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Acronis Trueimage 2016 No Background Tasks. This will fix three major problems

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I want Acronis Trueimage to run ONLY when I start it.  I never want any background operation unless I plug in my backup disk (USB3) and run Acronis.  

Background operations cause two major problems and one critical security risk.  I only want Acronis Trueimage to run when I plug in one of my two backup drives and explicitly run the program.  There should be no backup operations except for my weekly backups when I run the program.  The backup drives are removed from the computer and even moved to a separate location.

1) Acronis writes to thumb drives, forcing me to manually delete the huge backup file.  I insert USB thumb drives frequently.  Whenever the thumb drive is assigned the drive letter E: it writes gigabyte sized files to my thumb drives!  Stupid stupid stupid.  I manually delete the files.  Each thumb drive has a specific purpose and I can't fill them up with huge files.  This has happened a dozen times.  What backup files have I lost?

2) Acronis delays my computer shutdown.  This is a major problem with my work laptop when I shut down and pack it away and leave.  I pack the laptop and get out the door.  I am a contractor, and time is money.

3) MAJOR SECURITY PROBLEM:  Ransomware will encrypt files on all attached drives.  If my backup drive is attached, the backup files will be encrypted.  My backup drives are never attached unless I am backing up or restoring files.

I want NO BACKGROUND OPERATION.  The ONLY time Acronis should run is when I run it with my backup drives pluggede in.  The rest of the time there are no backup drives.

Steve Kraus
4steve@att.net
330-867-6112

0 Users found this helpful

Steven,

Acronis True Image Home is designed to be usable with the majority of how a typical home user woudl backup - point and click / set and forget.  I'd say you're setup and requests are probably in the 20% of the 80/20 - but probably lower than that.  

Long story short - functionally, Acronis is a user/home product.  Offline media sounds the way to go for how you want the software to behave.  Acrnonis default behavior is similar in other competing "home" backup products that I've tested/used too so you'll be hard pressed to find a COTS home backup solution that behaves much differently.  That said, here are some ideas/options, but probably more in depth than you'd care to implement.  Up to you though.

1) You set the size of the backup files.  The default is to use a single backup size as needed for a single .tib file.  However, you can adjust the .tib output size to any size you want.  This is under the advanced tab >>> backup splitting.  If you use your offline recovery media to boot into Acronis outside of Windows, you can also set this size in the advanced options. 

2) What version of Acronis do you have installed?  2016 v ????.  If you are using v6027 or an earlier version, make sure to upgrade to the latest.  If no backup are running, you should not see a delay in shutdown.  However, even things like Antivirus or open files can prevent a system from shuttind down quickly.  Sleep and/or hibernation may be useful for a faster shutdown. 

3) If you want no background operation and no chance or ransomware having access to your backups, use the offline bootable recovery media and take backups that way.  No matter what you do, if you attach drives in Windows, they are susceptible to ransomware at that time.  Using the offline reocvery media will ensure that your backup drives are only attached outside of Windows where ransomeware won't be effective since the bootable media environment is none-changeable and is completley outside of the Windows OS.  If desired, you could even completely uninstall Acronis in Windows and not have any services running, you won't have any delays shutting down and soley use your offline bootable media to backup and/or restore your system at yoru leisure.

There are work-a-rounds to disable Acronis in Windows, but may lead to other undesired behavior when you go to launch it.  You would need to first disable Acronis manually in Windows 10 using taskmanager>>> startup in Windows  or using msconfig >>> startup in Windows 8.1 and earlier.  That should prevent Acronis from starting the application in Windows after reboots.  

However, you'd also have to manually stop all Acronis services and set them to "manual" in computer management >>> admin tools >>> services.  Unfortunately, as soon as you launch Acronis, it will kick off the services and set them to automatic again.  A quick fix would be to script the shutdown of these services with a .bat file (see attached - rename from .txt to .bat).  Run the stop .bat file as a logon task in Windows (copy it to C:\users\yourprofilename\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup, or better yet, set it as a post backup task in your backup task (advanced tab >>> pre/post commands..... just input the path to the stop.bat file) which will disable all Acronsi services after the backup task has completed).  

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Steve, in addition to the reply given by Bobbo above, I would suggest that you edit your original post and remove your email adress and phone details unless you wish to invite spammers to contact you.  These are public forums and show up in Google and other search engines.