Cannot restore backup of partition containing NTFS sparse file in TI 2013

Steps to recreate the issue:

- Create a NTFS sparse file with a maximum size that is bigger than your actual hard drive size (e.g. 9999 GB). For example, TrueCrypt dynamic size file containers use this method.
- Backup the partition that contains the sparse file
- Boot the computer using the Acronis rescue USB media
- When trying to restore the backup, Acronis will crash, report a wrong backup size, or give you an error message, because it reports a backup size of 9999 GB and therefore doesn't fit the target drive. This will even happen if you excluded the sparse file in the backup settings.

Solution:

It's a bug in True Image 2013's rescue media tool. The problem can be solved by creating a TI 2013 rescue disk and then turning it into a TI 2015 rescue disk by copying two files.

- Create a USB rescue media using TI 2013's rescue media builder tool
- Download the TI Home 2015 rescue media ISO file at: http://dl2.acronis.com/s/AcronisTrueImage2015_en-US.iso (english) http://dl2.acronis.com/s/AcronisTrueImage2015_de-DE.iso (german)
- Open the ISO file, go to Folder "Recovery Manager", and copy the files "ramdisk.dat" and "ramdisk64.dat"
- Paste these two files to the same directory on your USB drive, replacing the old TI 2013 files with the new 2015 files
- Proceed as normally.

Thanks to the Acronis support who helped me with the issue.