view comments how to ?
When backing up my computer I add comments and screen shots to the backup.
How do I view that data after backup is completed.
Thanks , Hank
See from the ATIH 2016 User Guide
Backup comment
This option allows you to add comments to the backup. Backup comments may help you to find the necessary backup later, when recovering data by using bootable media.
If a backup does not have comments, type your comment in the comments area. When a comment already exists, you can edit it after clicking Edit.
Hello Hank,
You will see comments for every backup when you will be recovering from bootable media. "Comments" is one of the columns in the backup list table in Acronis True Image 2016 running from bootable media.
It is not possible to see comments for your backups when you are booted in Windows.
Regards,
Slava
Hallo,
excuse for my bad english, but i try to explain.
In ATI 2014, you can under Windows in ATI about Files Recovery the Comment editing. In ATI 2016 i don`t find this Option, i know that i can edit the Comment about the advanced Options or with the BootMedia, but in ATI 2014 it is very better, because you can each incremental Backup editing the Comment, or have you another Idea ?.
merle, welcome to these user forums.
There are many differences between the older versions of Acronis True Image and the latest versions, and many complaints from users who would prefer the way those older versions worked in comparison.
In ATIH 2016, Backup Comments are only available via the Advanced > Backup Comments option, and can only be viewed when using the Acronis bootable Rescue Media, not from within Windows. There is also a warning message given for the Backup Comments which states:
Note: comments for incremental and differential backup versions cannot be shown under bootable media.
Hallo,
thank you for this Info, i known this and i think ATI 2014 is the better Solution, because it is clearer and to better serve, now i am going to uninstall the Demo Version of ATI 2016.
Best Regards
merle
merle,
Thank you for sharing your opinion about different versions of Acronis True Image software. Just for your information: Acronis True Image 2017 (expected this August) will display comments correctly in its Windows version.
Regards,
Slava
Ahh,
this is good to hearing and i hope it will be display comments correctly and easy to editing.
thank`s for this Info.
So will there be an update for ATI 2016 to fix this regression?
In the older versions of Acronis you could hover over the backup image in explorer and see the comment.
Not having the ability to see the comment is a pretty big loss of functionality.
--- bill
[Not having the ability to see the comment is a pretty big loss of functionality.]
Semi-functional software. In my experience Acronis support has always been at best flaky, arrogant, and semi-accurate. Software interface is awful and ill designed to handle over 2-3 backups. They do have the best backup software but need to work on the customer (ATI) interface. (read both software and support wise).
Sometimes the interface will not allow me to select compression other times the comments field is not accessible at recovery, some times .tib files are reported as missing and difficulties abound when backing up to a network server.
First interaction with Acronos led to my returning software and fighting with management to get my money back. But had to back that decision out as bad as Acronos is other backup software has worse recovery track record.
Not a glowing recommendation but the best PC backup available.
Bill & Hank, I have seen any mention of this being added back to ATIH 2016 but they have brought it back into the ATIH 2017 GUI to allow comments to be seen and modified in that version. I somehow doubt that they will regress this to 2016 now that 2017 is available.
I read the 2017 user guide. There is nothing in the documenation that shows or even mentions how to see the comment from a previous backup.
Bill, please see KB document: 58606: Acronis True Image 2017: How to Add Backup Comments which has more details of this new feature.
There are only brief mentions of comments in the 2017 user guide, mainly related to backups.
Unless I'm missing something, the KB document is not that helpful - in fact it is very misleading.
This is probably the most misleading statement:
You can add a comment to a backup version. Backup version is the result of a single backup operation. Backup comments will help you to find the necessary backup version later, when recovering your data.
To really see how it works you have to actually run the the s/w. (I ran the trial version)
So for anyone that thinks 2017 will allow you see comments in the .tib files - take note as to how this really works. (from what I can tell, it doesn't)
While the new Windows app interrface does make it easier to add a comment to each individual backup image - and that does have value, the Windows s/w app still has no easy way see the comment inside a backup image or "backup version" as they call it which is really a .tib file.
The new Windows app interface merely allows you see the last comment used when a backup image was created using that "backup" configuration and you can modify the comment for when the next backup image is created. It is not a comment from the actual .tib file and if you modify the comment in the "backup" configuration or delete it, it will no longer reflect the comment last used in the backup image.
Even if you go to the [Recover disks] or [Recover files] GUI, there is still no way to see the comment inside the .tib files for the available backup images/versions. All you can do is select one from a drop down box by the date it was created.
So if you have multiple versions of a backup with different comments there is no way to see them to get a better idea which one you may want to use for restoration.
So all the new GUI really does is make it a bit easier to get to the same comment information that was available in the 2016 GUI down under the other pages. It isn't really the comment in the .tib file but rather the last comment used when creating a backup using that "backup" configuation.
The rescue/standalone GUI does have an easy way to see the comments in the .tib files.
The Windows GUI kind of sucks when it comes to the way it handles pre-existing backup images as you have to go in and create a "backup" for each existing backup image (.tib file) that you may want to take a look at. If you go through that hassle, then you can see the comment in side the .tib file for that backup image.
The standalone interface is MUCH better in this area. You simply do a "refresh" and all the backup images show up and you can see the date and comment for each.
The Windows app has moved to this new "Modern" GUI which is a big deviation from the standalone bootable s/w (they use to be very close). And in the process some very useful functionality has been lost from the Windows s/w app and some things are more difficult than they used to be.
The Windows app needs a way to see the comments and it needs a way to populate the available backup images without having to go through the hassle of creating a custom "backup" configuration.
I thought that the older versions of Acronis were much better in how they delt with the comments.
You could easily enter it if you wanted to when doing a backup and it was blank if you didn't enter in anything.
This newer s/w will continue to use the same comment until you change it, so it is easy to forget to change it and end up with an incorrect comment.
In the older s/w, you could simple bring up Windows explorer, click on the .tib file, then hover over the backup image icon and see the comment as a tool tip.
In the newer s/w there is no way to see the comment in a .tib file from Windows.
A bit off topic below........
The WIndows GUI remembers all these pre-existing backups even when the drive that contained them is not plugged in so if you have multiple drives with backups, It will be showing backups that are not avaiable.
Even worse, it will create the directories for non existing backups on a different drive.
It wants all the directories for all its backups to exist and will create them if the don't exist, but it doesn't bother to check to see what drive that backup was created for so if you use multipe drives, you end up with phantom empty directories.
--- bill
Bill, you are preaching to the converted for the most part with your observations but only the user community are likely to be reading these comments. You should submit these via the Feedback tool in the ATIH GUI if you want anyone at Acronis to read them and perhaps take notice?
With regard to your off topic observation, the behaviour that you describe is typically caused when users try to use more than one destination / target drive within a single backup task. This is not how ATIH is designed to be used as it stores the target drive unique identifier (UUID) in its internal Database when the task is created, and when you present a different drive to the task this then will cause the behaviour of creating phantom directories or giving unpredictable results. There have been lots of posts in the forum where this has been shown to be the case.
It should be remembered that ATIH is aimed at the Home market rather than as a Business product, and hence many of the UI changes have been aimed at such home users along with a simplification of functionality. I totally agree that for many more technical users, myself included, that this dumbing down is a retrograde step and the MVP's have consistently suggested / promoted the ability to be able to switch between the simplified interface and an advanced user interface, but unfortunately the Acronis developers do not seem to be listening to this request!
I don't run Windows or MACOS, but my 75 year mother uses Windows and she is ultimately the one using the product.
And I do understand the push for simpler and a less technical interface for less technical users.
(I had a company that created products that sold about 5M units per month that included Windows s/w and drivers, and believe me I understand real world s/w and support issues for a mass audience)
However, they have really bungled things up by not having an auto "refresh" backup images list like what is available in the standalone boot app.
Not having the ability to auto populate a list with all the pre-existing .tib files is what causes a need to have to create the "existing backup" configurations which in turn can create the phantom directories on drives.
If they had just made it easier to see all the available/existing backup images (like they used to do in the past and still do in the standalone boot code) a lot of these issues I'm seeing would vanish.
I think to some extent they ended up creating more problems than they solved by going to this new "Add existing backup" methodology of storing canned entries for pre-existing backup images.
--- bill