ATI 2017 Disk Recovery Fails and Leaves Me Worse Off - Buyer Beware!
ATI 2017 failed miserably to protect me. Basically I was left with a succession of errors let left me worse off - resulting in considerable time and expense to recover my system.
I was starting to see problems with my computer...things like Windows files corrupted and wonky performance. So I decided as a precaution to reimage my drive using an ATI 2017 disk partition from prior to the onset of the problems. After all that is what ATI 2107 is for!
Well, the first image that I selected failed when I validate. First of all ATI 2017 could not find the backup associated with the backup scheme. This despite the fact that when I select 'open location', it was obviously there. Adding the backup did nothing. Finally -as advised by customer support - I was able to run the validation test by right clicking on the file and received a message something like' file is open or corrupted'. Acronis customer service could not help me to determine the real problem ( was it open or corrupted and why).
Well I had another backup, about 6 months old, created with ATI 2013. Validation with ATI 2017 was successful. Rebooted with my rescue media and started the recovery (after validating the procedure with the on line help and Acronis support staff). At the end the recovery failed and according to the log 'internal error: number of copied sectors differs from counted'. No description of what this error actually means and what to do about it! So what did the validation actually do? Why did it not check for this error before starting the process?
The net result was that my hard drive was reimaged... but incorrectly. Instead of putting me back to a former stable state I was left off much worse...missing or corrupted Windows files that left the system unusable. I was forced to go to a professional to reinstall everthing...at considerable expense. Fortunately I have a backups of my date - with conventional cut and paste of the files to an external drive.
And this is not to mention all the other problems....Backups that had been working for weeks and that suddenly failed. Backups that had been working for weeks and started to hang up or not complete. Obscure and meaningless error messages that referenced non-existant articles to the ATI database. And the complete absence of meaingful or readable error logs. And the fact that I was forced to update from 2013 ot 2017 because 2013 is no longer supported.
In the end this product is unreliable and I have no confidence that this product will deliver when I need it.. and my recent experience bears this out.
DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT.
In reply to Robert, sorry to hear of… by truwrikodrorow…
Thanks Steve, I would have replied earlier by I was trying to recover from the damage caused by ATI...
You perhaps misunderstand me. I have no real problem with the support team, as such...my product is the product itself...unreliable, unstable, obscure error messages etc. In the end I do not know if I can trust it.
And I sure would like to know what 'internal error:number of copied sectors differs from counted' means and why i was not warned before it happens.
I will write to Gaidar... but I doubt it will accomplish much
Robert, there is very little, if any, information available to the general public about the internal error codes mentioned in the Acronis messages / logs. These look to be the province of their developers only or documented only in their internal databases etc.
Perhaps I have been fortunate in not having encountered a situation where I have found the product to be unreliable, unstable etc over the years I have been using it. Yes, there have been times when I have encountered problems but Acronis Support have been able to help me to overcome those - some of which were simply down to my own lack of knowledge at that time.
In terms of the original subject of this topic, i.e. Disk Recovery. Then I tend to be a little more agnostic in my approach and try not to have all my eggs in one basket, so Yes, ATIH is still my main/primary backup/recovery application, but I also use other applications where the safety of my data is critical. This is much the same as having multiple generations of backups, stored on completely different disk drives and locations etc. I have and continue to use Macrium Reflect (free version), Easeus ToDo, AOMEI Backupper etc as deemed appropriate.
Robert, I understand how you feel. I had a terrible experience with 2017 version of Acronis True Image. OS of my desktop is windows 10 version. 1703. a few days ago, I had some minor issue with my computer after updating v. 1703. I tried to restore one of my saved backup file with 2017 rescue CD and flash drive (including a PE-based rescue flash drive). I had six backup tib files. I tried to restore one of tib file with 2017 rescue CD or flash drive. All of 6 tib files failed to restore. Restore was crashed in the middle of restore process. I was helpless because I do not have windows 10 installation disk (when I got this desktop a year ago from Dell, it came without an extra installation DVD disk). I eventually made it work yesterday. How? Out of the desperation and also curiosity, I replaced the 2017 rescue CD with 2015 rescue CD. Surprisingly, that allowed me to fully restore windows. It appears that there is a serious issue with 2017 rescue programs (for both CD and flash drive). You could try to restore with 2017 rescue CD if you have.
Jorge that was a stroke of genius. It may have been corrupt installation of recovery media rather than the program itself. This can be the case if you are using a well used USB drive. I had that very experience yesterday with ATI 2018 beta; fortunately Acronis aborted the creation of the recovery media.
You can also download the latest version of the recovery ISO from you Arconis account - but who uses DVD/CD these days. I at least have a USB Blueray drive.
Ian