslash (\) and the file name mask (*.*). This may contribute to whey your exclusions didn't work as expected.
- Since you are excluding subfolders, the important question is not how many files are in the folder E:\Backups, but rather how many files are in the E:\Backups (or E:\Backup) folder and all subfolders. If you right-click the E:\Backups (or E:\Backup) folder in Windows File Explorer and select "Properties", how many files are enumerated on the "General" tab (under "Contains")?
J K
- It's hard to tell from the screenshot of your registry entry, but did you follow the instruction that says you must press "ENTER" at the end of the last string in your multi-string value, so that there will be a final blank line?
Definitely made sure of this. Like the KB shows, with two entries, there should be three lines. The final line is blank. (This is a snap shot AFTER fixing the spaces AND Adding E:\Backups in response to your next question.)
The "/s" option is supposed to also exclude subfolders, so I don't think you would need separate entries for "E:\Backup\Acronis" and "E:\Backup\Macrium" if you have already specified exclusions of "E:\Backup\*.* /s"
You are definitely correct about this. It is redundant. Since I could not get the main folder E:\Backups to work, but in one case I got the sub folder E:\Backups\Acronis to work, I was just trying anything. So, I was thinking that if the main directory didn't exclude, maybe the subdirectory would.
It looks like you have inserted a space before "*.*" in some of your exclusion strings. There should be no space between the backslash (\) and the file name mask (*.*). This may contribute to whey your exclusions didn't work as expected.
Great catch! I DID in fact have a space between two of the three strings, I fixed them and added a new string called E:\Backups\*.* /s and I am now testing it. BINGO!!! That was it. I must have had a space between the back slash and the asterisk. Now I feel ridiculous!
Since you are excluding subfolders, the important question is not how many files are in the folder E:\Backups, but rather how many files are in the E:\Backups (or E:\Backup) folder and all subfolders. If you right-click the E:\Backups (or E:\Backup) folder in Windows File Explorer and select "Properties", how many files are enumerated on the "General" tab (under "Contains")?
No, I understood your question. I actually moved all of the backups off of the drive to test. I then put just ONE text file in each directory. That's it. E:\Backups\text.txt then E\:Backups\Acronis\text.txt and E:\Backups\Macrium\Text.txt
Well, J K, Thanks for being patient with me and catching my error. I really appreciate it!!!!
Edit: Here is the final working string which is how I wanted it all along. I just did a backup and it excluded everything in that directory:
Glad to hear you got it working.
The caveat about the limitations of the Shadow Copy Optimization Writer still applies -- if your exclusion folder (E:\Backups Livingroom) and its subfolders contain a very large number of files (thousands), then it is possible that some of the files may fail to be excluded from the snapshot.
J K
The caveat about the limitations of the Shadow Copy Optimization Writer still applies -
Understood. I don't anticipate that happening. It's just my C drive backups. Thanks Again!
I've been using R-Drive Image for months now and haven't encountered any problems. As I said in my earlier post I tested it with both NTFS and Ext4 partitions of all types and it worked flawlessly.
I have no vested interested in R-Drive by the way, it's just that a number of people are having difficulties with Macrium that I don't experience with R-Drive, and my post about it was quite awhile ago. So for those having problems I definitely recommend giving R-Drive a spin.
Robert Muncrief wrote:
it's just that a number of people are having difficulties with Macrium
I'm not sure where you are seeing this? In this thread, the only major complaint is from a user with a extremely high-end backup destination (SSD RAID with SATA connection) who is trying to reach transfer speeds on the order 2GB/s. If R-Drive can achieve these types of backup speeds, then that would be very welcome information for madbrain (and others who have hardware setups capable of extreme write speeds); please post test results if you are able.
As far as I can tell, any other concerns raised regarding Macrium Reflect in this thread have been from users who were still learning how to use the software to achieve what they were trying to achieve, and the issues have been resolved after clarification.
In any case, this is a good opportunity to summarize the various imaging solutions that have been mentioned in this thread as possible alternatives to ACPHO (in no particular order):
- Macrium Reflect
- Drive Snapshot
- R-Drive Image
- Lsoft active@Disk Image
- EaseUs ToDo
- AOMEI Backupper
- Paragon Backup
- CloudBerry Backup 7
- Acronis True Image 2019...
J K wrote:You have a quite exotic setup (stripe of SATA SSDs) that may indeed be subject to some rate-limiting in Reflect. As already discussed about a page ago on this thread, your hardware configuration is atypical -- most users of Reflect back up to USB-connected external SSDs and/or NAS systems, and usually report performances that are improved over what they were getting from ATI (especially when using the paid version of Reflect).
Your experience with "idling" when backing up to NAS is not typical among Reflect users, so there is an idiosyncrasy in your set-up that would require some troubleshooting to fix.
However, if your expectations are write speeds on the order 2000 MB/s, then you may be stuck with ATI/ACPHO for the foreseeable future (or you could trial some of the other imaging software alternatives that have been suggested in this thread).
Yes, I know my hardware is way faster than most, and when software is optimized for slower hardware, as ATI 2021 is with TIBX files forcing compression; and Macrium seems to be with a hard ceiling on local disks, it shows.
I filed a case with support for Macrium during my trial, but didn't follow up, admittedly. I doubt I could have resolved the local backups being 1/3 the speed of ATI. Perhaps LAN backups taking so long to start that the NAS goes to sleep might have been resolved. I spent enough time with all the benchmarking of the 30-day trials for both ATI 2021 and Macrium 8, and didn't have really have any time left to spend on the issue. Maybe with forum access, or a longer trial to interact with support, one of the two issues could have been resolved.
The truth is that for the time being ATI 2019 meets my needs. Win10 won't go out of support until at least October 2025. That's 3 more years to find a better backup solution. Maybe Acronis will surprise us and bring back a non-cloud version, and the ability to create TIB backups. Or allow compression to be disabled in TIBX. Or allow all the functions other than backup to be turned off. Who knows. I will likely do the trial for Macrium 9, 10 or 11 when they come out, to see if they improve, and if not, spend a bit less time benchmarking, and more time with support.
While I am in the process of running both Macrium Reflect 8.0 Trial and Acronis True Image 2020, there is one distinct advantage I've found using Macrium. When recovering a full backup with Macrium, it compares the image to what is being restored and appears to only restore the changes. A recent restore of a backup that was done about 12 hours earlier, was processed in just 2 minutes.
Another minor plus is that Macrium retains the Boot Protection from Exlade Disk Password Protection, a hidden password on the boot drive. With Acronis, I have to re-enter that after a restore.
Also, Macrium retains Windows 10 System Restore Protection. That is another thing I have to fix after an Acronis restore. Again, it is minor, but something I noticed.
EDIT:
Another thing I have noticed is that with Macrium, I do not need to complete 2 factor authentication for sites that request it until you verify that your computer can be trusted. An Acronis restore always requires this from me for certain sites. The main sites I can think of are my local bank, Chase & Fidelity.
Hello,
first, sorry for my bad english :-(
I have read this topic and guess, as many of you, i am not pleased by the way Acronis has turned.
I used Acronis since 2012, and since gew years, it mutated into a "monster" (with some big nasty bugs on my config).
I decided to get rid of Acronis (it was a pain to delete all traces, but finally i hope this is it).
Thanks to Steve Smith, i am trying Macrium, seems to be more friendly than the genetic modified software that Acronis had become (by the way, i am looking for coupon or code for Macrium Reflect, if anonye here knows where to have one, let me know).
Kind regards from Paris, France
Just got my Acronis reality check today! I hate subscriptions for the same reason as many of you have posted! I now cannot access/open one of my many perpetual licensed applications on MY computer. In 2020 I feel I was tricked into the True Image Essential "upgrade".
After realizing this, I contacted Acronis to try to switch to perpetual. They told me, I wasn't able to do this but I could buy another license [at the time]. I decided to ride the year 2021 out and make a discision to either stay or go with Acronis at that time. Before my supscription ran out, I contacted Acronis support about my displeasure of their total move to subscription and that I would move back to my ATI2020 perpetual. I was assured that doing so that I would have similar access to the application after my 2021 Essential expired.
I moved my five machines back to ATI2020P and it was working fine until I checked today. When I went to fire up the ATI application, it would not allow the application to proceed unless I paid their ransome [subscription]. THIS IS AS BAD AS RANSOMEWARE! Now I have no ability to contact support [besides emergency backup support] because of their policies. I have test AOMEI in the past year at it worked very well. Goodbye Acronis!
To Steve Smith: First of all thanks for your many informative posts in the past. I saw one of your posts somewhere that stated something to the effect that ATI2020 would still work perpetually. I tested ATI after my subscription expired and it worked for a little bit of time. It seems Acronis gives you a couple of weeks "grace" and then they totally cut you off. You end with a "PAY UP OR ELSE" page...
Gary,
I don't know if there are any moderators who monitor these forums, and I don't think we have the ability to delete our posted comments. However, if you click the "Pencil" icon below your comment, you can at least edit it to remove the text.
(by the way, i am looking for coupon or code for Macrium Reflect, if anonye here knows where to have one, let me know)
FYI, sharing discount links for competitors' products violates the Terms of Use of the Acronis forum, so we should be careful not to do that here if we want this topic to remain open.
However, if you scroll through previous comments on this topic, you will see that there is usually a sale on Black Friday and sometimes at other times of the year.
J K wrote:Gary,
I don't know if there are any moderators who monitor these forums, and I don't think we have the ability to delete our posted comments. However, if you click the "Pencil" icon below your comment, you can at least edit it to remove the text.
Thank you JK!
FYI, March 31 is World Backup Day. It may be worth checking if vendors are offering discounts for this occasion... ;)
I just want to update this issue: Recently, Acronis reached out to me, after I opened a ticket, to set up an online meeting to remotely enter my computer.
In preparation for this call, I decided to take one more stab at trying to get past the page that I posted earlier. I tried every option again and finally decided to try putting in my old serial number. I thought this "option" was asking for a new "paid" serial number.
When I downloaded ATI2020 several weeks ago from my Acronis account page, I assumed that my serial number was automatically put in. I suppose at the time, my subscription was still active for 2021 and that is why everything looked good and I thought there was no need to input again.
Well, low and behold, after putting in my ATI2020 upgrade PW and ATI2019 PW I was able to access the application. Therefore, there is no reason to have my session next Wednesday.
Just to add, while looking for alternate backup applications, I found that my Synology server has a very convenient application to back up most of my machines. I think this method is more efficient since it is the hub at home for all of my other machines. This eliminates the need to have individual machines with an application installed. Plus it is cheaper than having to deal with a subscription service on a yearly basis.
Thank you all who moderate and add valuable input to this page. GARY
gary stoy wrote:
Just to add, while looking for alternate backup applications, I found that my Synology server has a very convenient application to back up most of my machines. I think this method is more efficient since it is the hub at home for all of my other machines. This eliminates the need to have individual machines with an application installed. Plus it is cheaper than having to deal with a subscription service on a yearly basis.
Gary, out of interest, which particular application are you referring to above? Is it a native Synology application from the Package Centre, or it is a Third Party one? Just wondering if it might be available on my older Synology DS215j NAS?
Steve, I have the DS415+ and DS1821. Both have the "Active Backup for Business" application available on the package center. I am not a business but it works for me. GARY
Thanks Gary, guess my DS215j is either too old or not compatible with Active Backup as it is not listed in my package centre, and the other options are more cloud related etc.
Steve, I have a DS220+ and Active Backup is good for data but bad for an entire hard drive. If your drive fails you would need to reinstall the OS and all your apps then restore your data using the desktop client of Active Backup since you can't boot from the Synology NAS. To me it's much easier to just plug in a flash drive with the recovery software and restore the entire drive.
M S, thanks for that further information. I was curious simply because of having my Synology NAS but otherwise am happy with my various older versions of ATI plus Macrium Reflect 8 which I am using.
Although I have purchased various updates of AcronisTrue Image Home since 2011, I have no intention of purchasing a subscription for the latest version.
Acronis is producing software that goes far beyond backing up PCs by implementing security solutions and in my view this is overkill. I already use well-established security packages and do not need - nor want - such a package from a newcomer who is not well-established in the security market. Why can't Acronis continue to develop AcronisTrue Image Home separately from the security package on a non-subscription basis? Then they would satisfy both markets.
Acronis has lost another loyal customer; There are some excellent free backup programs available as discussed in previous posts which meet all my backup requirements and there is also Reboot Restore (Freeware) that can replace Try & Decide.