ATIH gets confused and self-destructs when it finds multiple copies of a backup series

Great structured narrative!

Management of the TIH application's various functions seems to be based on a rather strange and disjointed mix of data sources. Some of the control data is contained in registry entries and some of it is in a pseudo-database, mostly in XML format, comprising multiple individual files. Overall coordination appears questionable at best and, in some cases, as your comments point out, there is no obvious provision for any control at all by the end user. In fact, some TIH background tasks seem to occur quite independently of all other functional control elements.

In sum, it's not so much the case that "ATIH gets confused" as it is a confused and confusing hodge podge in the first place. The whole thing seems to be cobbled together in such a way that its right hand often doesn't know what its left hand is doing, so to speak. And, sad to say, that also seems to reflect some aspects of Acronis corporate management as well. Certainly, IMO, any dB/DBMS professional would be appalled at the lack of any overall coordinated relational database structure for the complex interactions involved. And Acronis insists on adding more complexities with "new and improved" gimmicks and gizmos in each new release with little, if any, attention to existing core problem impacts.

As several postings in these forums make apparent, the results are manifold and diverse. They've recently fixed(?) one issue where Windows complained about seeing incomplete backup tasks on every system startup, for example. They're still working on trying to get its backup filenames to correspond correctly with date-timestamps. But that sort of thing is merely the tip of a very large iceberg as I perceive it. Until they take a much more carefully considered approach to managing ALL of the TIH application's functional control data, these kinds of issues will persist in one form or another.

So far, Acronis seems focussed on "one-at-a-time" bug fixes, only to have the same or similar issues reappear in each major revision of the product. Perhaps their next bug fix, or maybe the one after, will catch this one too. As for the possibility of end user "workarounds" or compensations for those underlying causal factors in the meantime, however, all I can say is "good luck."

Thanks for the feedback. This is partly a test to see if Acronis is even paying attention to these posts as many other vendors do with their forum sites. It appears we have to pay money to tell Acronis about their problems, something I'm not going to do.

I've certainly come to be disappointed in this home product line, to the point I should start looking for a replacement. Cost of the app isn't even the issue... I just want something that works. The user interface seems to be getting dumb'ed down for casual users to the point that users who know what they're doing can't do what they want to do, or worse even do what they need to do. This is likely the last straw. I should also reconsider our corporate use of their product line, based on my experiences here.

It appears that there are at least a few Acronis people who pay attention to what is said in these forums. Although their responses appear quite narrowly restricted, most of the specifically identified problems do eventually seem to get addressed at least symptomatically on an ad hoc basis -- often just in time for the next major product release horror story and its cumulative frustrations for end users.

The evidence seems to suggest that underlying causal factors are poorly understood and/or that the various responses are not well enough coordinated to deal systematically and effectively with issues in a broader longer-term context. The other possibility, of course, is that the people who do understand the situation in greater depth just don't carry sufficient weight within the corporate structure to overcome the promotional ad hoccery. There are strong indications that even some actual results of their pre-release beta testing are sometimes discarded or overridden.

That's certainly not a unique situation, but Acronis seems to carry it to the extreme and increasingly so. It is no doubt driven by their (mis)perceptions of marketing factors, but they actually end up shooting themselves in the foot -- and ultimately much higher in the corporate anatomy. Once confidence in a backup and recovery utility is lost, it won't easily be regained.

After surveying current products, I am dismayed. There doesn't appear to be any decent products available for small home networks. I think I need to consider professional product lines and dump the junk.

I feel like a sucker for even thinking this, but would their business products be any better? I.e., Acronis Backup & Recovery™ 11 Workstation, or related products.

The overall Acronis corporate culture doesn't look very encouraging at this point, but my own direct experience doesn't really qualify me to provide specific answers about their business products. Suggest that you browse and/or post in the forums under http://forum.acronis.com/forums/acronis-business-products-discussions for some direct user feedback in that area.

After looking at the ABR product set and forum comments I'm not finding anything significantly better. I see no future here. The funny thing is I had my corp support group move from Ghost to Acronis years ago because they had the better product. Now I'd pick and recommend neither. The final straw was finding ATIH had become fixated on a destination called MyBackup, whatever that is. It was the only choice I could make on every single local and network storage device I own. So basically it became corrupted and totally unusable. There was no longer any reason to try and keep using Acronis. So off it came, and to the web I went.

Fortunately my searching paid off with discovery of a simple focused imaging tool that's robust, well documented, and well liked by their forum members. It isn't one of the mainstream home/biz products found in top10 lists, but PCmag highly recommended it. The vendor regularly comments on the forum like you'd want them too. All very professional. I love the way this thing works, esp the speed. It must be twice as fast as ATIH with my 100GB jobs. It doesn't have all the layered baubles and do-dads, nor the cloud stuff I'll never use. It's just about doing imaging and restoring well. I like it. In fact its dissimilar-hardware restore feature is probably more robust as well, and isn't extra cost. I had to laugh about all the folks there who were Ghost and Acronis expats, just like me.

There was a final frustration in needing to carefully remove remnants of Acronis after Windows removed it before the new product would work. Files and reg entries were left behind that interfered with other BaR products; Microsoft probably shares some of the blame. Both vendors had detailed instructions on how to remedy but it made me nervous because mistakes cleaning up could leave the PC unbootable... more stress and grief I didn't need. As I was sweating through the cleanup and rebooting I was thinking "The final irony... the BaR app takes out the PC."

So, good bye Acronis. I wish I could leave behind fond memories, but I can't. I've found the product I wished you were and could have been.

I think we've probably been looking at the same thing, if it's the one that says: "Something not widely known is that the S******C**** S*****P****** technology is licensed to be the engine for some of of the largest backup software vendors for their data protection, backup and disaster recovery software products."

I'd be interested in confirmation if you'd like to PM me the name of the software that you've been looking at.