Acronis 2015

I found this post by googling "Acronis 2015 is horrible" and was (not) surprised to find this posting. After months of frustration with TIH 2015, I've too have rolled back to the previous version.

Doods,

We all agree, not sure what was going through their minds with 2015.

My guess is that they were trying for a simple, touch-friendly version, and that's how we got 2015. I guess all the options with 2014, they could not make that many icons fit on a tablet touch screen and still eb readable, so they just left a lot of stuff out and focused on just the backup part. Sad, because people don;t buy backup software based on how well the touch interface is, they buy backup software based on reliability.

I hope 2016 gets back to what made their products great, and focuses on the customer who buy and use their products.

David

I doubt that 2016 will be much better. It seems that Acronis is determined to make the new model their standard. 2014 was very functional and worked...2015 is a bomb and they keep pursuing it. The recovery CD is hit and miss. The software crashes and is not functional on many machines...and they still haven't released a fix for all the issues yet. Seems that they don't care about losing a lot of money. I purchased 2-015 and within hours put in for a refund. I am not alone on the refund front. You would think that they would care, but doesn't seem that way.

Agreed that the new interface is a major problem. Rolled back to 2014 version.

This is a very old post, have switch to Macrium over a year now. Acronis backup interface is crap and the application performs like crap.

I too tried to use the 2015 version and ended up asking and getting a refund. I am presently using 2014 and EaseUS. What is your opinion of the Macrium Home edition?

Gifford Tremblay wrote:

I too tried to use the 2015 version and ended up asking and getting a refund. I am presently using 2014 and EaseUS. What is your opinion of the Macrium Home edition?

The company updates there software often, they listen to there users and fix bugs quickly.

Reflect shows me what folders/files are being backed up in real time. Acronis just shows a stupid blue bar.
Reflect has the option to add the recovery image to your boot sector, you never need a bootable cd or usb drive again, Acronis does not.
Reflect lets me mount any image instantly, I can copy folders/files from it easily, Acronis version is sloppy.
Reflect has never disappointed me, never had a bad or corrupted image., Acronis images are not reliable.
Reflect scheduler is amazing, it does automatic backups and lets me know when there done, Acronis scheduler is hidden away.

Acronis True Image 2015 Home is $50
Macrium Reflect Workstation 6.0 is $75
Macrium Reflect Home 6.0 is $70

Download the trial of Macrium 6 and see for yourself.

Acronis is no longer #1 in my opinion. But why would I write this on an Acronis forum? Because I would like to see the product become the best again, with real development and support, and a company responsive to customers. Act like you care! Also, as an owner of ATI 2016, I feel entitled to say something.

I've been an Acronis user and supporter since they first made their presence around 2001/2002. The product has always had some feature not working. But in general, it did what I needed, and there were few alternatives.

By the 2014 version on an XP machine, True Image continued to work well enough, although more of the features stopped working, or never did. Support was basically useless. It was outsourced, but that didn't matter. I've found excellent tech help from other outsourced support, 'real' technicians at other companies. It’s not about the location; it IS about the training given to support techs, the job skills required, and the needed ability to communicate with the customers. Acronis fails me in this regard.

I bought a new system, Windows 8/8.1. ATI 2014 had even more issues. Scheduling stopped working, incrementals failed. My one need, a full back up now and then continued to work.

Then, last month, I did the free upgrade to Windows 10. ATI 2014 stopped working for me. It would hang and never finish a backup. (I understand that it does work for a minority of folks on Windows 10.) I figured it was time for an upgrade and I went directly to 2016 after ‘completely’ uninstalling 2014. It didn’t work any better than 2014 and it had even more issues. It would not finish a backup, crashed window's explorer on uninstall and reinstall, and other features crashed the program. Support was ridiculous and a time waster. Each support email response included a ridiculous set of requests expecting me to have the tech knowledge they do not, and to to try things I don't have a clue about. The email response to mine, often 5 days later began with, "I am sorry for the delay in response" and then repeated that they cannot help unless I complied with their requests to 'alter my registry', 'rename *.dll files from other software', use 3rd party softwares to extract data and create logs" or whatever. I had no idea what they wanted and do not have the time or desire to read the numerous reference pages they included explaining in technical language what they were asking me to do to ‘help them’. Where was the part about helping me?

I see that people here on the forums talk about rolling back to an older version to 'fix' issues with 2015 or 2016, or to regain features that have been removed.

MY POINT IS THIS: Why should anyone have to go through what I did to TRY and make the software work, by altering windows processes, messing with VSS and other services, altering dll files from other software, using no less than five 3rd party software to give Acronis the data they say they need to fix my issue that was never fixed. (One of those 3rd party softwares hijacked my browser and installed 3 more software, and YES, I did opt out during the install, but it did it regardless.)

Purchased software should work out of the box, period. If it doesn’t, the issue should be known to a company paying attention. It should be easily fixed with a patch to the software, not by altering Windows and other softwares. For a very, very few, software may not work at all, perhaps some incompatibility. But if there are more than a few different seemingly unsolvable issues, than the software has the problem. I do not believe I am one of the very, very few because I see numerous references to my issues on Acronis forums, and because every one of the alternative softwares works for me, out of the box.

I have contributed a 'fix' for 2015/2016 image unmount issues with WD USB hard drives. While not an ATI generated problem, Acronis should have figured it out before it did. I am not a computer tech, I am a Registered Nurse. And Acronis could not begin to fix my other 2016 issues, most importantly, not completing a backup. I tried sending all the logs and data requested, did a remote session and put up with the ridiculous emails and nothing worked.

So, I have been refunded for one copy of ATI 2016. I had also bought ATI 2016 for an office PC under company name, never checked to see if it works. It doesn’t and it is too late for a refund.

I have researched product reliability, features and company to customer responsiveness and Macrium Reflect comes out way ahead of Acronis. That's my opinion. EaseUs Todo seems like a decent product but the company has a 'sneaky' refund policy and support is less than ideal. I am still trying Macrium 6 Free and will purchase the Home version to equal the features of Acronis 2016.

Acronis True Image sucks, burn it to the ground forever. The app has gone from bad to worse and needs to be burried. 

Hello again,

So far, I am happy with 2016.  2015 is still one of the worst releases I have ever seen from any company, and 2014 was the "ROCK" of releases, but I am not sure how well it will handle Windows 10, so I am sticking with 2016.

I recently upgraded from 2014 to 2016 (after I downgraded 2015 to 2014).  I was going to test the restores for 2016, and as luck would have it, my Windows 8 install went south right before the weekend I intended to test 2016 restores.  One thing I did not know was that the 2014 startup F11 key thing does NOT get upgraded when you upgrade to 2016.  You have to manually remove and then re-install the startup F11 key program, otherwise it will stay at the older version.  Luckily, I was able to restore a 2016 backup with 2014 that was installed on the bootup F11 routine.  I still could have booted to a boot media and done it that way, but it worked so I am fine.

Well, as it went even my backups had the corrupt windows, typical GIGO scenario.  I only had a weeks worth of backups available, which is a shame since I have used the product all year.  I am still a little shakey on how these incrementals work, it seems like I should have had more backups to revert to, but either way I was able to get my system bootable and copy off what I needed.  After all of this, I went with a clean Windows 10 upgrade, and that is working great so far.  I was able to re-install 2016 on Windows 10, and the backups seemed to work 1st try.  I am lucky in that I have a BOOT and DATA partition, so I can blow away the C drive and all my data is still there on the 2nd partition.

So, while things were not perfect, Acronis saved me and I was able to recover my system, at least good enough to upgrade my Windows.  I guess I would have been upset if I wanted to keep Windows 8, because I felt that I should have at least had a good backup to revert to.  Like a previous poster said, the FULL backups are flawless, the incrementals are still unreliable.  Since I have Acronis installed on about a dozen machines in my house, and I use the email notices, I can say it is rare that any of the incrementals work without issues.  I use the Secure Zone as well as a NAS to send backups to, I will see how well all the backups go after a months worth of time.  I am scared to call their support, seems like I don;t have any options for support outside of the forums.

I have tried EaseUs, and trust me, it is not better.  I am interested in Macrum Reflect, and I might give that a try on a machine sometime soon.  I just wish there was a way to not get the incremental failures, but if I am diligent, I can make sure I have a FULL to revert to.

Keep trying Acronis, I hope the 2016 builds get better.

David