Simple Overwrite Backup...

Is the problem that ABR10 is appending numbers to the fimage files and therefore you are getting a succession of Fulls, or is just not imaging at all?

Do you have separate tasks for each drive?

I haven't checked out how ABR10 actually deals with network drives as I only have the Workstation version imaging to an internal drive, but normally the task script file contains a reference to the drive ID, changing a drive to another often causes the task to fail as the drive ID is different. Having said that, if it worked in Echo, then I would have assumed it would work in ABR10.

What build of ABR10 are you using?

Welcome to Acronis's world. With the advent of BR10 over-writing a previous backup went out the windows because you have no control over the image name. Major problem with BR10. Finally acknowledged by Acronis over a year ago. Nothing but promises by Acronis to fix the issue in U3. Promises, promises, promises...

Hi Jim, Greg and Colin!

Thank you for your comments!

Dear Greg, Colin is right - in order to provide you with more information regarding the fix we need to know more about the environment and the problem itself. I have carefully checked our internal resources and there are no known issue with backups overwriting, so this situation requires investigation. Could you please gather Acronis info and exact sequence of step description and submit it to the  support request?

Please also make sure that you're using the latest build of the product, it should be #12457, and it can be downloaded from your account here.

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

Thank you.

This is ALL just RIDICULOUS BS...

There is simply no good reason why, nearing December now, that I should still be fighting with this software, dating back to the August 1st weekend and still not have backups that are consistent and reliable. For gosh sake, there are not many options to set... how difficult can this be.

I've since gone through 2 updates of the software to the current version 12497 or whatever the hell it is now, I've tried all kinds of fiddling with vaults, which are useless waste of time, various backup, validation, and scheduling options as well as manual triggers to see if this crap will function AS ADVERTISED, and then when one arrives at any kind of success, try to get this all working once the workstation is logged off, locked, or left logged in (whatever state users tend to leave their computers in at the end of a day...).

While we're here, let me mention, I'm now out of pocket because all of the methods tried to date, have failed so, now I'm purchasing hard drives of various types/connections, sizes, brands, and HDD controllers trying to figure out if it's hardware that's not playing nice with this kludge of a program, or if the controller that the backup drive is connected to that's causing a problem or what...

Anyone care to know how many hours, days, nights, I've fought with trying to get this to work??!!?? Day after day, night after night, watching backups fail, reconfiguring backup jobs and schedules, trying to run jobs manually to test of they will work or not... on and on and on... not to mention the software doesn't seem retain the credentials for the damn vault 99% of the time so the backups instantly fail... and on the rare occasion that they actually work then, the validation fails... it's just a run around!!

This is both with the Server Version... RIP OFF at over $1100.00 just because it's a Server OS... and the Workstation version... a dozen licenses.

And, I cannot bill my client for something that's not functioning...

More details... like I have nothing else to do but spend time on this forum trying to get something that cost around $2500 ++ to work which I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO DO!!! I HAVE TO MAKE A LIVING and I'm wasting enough time screwing around with this bug ridden crap like I'm going to start chasing around here further, like I haven't already or something...

Am I PISSED OFF?!! RESOUNDING YES!

Do I have a right to be? DAMN RIGHT!

FIX YOUR SHIT!

Greg,

I take it you are aware that you are entitled to standard support via the support function on the support webpage so long as you are still within the 12 month time limit from date of purchase.

You've paid for it, so getting an official case number and hopefully being able to be put in contact with an appropriate support person would be the way to go.

I notice you never addressed any of the questions I asked and you haven't mentioned whether you have provided the reports so that Acronis or anyone else can see what is going awry in your case.

Greg,

I've just been having a fiddle - have you tried the following?

Tick the Use Echo naming convention (my term), this allows you to make only full backups which will overwrite the old full backup. This won't work if you add the date to the file name.

Greg F wrote:

This is ALL just RIDICULOUS BS...

There is simply no good reason why, nearing December now, that I should still be fighting with this software, dating back to the August 1st weekend and still not have backups that are consistent and reliable. For gosh sake, there are not many options to set... how difficult can this be.

I've since gone through 2 updates of the software to the current version 12497 or whatever the hell it is now, I've tried all kinds of fiddling with vaults, which are useless waste of time, various backup, validation, and scheduling options as well as manual triggers to see if this crap will function AS ADVERTISED, and then when one arrives at any kind of success, try to get this all working once the workstation is logged off, locked, or left logged in (whatever state users tend to leave their computers in at the end of a day...).

While we're here, let me mention, I'm now out of pocket because all of the methods tried to date, have failed so, now I'm purchasing hard drives of various types/connections, sizes, brands, and HDD controllers trying to figure out if it's hardware that's not playing nice with this kludge of a program, or if the controller that the backup drive is connected to that's causing a problem or what...

Anyone care to know how many hours, days, nights, I've fought with trying to get this to work??!!?? Day after day, night after night, watching backups fail, reconfiguring backup jobs and schedules, trying to run jobs manually to test of they will work or not... on and on and on... not to mention the software doesn't seem retain the credentials for the damn vault 99% of the time so the backups instantly fail... and on the rare occasion that they actually work then, the validation fails... it's just a run around!!

This is both with the Server Version... RIP OFF at over $1100.00 just because it's a Server OS... and the Workstation version... a dozen licenses.

And, I cannot bill my client for something that's not functioning...

More details... like I have nothing else to do but spend time on this forum trying to get something that cost around $2500 ++ to work which I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO DO!!! I HAVE TO MAKE A LIVING and I'm wasting enough time screwing around with this bug ridden crap like I'm going to start chasing around here further, like I haven't already or something...

Am I PISSED OFF?!! RESOUNDING YES!

Do I have a right to be? DAMN RIGHT!

FIX YOUR SHIT!

Hey Greg,

I could not agree more with you. I have several issues with Acronis as both a company and as a "product" that as a responsible company, should have been Beta tested until they had it right, or at least not with so many dam bugs. For the $60. I paid for their unstable and buggy program, I have wasted hundreds of dollars of MY time and hours and hours on the phone to NEW DEHLI, after failing in online text chats, paying them $10. and talking to "tech support" gurus, who did all kinds of things by remote, which did not ever fix things - from auto start for scheduled backups to other vital and BASIC issues to any software program that is advertised as a reliable backup and recovery data program.

I won't get into the outsourcing to India for tech help, since if they had GOOD, reliable help there who would follow through and get back to me in good time, it would not be an issue at all. I doubt in the long run they are saving any money but that's their choice. My main problem continues to be the same as many who post in various areas of the forum: THIS PRODUCT is buggy as Hell, has had multiple patches and "workarounds," updates and so on, yet it continues to be unreliable. So why the HELL are they still selling it, and WHY do I see 4 star reviews online on various web sites from the "editors," but the actual USERS give it 2-3 stars at best??? The reason is it is CRAPPY as you said, and full of program problems and issues. I see and read some people who claim to have "never had a problem with it." Works great for them. I would venture to say they are in the minority - maybe 30% or so of those who bought Acronis TI 2009-2011. And I am probably being generous there.

So, my message to the polite but misguided and placating Acronis forum posters and moderators here and other places is this: GET YOUR PRODUCT FIXED so it is compatible with the things you SAY it is compatible with, and so it will DO WHAT YOU SAY IT WILL DO - without the clients/customers having to call or chat with your Technical Support team (No big bonus if they are available 24/7 if they can't fix things or if there is a long wait to reach them) - or else RECALL it or quit selling it until you DO have a reliable product and if there are a few issues that are not so bad that people cannot recover data, cannot have backup schedules run reliably and the basic things you say your software does well. QUIT selling a faulty product, and take time off and do more R & D and testing and THEN release it when it WORKS for the majority of people.

I could ask for a refund now, but have read about how others who have wait and wait and wait, I am not even going to bother. I'll write it off as a business expense or a "bad investment" or something. I fortunately also have Carbonite off site backup, which is both inexpensive annually as well as reliable and safe. But to have to resort to using that when software is around that is so much more reliable than Acronis, is ridiculous.

I am done with the company and I am sorry if I ranted abit here as a newbie. But I wanted others to hear - especially the moderators and those others from Acronis - that you are creating a terrible reputation for your product by failing to address long standing and NEW issues. You feel obligated to issue a new product annually, when you have not fixed issues that were resident with last years product!!!! What kind of business sense does that make???

I have decided to go to a product starting with the letter "M," (been around for some time) which was recommended to me by MS techs and others who have followed Acronis and who have continued to see the same kinds of problems with both the program conflicts and also technical support year after year.

No refund thanks. I just hope some of the people here get some help, and if not, I hope they shop around for alternatives that are MUCH more reliable and have much better technical support. They are out there...a few of them. Not unlike anti-virus programs, which can either work well or mess your computer and data up badly with conflicts and other things, data backup and recovery programs are either well designed and work for most people without problems, (or if there are issues, they can be resolved easily) or they do not. From all I have tried, seen and read many places, Acronis does not work as advertised for a majority of people, and when it comes to protecting the very important data on my computers, I am not willing to risk taking chances any longer.

Thanks for reading, and good luck to all of you. There comes a time when enough is enough.

Happy Holidays to all,

Dennis

Hey Dennis!

Thanks for the post... sometimes one can start to lose sight of things so to speak and the "second guessing" creeps in and one begins to question whether they are indeed missing something in the process(es) but it becomes more and more obvious that I'm not and it all comes down to a software product that is quite simply faulty.

There is some kind of solace/reassurance hearing somebody else call it out as it is... thus making one realize or confirm that they are NOT the only one with issues with this product.

I've been a tech for nearly 20 years and I AM damn good at it! I've worked with several different OS, all types of software and hardware imaginable from Amiga Toasters back in the day, Linux of various flavors, Windows of every type, I've worked for small companies, and large, all the way from 1-2 person home office operations to Wall St. financial firms where data storage and security is of the utmost critical nature... there is very little I cannot and have not figured out. Over the last 10 years I've built my consultation biz to the point where I have several multi-million dollar clients. That does not happen by being useless... it's done by proving over and over that I am an asset to their operations.

Do I hold a grudge or am I ticked at Acronis on the whole... no. TIE has worked solidly for me at several locations over the years since I came across it and it did its job and still does at several client's locations. This version however is plain crap and never should have been released! Particularly since the previous version did work with some of the current OS and to suddenly have it not work makes it obvious that this was all intentional.

It IS VERY CLEAR that this release was all about a business decision, profit, etc., and NOT about producing a good product, with NO regard for the repercussions. True Image Echo works or should I say worked on Vista and if I'm not mistaken, I recall reading that it worked on early betas of Win 7 but that was a bit before my experience with this version. So suddenly, for it to not be a compatible software item, forcing end users to purchase a new version was all about the mighty $$$ and NOTHING MORE!! And, here we are struggling with the "mess".

A little bit of not so realized info for those who may care...in a nutshell;
Not too many industries grow as rapidly or as large as the Automobile Industry. It took about 50 years for that to happen. By the 1950's along comes Tucker and he challenged all from the auto makers to Washington. By the late 1960's through the early 1970's, it took Ralph Nader, notably, amongst others to challenge the industry and force some kind of regulation. One of the few other industries of the past century and moving into the current century to grow as rapidly and as large as the auto industry is the computer industry (in roughly half the time) but there is zero regulation. Politicians are generally illiterate to computers/technology and politics and economics have become so corrupt that I doubt that if in my lifetime, we'll see the Ralph Nader of the computer industry come along to bust balls.

At present, all this crap is being pounded out of every sweatshop imaginable in China (or the Pacific Rim) somewhere, nearly any kid that has managed to install a video card from Best Buy without killing themselves and everyone around them is suddenly a computer tech/consultant and a bunch of text book script kiddies are suddenly comp sci grads/programmers bashing shit like B&R 10 amongst many. There are false claims, no support, end user terms of agreement that are often bigger than the program they are applicable to, rarely solutions, and ZERO ACCOUNTABILITY. And everything is outsourced to some 3rd world dive where IF, and that's a BIG IF, you can even get a clean phone connection to one of these call centers, the people there are absolutely useless.

Even if that person or group surfaces in today's world, they'll likely turn up dead somewhere, somehow.

I do have hope that it will happen though... because payback will be a bitch one day when ALL these people/companies are forced to abide by regulation of some type and be accountable. The lawsuits will be immense and money that will have to be paid out in compensation will be crippling.

Oh... and why am I here ranting at 5:53am... well because I've been up all night, AGAIN, fighting through another night of F#$ked backups. (@@)

Greg,

Whilst you are up ranting at 5:53 am, I'm replying at 9:03pm :)

Have you tried the Echo selection option as I mentioned in post #6?

It works for me as I tried it on your behalf - I'm nice like that :)

Hi Greg,

Well, I ran and installed my NEW backup software (name beginning with the letter M) yesterday, and it ran a full image quickly, validated with no errors. I then made a recovery Windows PE bootable recovery disk also, and this am it started up at 4am and ran an incremental that took a whole 3 minutes to run! :) I am a happy camper. I refuse to waste any more time on Acronis. Maybe you might save some gray hairs and stress if you switched and just called it a BAD experience? ;)

Good luck to you.

Best,

Dennis

Colin B wrote:

Greg,

I've just been having a fiddle - have you tried the following?

Tick the Use Echo naming convention (my term), this allows you to make only full backups which will overwrite the old full backup. This won't work if you add the date to the file name.

Going back to the original post back in September I was still using the version that was provided at the time of purchase however since that time I've updated twice and am now at version 12497... and of course I am using this option.

Do you really think I wouldn't have?

This is the LEAST of the issues.

Here is the backup structure in place;

Each system backs up to a fixed share on a server... by that, to clarify, it is a stationary internal drive with a shared folder. Inside are individual folders for each system. Permissions are currently set on the share to full access by "Everyone", which I don't like to do because, inevitably, someone on the network is bound to go muck around in there but, at this point, I'm trying to eliminate the possibility of specific account access interfering. At the end of the daily backup cycle, that whole drive is dumped to an external drive which is taken offsite. This "offsite" drive is rotated with one other drive so there is always one offsite while one is being filled with the current day's backup.

The rest of it is where ALL the problems are.
- Vaults randomly become inaccessible.
* And I'll say it again, Vaults are a BRAINDEAD idea... restricting the use of rotating backup drives?? What kind of backup rookie thought this was feasible? *
http://kb.acronis.com/content/8217

- Validations constantly fail.
- Access Credentials get lost
- Backup Jobs start but hang at 0%
- Scheduling gacks up... i.e. Backup 1 job is set to run every 2 days starting at a set date. Backup 2 job set the same but for alternating days to the first job's days. Well randomly, the jobs both start running on the same day.
- Backups will sometimes run for a day, two, three, more and then randomly just start failing. Or in the case of some machines they will just not run and hang at 0% no matter what I've tried.
- I have made sure that each user is now logging off their systems and that no system is left just locked or completely logged in just in case any of that user's limits are affecting the process.

I've tried uninstalling previous versions and installing new versions/updates. Each time the ABR Cleanup tool was used. I've tried letting the installer create it's own account and I've tried specifying an Administrative account. I tried the scheduling patch I found on these forums, as well as countless hours of scouring these forums for a possible solution as well as other places on the net where there are any discussions related to ABR.

I've checked, rechecked and fine tuned the network to the point where on an "idle" network performing tests on individual systems, I've hit as high as 97% efficiency over the network so I feel that rules out communications issues. I've also tested the network under various load levels and have not encountered anything that could affect network communications so adversely that backup data flow should be affected. And backups are running at night during off peak usage times and each system is staggered in schedule so as avoid excessive network traffic.

I configure and run systems super lean so any services, background tasks/startup items that are unnecessary have been removed or disabled. Just for kicks though, I've set a couple systems back to Windows 7 defaults. Didn't change anything...

Enough info?

I've performed my due diligence with this KLUDGE. THIS WEEK ALONE I've spent $2000.00 worth of my billable time watching backup job after backup job fail, and will never see a penny... unlike many companies, I still have some ethics and I WILL NOT bill a client until I produce a result. This junk was installed on the August 1st weekend and here we are approaching 1/3 of year later and no reliable backups. My clients cannot live with this risk!

After hours of combing the internet and these forums related to this software and its problems, it is painfully obvious that I am NOT the only one with a multitude of issues with this software. I will strongly urge anyone and everyone that I encounter to stay away from it.

I really wish that Acronis would just own up, take some responsibility and accountability and admit that they produced a STINKER!

I really don't care what the "policies" are, I will be seeking a refund and I'll write off the rest to an incredibly BAD EXPERIENCE! I will do so in a civil fashion and if the requests aren't honored my legal counsel will deal with it accordingly.

Not quite,

Did you raise a support ticket with Acronis?

The drive rotation has been a problem since WRKSt 9.1, caused I believe by the task embedding the drive ID in the script file, change the drive, obviously the drive ID is changed, often the task will fail or behave in an unpredictable fashion.

The way I got around it was to make a task for each drive that then ran on it's allocated rotation day. So 3 drives = 3 identical tasks except for the day they ran on. I note this is bascially what you did as well. I have had ABR10 get confused with consolidation in fact last week, where it suddenly starts imaging the complete drive twice and then attempts to consolidate, runs out of space and promptly doubles the images again. The only way I've found around this is to edit the task, make a change, edit it back to what I want. This deletes the database entry and all starts working normally again.

As you are imaging to a server, have you installed Acronis Agent on it, and has Acronis Agent installed Acronis Agent User as a user and made itself and all those who log on to make images part of the Backup Operators group? There should also be an entry for Acronis Remote Users.

Are you using UNC rather than a mapped share - Acronis prefers UNC.

I've not opened a support ticket with Acronis. I don't much care for dealing with some call center on the other side of the world. Typically, I find these support centers useless and a poor excuse to claim that some kind of support is provided.

Past experience has proven that with nearly every product or service I've used, where a facade of support is some "help hag" at some 3rd world call center, I've resolved the problems long before somebody following a flow chart ever has. So, rather than dealing with the hassle of a bad phone connection to some place in India or wherever, I've avoided it.

As for rotating backups, I've never had issues in the past with TIE 9.xx however, I am aware that this is an issue with version 10.xx. To clarify, as stated in the previous message, all backups go to a fixed internal drive on host computer. This remains constant thus keeping the vaults consistent... or at least in theory although loss of vaults is recurring.

My rotational drive is my offsite drive that everything from the main backup drive gets backed up to, and the backup to that drive is not handled by ABR 10 so as to avoid the vault issue.

The problem(s) is ALL the other flakey crap with this kludge of a program.

Here we go again... a screen shot of a failed backup and then when I rebooted the system, I manually validated the vault which was successful, then triggered the scheduled job manually and there it rots... it'll sit at 0% and the only way to stop this is to end the mms.exe process. Then, typically, a reboot. From there it's a 50/50 "let's hope" game as to whether this junk will work the next time or whether it hangs, fails, succeeds but fails the validation etc.

UNRELIABLE!!! EXPENSIVE UNRELIABLE!!

Meanwhile, I installed a competitor product on a different system that was flaking out all over like this one and it has been "fire and forget" since last week.

Acronis has to own up!! They have a bug ridden piece of crap that needs to be fixed or replaced ASAP!!

Colin B wrote:

Not quite,

Did you raise a support ticket with Acronis?

The drive rotation has been a problem since WRKSt 9.1, caused I believe by the task embedding the drive ID in the script file, change the drive, obviously the drive ID is changed, often the task will fail or behave in an unpredictable fashion.

The way I got around it was to make a task for each drive that then ran on it's allocated rotation day. So 3 drives = 3 identical tasks except for the day they ran on. I note this is bascially what you did as well. I have had ABR10 get confused with consolidation in fact last week, where it suddenly starts imaging the complete drive twice and then attempts to consolidate, runs out of space and promptly doubles the images again. The only way I've found around this is to edit the task, make a change, edit it back to what I want. This deletes the database entry and all starts working normally again.

As you are imaging to a server, have you installed Acronis Agent on it, and has Acronis Agent installed Acronis Agent User as a user and made itself and all those who log on to make images part of the Backup Operators group? There should also be an entry for Acronis Remote Users.

Are you using UNC rather than a mapped share - Acronis prefers UNC.