Reassurance ... please!

UKCustomer wrote:

I'm a few days in to a trial of Acronis True Image 2016. I haven't paid anything yet but so far I'm very disappointed.

1) Today I've needed to contact Support because none of my night time backs have ran this week.

Make sure the backups run normally manually. Then make sure the destination of the backup is available at that time (not asleep, or something like that), then, of course, make sure the computer doesn't fall asleep during the backup.

2) The Sync feature appears to have a very basic design problem: it's not possible to change which folder is mirrored by the Sync feature: once you've set a Default Sync folder that's it - you're stuck with it forever! Incredible!

3) I've found the iPhone app to be extremely buggy. Even really simple issues - such as the Help menu having no content - have been allowed in to the current release. And, importantly, I'm seeing none of my Sync'ed items in the app.

4) I'm used to Dropbox and BackBlaze and, in comparison, Acronis Cloud appears to be very slow and potentially unreliable (https://cloud-wr-us2.acronis.com/ has timed out every time I've tried to access my Archive this afternoon).

All-in-all I'm thinking there's no way I want to buy this!

But ... all of the reviews of True Image that I've read have said it's excellent. So I'm wondering whether I'm just unlucky in my experience. What I'd really like is some reassurance. My main reason for trying Acronis is for HDD recovery in the event of full system disk failure. (I have other Cloud solutions which I'm happy with that handle document backups.)

I am with you on this. File-based features in Acronis are simply not great compared with competition. On the imaging/restore and clone side, however, Acronis is excellent. YOu need however to make sure that the rescue medium works for you. Boot the computer on it, and restore a couple of files from your backup, to make sure. This is *necessary*.
Also, don't start restore and clone operations from Windows. Always you the rescue medium.

So can I rely on Acronis should disaster ever strike? If my Windows 7 system HDD fails will I find that I can restore my system with a minimum of fuss on to a new hard disk? Or is the main functionality as poor as I've experienced the rest of the product to be?

That is the core use case. Since I joined this forum, I have never been let down by the product, across multiple generations of computers, BIOS, and OSes.

Would people who have actually used Acronis in real life to recover from a system disk failure please let me know ... does it work?

Yes, it works. Make sure it works on your equipment.

Thanks Pat for your help.

My backups were running normally manually - I contacted Support after confirming that and also leaving it for several days. The computer is on 24/7 - it never sleeps or hibernates.

The issue appears to have been a problem with the Acronis Service as, after checking all my settings and running a test backup of a single file which confirmed that scheduled backups weren't working, the ONLY thing the Support person did was update the software. I made no changes to my settings or system after she disconnected. It really was an Acronis software issue - hence my worry about its reliability.

From your comments, it seems like sticking with BackBlaze for file based backup and Acronis for local whole disk restore is the way to go. BackBlaze doesn't appear to be designed for whole disk restore (it backs up only 'My Documents' and a limited number of non-system files). Acronis seems dreadful at file based cloud backup. For now - two products are needed.

So my backups had been running (after Acronis support replaced a file or three) for several days. But a couple of nights ago they stopped again. I had made no changes to the system or configuration. Worryingly Acronis issued no error reports either.

I really cannot face going to support again. The person who helped me last time really struggled with understanding my English spoken with a British accent and I really struggled understanding her English spoken with an Indian accent. I'm just not that patient.

So that, together with this issue, has made my mind up. I'm abandoning my trial and looking elsewhere. I already use a reliable cloud document files backup service. I'm just looking for a reliable local full-system backup client. I've just installed EaseUS ... and I'm crossing my fingers that will work! (Surely this shouldn't be so difficult - backup software should be mature by now.)

But here's the amusing thing:

I went to Control Panel and began uninstalling Acronis. After serveral minutes a dialog arrived telling me that the unstall had been successful. There was no prompt to restart. So I presumed the dialog had told the truth. I dismissed it.

A couple of minutes later I notice a lot of activity on my backup HDD. I opened Process Explorer ... and there's Acronis using CPU time and showing a large amount of disk I/O activity!! I checked the backup destination folder ... and sitting in it was a fresh backup file growing in size.

I've ready dozens of reviews telling me that earlier versions are good - so maybe it's just my PC or maybe the 2016 version was released from beta testing too soon. But what really disturbes me is that I've discovered that a company called MaxBounty has been offering payment for website owners to promote Acronis 2016. So I've realised that a lot of the reviews I've read may have actually be affiliate marketing 'adverts' rather than true reviews from experts who have ran Acronis over a period of time and performed real life restores of the images it produces.

Now it's true that you can only be REALLY sure that a system backup is working if you perform a full restore on to a clean disk. I wonder how many people actually do that. And how many of them write reviews. But, judging by the number of issues I've had with just backing up, I don't trust Acronis. I'm off.

Anyway, in summary, here's the secret folks - if you want Acronis to work, uninstall it ;)

Too late for me I paid already :( I'm pretty annoyed something so basic is so restrictive and why is nobody responding to that thread? I hope I will not have to deal with Acronis Support in the future myself if this is anything to go by.

This is the SALES promo:

•Capture your entire PC in 1 quick step — both locally & to the cloud.

• Archive your data in a secure cloud, free up disk space, and access your data from any device.

But a backup of my HD would take 13 days 19 hours and 58 minutes!!!

160mb took 45 minutes.

This is just not useable at all and very misleading.

My normal ADSL speed is good.

A 320mb backup to MS One Drive takes just 15 seconds.