Is Acronis True Image 2017 New Generation for me?...
Acronis is offerlng its current users what seems to be a reasonably good deal for acquiring Acronis True Image 2017 New Generation as an annual subscription.
I have been using Acronis since their version 11 and currently using ATI 2016. I use Acronis for only backups and eventual recoveries and never had a problem. If I'm not prepared to trust cloud solutions for my backup needs, is there anything else in this ATI version that could be of interest for an Acronis user like me to consider purchasing it?
Any thoughts will be much appreciated.
Thanks.
I agree with the advice from FtrPilot. I am having problems with 2 out of the three systems on which I have installed New Generation. Stangely, the one on which it is work is the least powerful (AMD A8-5600K 8 gig of RAM); the two I am having issues with have 16gig of RAM and in one case an i7-2600K cpu and the other a i7-3770K cpu. These CPUs are old but were high powered at the time I got them. Much more powerful than the much newer A8.
Ian
I am not a fan of subscriptions, cloud storage, cloning or running background tasks that are performance hogs. I thought about testing NG but stopped after reading some of the comments here and seeing what additional benefits and performance costs may be involved.
I Agree, ransomeware is a serious threat.
I use an external HDD dock for my backup drives. I do not clone nor do I store disk images in the cloud. If I am desperate for a restore and the internet is down or the cloud is down or the download is slow or the download is corrupted or...and the list goes on and on then I am SOL... I rotate 2 backup drives and store one externally from the home. Backup and recovery is fast and reliable. Backup drives are released from the system immediately after the backup completes and the drive docking station is powered down. I unplug the drive and place it in a small safe (in the same room) , lock the safe and smile...
That was my solution... all solutions have merit, this works best for me and has been tested over the years with small failures, total hd failures and moves to new hardware. Everything worked well and I have always been able to recover my files or total systems.
Steve
Steve, I understand and agree with your comments - I have never needed to use a subscription or cloud storage service and have a number of different local / network backup locations that I use which have served me well over the years and have saved a lot of time and heartache when a disk has failed etc.
I only have a subscription product at present simply because this has been provided to me as an MVP so that I can experience and learn from using the product in that way, though I have not tried doing a full disk backup to the Cloud and not considering doing so with my current ISP upload speed of only 5Mbps (maximum on a good day with a following wind).
For my 2 cents worth I will side with the not a fan of subscription based products crowd. I believe though that is because of my age. Seems to me that older folk like the PAID FOR aspect of ownership whereas the younger crowd prefers the PAY AS YOU GO aspect.
Cloud storage, not ready for prime time in my corner. I am not trusting in cloud storage due to whom might have access and how and as I have said before upload speeds, although mine are double what those here report, is terrible. For me cloud storage is best for individual files/folders in their native form that do not need to be "restored" to be of use.
The feature I was sort of hoping but not really expecting to see in 2017 with or without NG was the ability to make new differential backup or start a new series of incremental backups off of *any* full backup of the same hdd, or perhaps even a different one to which the original material has been copied ... this would make it possible to maintain monthly snapshots of a system that mostly changes very slowly going back years, without shelling out too much for external hdds, whose price/capacity curve does seem to be flattening out somewhat.
But the NG feature does seem excellent, to the extent that it works, for people for whom it would be much better to have ransomware stopped in its tracks than to have to pause to restore from backup. Sadly for Acronis, I'm not such a person ATM ...
Avery, you could achieve your wish of being able to make new differential or incremental backups from your full backups, provided that you approach this with this intent in mind.
For example, create an unscheduled backup task that will create the type of backups you want to have, i.e. Differential or Incremental. When this task is run for the first time, it will always create a full backup, but when run on subsequent occasions, it will then follow your backup scheme rules and create differential or incremental backups 'on demand' for this task.
In principle, it should be possible to do the same with an existing full backup, provided that you match both the name of the full backup file and the task name; i.e. file name = disk2_full_b1_s1_v1.tib and task name = disk2 and you have no other tasks which have had the same name which may have left information behind in the Acronis database.
Thanks ... I may have accidentally managed to follow this procedure or something like it once, when re-adding an old full incremental backup seemed to allow me to start a new series, but it's never worked since ... on attempted repeats, it always makes a new full backup, which makes it impossible to maintain a real history. I suspect that the stickiness of the memory of the database is a big obstacle to a practical procedure.
Hello Avery,
Currently there is no known issue with the software that would be causing backups to be full, when according to the backup settings they should be incremental or differential. I suggest that you review the backup settings with our Support Team. We would be glad to help you configuring the program so that the backup history and the list of recovery points are maintained according to your expectations.
Regards,
Slava
Thanks, but I don't think you quite understand my issue ... diff and incr backups work fine, unless you want to start a new series based on the first, full, backup. That does not appear to be possible; if you delete the backup from the list, re-add the original full backup as incremental or differential, it then makes a new full backup rather than a new series of incremental or differential backups. My incremental backups typically weigh in at about 5% of the size of a full one, making it impractical to keep a full series of, say, monthly snaphots of the state of the system over a period of 1-2 years, since havng the 20th backup depend on 19 previous ones would surely not be very reliable. The time needed to make the new full backup that is probably about 90% identical to the new one is also rather annoying.
Hi Avery,
When you say that you add a full backup "as incremental or differential", I suppose you mean that you click "Reconfigure" button, and select "Incremental", "Differential" or "Custom" backup scheme.
My point was that you needed to verify the backup scheme selection, review the rules for when incremental and differential should be created, together with one of our Support Engineers. You can open a support ticket here.
Regards,
Slava
Slava, my understanding of the point that Avery is raising here is as follows:
- Create a full backup image of drive C: to an external backup drive.
- Remove the backup task that created the backup image.
- Add back the full backup image using Add existing backup.
- Reconfigure this backup and select Incremental backup scheme.
- Run the reconfigured task.
Avery is expecting that when the new, reconfigured task is run, that it will create an incremental backup based upon the full backup image that was added in step 2, but he is seeing Acronis starting a whole new backup version chain instead, with another new full backup image, ignoring the added full backup that is present.
Steve,
I believe the problem is caused because the data concerning the task that was removed (but not deleted) is still in the database folder. I believe that renaming the database folder to database.old and having ATI create a new database folder....Then ATI would do what Avery wants it to do.
I am not positive this would work, but might be worth a try.