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What happened to Acronis?

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I have used Acronis True Image WD edition several times over the years to migrate OS installs to larger or faster drives.  It has served me very well and I've been very appreciative of the free WD version since I only use WD drives.  I've recently tried the new 2021 version and it pains me to say it, but it's pure garbage now.  I mean no disrespect when I say that.  I hope this criticism is taken constructively as it's intended.

Modern Acronis is far too bulky.  I do not want ransomware protection in a backup/clone utility.  Also I fail to understand why a version that doesn't feature scheduled backups still installs a scheduler service.  In fact Acronis WD edition installs about 6 separate services that run all the time, not just when I want to use the program for a manual backup or disk cloning.  This kills boot times and eats up system resources.

Upon launching the clone tool in Acronis, I get a spinning clock animation.  This thing spins for about 10 minutes before I can do anything.  Then when I click on the Automatic clone option, the clock spins for another 10 minutes.  I made the mistake of then clicking on "options" which of course took another 10 minutes of spinning animation only to find that I didn't need any of the options.  Trying to go back to the previous screen.....more spinning...more minutes.  It was ridiculous.  After almost 40 minutes of just trying to navigate the UI, when I actually tried to clone a 1TB HDD to a 1TB SSD, acronis estimated that it would take 7 hours (The same clone with Minitool Shadowmaker trial version took 1.5 hours).

Once my clone was successfully done (with other software) I decided that I should uninstall Acronis.  After sitting there and looking at the uninstall progress bar not move for about 5 minutes I was told that "Uninstall Failed".  I had to then find and download the Acronis Cleanup Tool to actually uninstall the program.  You must know how bad you uninstaller is when you need to make a separate cleanup tool.

Look...I don't know what happened to the great Acronis that I used to love...but this new version is basically malware.  It does more than you want it to at the cost of system performance while completely failing to do what it's needed for, and when you try to remove it...you can't.

I'm sad to say that I will no longer be using Acronis WD edition, or any Acronis software for that matter.  How could I even trust it to clone a disk properly when it can barely function and can't be removed?  I hope that in future version Acronis can reclaim it's reputation as one of, if not the best backup cloning software.  To do this though you will need to take the 2021 version out behind the barn like Old Yeller.

1 Users found this helpful

R H, you really need to communicate your comments directly to Acronis via their Feedback tools if you want them to actually read them.  This is a user forum (hosted by Acronis) but rarely visited by anyone at Acronis (sad to say!).

See KB 57216: Acronis True Image: Send Feedback for help with the Feedback process.