My workaround for Sleeping and Invalid Index issues...

First I have to say, I was dissapointed with Acronis Backup & Recovery when I bought it a few weeks ago.

Some basic things seemed to be omitted from the product that is evident in other products such as the ability to wake the PC, keep the PC awake during backup and shut the PC after backup. On top of this the notorious Invalid Index issues which although didn't seem to affect backups, was just annoying to see the misleading 'warnings' in the backup dashboard that would make the operator believe as though there is an issue when there really isnt.

I was so dissapointed that I actually tried Genie Backup, Novastor and Ghost.

Of all the backup programs I have used so far, I have found Acronis' UI/UX to be pretty good, and the backup performance just beat the competitors hands down (for me).

I purchased a copy of Genie Backup Professional (not the timeline version) and though Genie had ALL the power management features I could ever want out of the box, the backup time and the UI was not as easy to follow as Acronis.

The other aspect was Acronis just seems to blow Genie and NovaStor out of the water when it came to backup time.

For 1TB (mainly camera RAW image files), Genie took around 13 hours with no compression. Acronis did this in 4hrs, normal level compression.

So for this reason I made the slow reluctant retreat back to Acronis and inspired me to fix the power management and WMI issue - well not fix but workaround!

So here it is:

I created 3 BAT files;
1 bat file switches power management to 'backup' mode so the PC doesn't sleep during backups. Use the Windows pwrcfg.exe command line program

1 bat file switches power mgmt to 'balanced' mode which is the regular mode that sleeps after 20 mins. Use the Windows pwrcfg.exe command line program

1 bat file puts the PC to sleep. Use the Windows pwrcfg.exe command line program

I then create an Acronis Backup Plan, which runs a pre-command to switch the PC to backup mode before the backup, and switch it back to balanced mode after the backup.

This fixes the power management issue of keeping the PC alive whilst backing up, and putting it to sleep 20 minutes after if an induced sleep command did not work for whatever reason. Obviously I schedule this to happen while I'm sleeping.

To get the PC to wakeup AND fix the WMI issue:
I use Acronis' command line program to run the backup script (*.tis) that is automatically created when you create a backup plan in Acronis - though this is not actually a TIS file, it's a long name with no extension placed in the .meta folder of the destination backup drive!!! This file contains the XML that will run the appropriate backup plan when invoked by Acronis' command line program.

I make a copy of this file and rename it to something meaningful like 'backup.tis'

I then schedule the backup using Windows Task Manager, enabling the option to WAKE the PC. I also enable the option which says 'Only allow this task to run if xxxx wireless network is available' - THIS FIXES THE INVALID INDEX/WMI ISSUE! (for me anyway!).

I then add the Acronis command line program to the task scheduler with the required arguments to initiate the backup (the tis file) and follow it with the sleep bat file command I created earlier to induce sleep after backup.

I schedule the backup in Windows Task Scheduler to be exactly the same time as what is set in Acronis, when the times are different it seems to kick off two separate backups which I don't want.

And that's it!

I wish something like this was pointed out to me before buying the product instead of having to search the net to find some of these answers and tinker with the registry only to find out this was the solution.