An open letter to Acronis.
******An open letter to Acronis******
Acronis was once a byword for the single most trusted and respected disk imaging and backup solution in the business. The last few years have seen each release become more and more buggy and troublesome, with many of the issues seemingly deep rooted within the product.
You have only to look at the countless complaints and problems in these forums (once you get past the dozens of spam postings... another issue that is not being addressed) to see how much dissatisfaction and discontent there is among the current TI2016 user base.
Acronis... imo you need to begin a new product development starting with a totally clean sheet and not as I suspect, simply building on previous versions.
A very real concern I have is related to Windows 10. We know that W10 is an ongoing 'work in progress' and that new builds will come along. How can you guarantee that any future product which works with one build will still be compatable with future releases of W10 ? Maybe you are trying to hard and wanting to include just to many advanced options (options that I suspect the majority of buyers will never use).
(Microsoft included 'W7 backup and restore' disk imaging with W7 and that same application appears in W8, W8.1 and W10 and it just works. Easy, simple and no fuss. Why is Acronis TI not resilient to major changes like this)
A winning product needs to be first and foremost reliable, and it needs to be simple.
Its sad to see a company that was once the market leader brought down to this. You are the only people that can turn this around, and the clock is ticking.
The attached image shows the face of Acronis as it appeared to me today. Not good ! And what is worse... some hours later and nothing has changed.
Mooley said, "(Microsoft included 'W7 backup and restore' disk imaging with W7 and that same application appears in W8, W8.1 and W10 and it just works. Easy, simple and no fuss. Why is Acronis TI not resilient to major changes like this)"
Have you tested the MS backup programs? Are there many complaints about it in the MS user forums? I've noticed that the MS user forums aren't nearly as responsive as the Acronis forum is.
Yes, I have tested it extensively.
I've used Acronis daily for 9 yrs, and TI ? from 2007 was in may ways the best version I have used. It works, and every which way you throw something at it. TI2012 was problematic from the start, not always opening and not always launching into recovery mode when required (freezing). TI2014 fixed the problematic opening but would still freeze 50% of the time when launching a restore. TI2016 was problemtic beyond belief. All were clean installs and were in all cases the first program to be installed on the OS.
So back to Windows and yes, I have tested it very very thoroughly for making and restoring disk images. It works quickly and faultlessly and with no glitches or drama. Even more surprising, and something I am investigating, is that it appears to make either incremental or differential backups although the method of its operation is not obvious. However when you come to restore you are presented with a full tree of all the images made previously.
W10 also has the excellent 'File History' feature which can save a copy of every changed user file at a frequency specified by the user. Again, it just works and with no overheads or glitches.
Mooly, what do you think about using both Acronis and the Windows backup? Would they conflict?
Joe
I can't see there being any conflict and I'm pretty sure I have used both myself in the past when evaluating beta versions of Windows.
Unfortunately I have to chip in and join the complaints Mooley brought here. I think a few people might recognize that I am always trying to be helpful to reach a goal instead of complaining but now and then I cannot keep up all my criticsm I share with ATIH as a product and how it is managed, and most of all I have to agree with his criticsm how this forum is being managed.
The idea that just a few people, volunteers, try to help people with some first level issues is ok. But it should be also a platform to rise issues and get things in shape. I am not blaming the Acronis team for not listening as they have been responsive on a high number of cases so far, and fixed problems.
For the moment I am disguised by a number of problems that I cannot catch on my own, and that make ATIH not trustworthy and unreliable as Mooley described.
If the Microsoft solution would be somehow helpful (it is certainly not, as it's painfully slow and generating too much data overhead - missing incremental backups and flexible options like ATIH etc) I wouldn't use ATIH, but it is not. Most of all as Microsoft dropped most of its functionality in Windows 8.x and 10.
Maby- if there still are any computer magazines left- or online versions- that somebody do a thorough review of all backup software. Most of us just don't have the time to experiment with them.
Joe
this very old thread from 2008! Shows that the responsiveness of Acronis support lacks of too less "human ressources", and that's a valid problem with Acronis and a time critical application like a backup application naturally is - even for a home user. And this situation still persists - very unfortunately.
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/is-acronis-customer-service-depa…
I can encourage anyone to try out the support of Teamviewer or ASUS (certainly stronger companies), and you'll get a complete different idea of how the way "supporting a product" is lived.
Maby- if there still are any computer magazines left- or online versions- that somebody do a thorough review of all backup software. Most of us just don't have the time to experiment with them.
Joe
I agree ATIH is a very complex piece of software and so there are many possible reasons for issues. A lot of problems causes by very special or improper configured systems and last but not least "layer 8" problems.
I do also concur that mostly you will see many issues with ATIH after a longer time of usage. So reviewing backup software is not a piece of cake. The basic functionality works quite fine, IF the computer and the environment does absolutely meet an ideal, lab like, state.
But that's the problem with ATIH. As soon there is anything off that state, it starts to threw a bunch of problems at the user, without giving helpful and error messages - sometimes just like Windows or Powershell.
Either things like chkdsk errors on readonly system partitions or anything like that. In our company we are using System Center 2012 DPM and I don't want to say it is always working but somehow it is more forgiveable than ATIH.
In the past years I had backups where backup and verifying is ok but they are not recoverable. Leaving me alone so I expierenced data loss, spending hours with the customer support, and we did not even find the cause for that.
Imho the code of ATIH is not designed to handle exceptions and differences. And this is the weakest point.
In the current state of code it demands a perfect state of a computer and even you thing you meet this requirement - it still is not enough sometimes.
Just have a look at all my postings to get an idea about that. Sometimes ATIH does insanely refuse to do the job.
Hi All,
I'd like to say *IF* ANY of you think there is a problem with support you are receiving, you might want to EMail your specific problem to new product support of Acronis Gaidar Magdanurov at GM@acronis.com with ALL supporting documentation, not just a general complaint but a documented problem which support is not responding to, I know he will get you help!!
Hope that helps,
If the Microsoft solution would be somehow helpful (it is certainly not, as it's painfully slow and generating too much data overhead - missing incremental backups and flexible options like ATIH etc) I wouldn't use ATIH, but it is not. Most of all as Microsoft dropped most of its functionality in Windows 8.x and 10.
For a home user (like myself) I wouldn't call it slow. A full image takes around two to three minutes to complete and running a restore is similar.
Do the images I posted over in 'TenForums' show ? Post #108
http://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/5495-system-image-create-windows-10-a-11.html#post558884
What about Norton Ghost? The Norton AV program is now pretty good. I've been tempted to purchase Ghost to find out- but first of course, I'll review the Norton forums. I'm just curious if anyone experienced with Acronis has also tried Ghost.
Joe
Well the last time I used Norton Ghost was back in the 2000's . The good thing back then was the multicast support that made it possible to image a lot of computers without breaking down the network.
To be honest after 2006 I never used Ghost again as I was not responsible for Client deployment and management anymore.
I am not sure if Ghost is really a competitve backup / restore solution rather than it was an imaging tool back in the days, but it would be great to learn from your experiences if you are going to trial it.
offtopic: as for Norton AV, I think I have given up to create a valid link between performance - Antivirus - and Norton in my mind :)