Acronis support: Where are you?
I am re-posting the note below because, after threads on the Wilder's forums and another thread on this forum, the problem persists, unaddressed by Acronis support. My frustration with Acronis, with this product, and with Acronis support is high and rising.
Does Acronis believe that, after paying for a software product, one should have to wait months for answers to straightforward questions? At what point does one conclude the product simply doesn't work, and request a refund?
I have received several helpful suggestions from forum members, for which I am grateful. None, however, have successfully addressed the root cause of the problem.
Thank you, in advance, for any advice and help.
Original thread is at: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/3209
Text of the original post is below:
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Hello:
I began trying to resolve this issue over on the old forums, but I'm still struggling, so am starting a new thread, here. Please forgive the palpable frustration in this post, but having to diddle with software, for weeks, is frustrating -- especially when that software is presented as easy to use. I would be grateful for the forum's help.
I'm using TIH 2009, build 9,709 under Windows XP Home with SP 3.
Here's the problem. I have several backups running under TIH. In some cases, the backups are roughly the same size as the original discs/partitions. In other cases, however, the backups are much larger than the originals. Yet I believe I have them all set up similarly. The size of several of the backups is now becoming a problem in that the disc drives containing them are filling up with the bloated buckup files.
I'll use one of the backups as an example.
I have a partition, which is drive D, being backed up into a folder on a much larger, external USB HD: drive I.
Drive D has a 250g capacity, of which 228g are used.
The backup folder, on Drive I, is now occupying 426g of disc space, and Acronis TIH is telling me that the disc is full every time it tries to run that backup task. (...which is frustrating, since it's TIH that has filled up the disc.)
My backup needs are simple and unsophisticated. I need a simple backup of the full partition. That's it.
I had set the backup to be incremental, scheduled daily, and to create a new backup after a number of days (with the option to remove old archives activated). Normal compression. Automatic consolidation when backups exceed 2. (I set this number low because I had already experienced problems with backup file proliferation, and I thought consolidation might help.)
I'm certain that there's an issue with the way I have set the backups up to run, but I can't sort out what I might be doing wrong, even after having read the beginner's guides, etc.
This problem is driving me around the bend, along with the need to spend time on support forums -- and now having been moved off of one forum and onto another. I purchased TIH after having used a simple shareware utility for years. I stepped up to TIH after reading several positive reviews. Yet, having only wanted simple, reliable backup, Acronis has been a frustration since the beginning. Having struggled with this problem for several weeks, I am beginning to regret purchasing TIH. I'm sure the product is great, but having to struggle with it isn't.
I would be grateful for help in resolving this issue.
Thank you, in advance.
xx
Are you doing only Full backups, file backups, incs, what? What level of compression? Is the majority of the used disk space on the source disk made up of already compressed files like jpegs, mp3, etc.? Is this a Vista machine with VSS? Vista normally uses Volume Sahdow Copy to make a copy of the disk more or less on the fly. Vista disks can slowly double in size even though you only add and remove the about same number of data-file bytes.
Thank You, Scott for providing your response as to Acronis support. I totally agree with Spencer's comments that installing/using Acronis is difficult and frustrating. There is no direct customer service contact only the forums which, from what I observe, is done by people outside of the Acronis company. Yes to the fact that it is advertised as easy to use, etc. In all my fiddling around with getting it to work, I for whatever reason, lost the sound on my computer. Either by coincidence it went out at the same time I did the installation and set up for Acronis (Acronis True Image 11 Home) because prior to the installation it worked just fine. I have since attempted in many ways, through Windows help directions, to get the sound back. Nada! I got so frustrated I uninstalled Acronis; however, I kept the Acronis Suite on and have disk to re-install Acronis. HERE IS MY QUESTION: I backup via partitioning my C drive (main drive) and not externally. How do I restore where my OS was prior to the Acronis install? And Yes I read through the so-call manual and it is too techie for me. I appreciate any assistance you can provide. Thank You!
HELP! BEGINNER HERE TOTALLY FRUSTRATED WITH ACRONIS PROGRAMS.
When I installed/used Acronis full program, whether by coincidence or due to the installation, THE SOUND on my computer went out. It was working just fine prior to the installation. I have since attempted in many ways, through Windows help directions, etc. to get the sound back. Nada! I got so frustrated I uninstalled Acronis; however, I kept the Acronis Suite on (?for whatever reason?) and have disk to re-install Acronis True Image 11 Home. HERE IS MY QUESTION: I backup via partitioning my C drive (main drive) and not externally. How do I restore where my OS was prior to the Acronis install? And Yes I read through the so-call manual and it is too techie for me. I appreciate any assistance you can provide. Thank You!
I have to point out that imaging to the same drive even though to a different partition is fraught with upset waiting to happen!
If your drive itself dies, then your images have died also.
To answer your questions, assuming that your drive problem is just corrupt data on the C: partition, you will need to make a Rescue CD, boot from that CD, navigate to the partition that your images are on and restore.
I can't recall the actual layout to TI 11, but you will have an option to 'build rescue media' which IIRC is under the tools menu option. I suggest using a RW CD the first time around as you need to make sure the rescue environment can see all your hardware properly.
Going back to the imaging to the same physical drive problem, it is possible that if the data on drive C: is badly corrupted, it might be that the rescue environment will not be able to see the second partition.
One other thing to look out for is that if you are making partition only images, you will need to tick the 'restore MBR' option that will appear on the restore options as otherwise your data will be restored, but the partition structure information won't be. This may or may not be a problem depending on what has become corrupted on the drive.
If you are amking only a files and folders backup then the instructions are slightly different.
Hello all,
Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.
Please accept our apologies for the inconvenience and for the delayed response.
Houston Spencer, we haven't faced the issues when backups are larger than source in size. However, there are several cases related to defragmentation (which we are already excluded from list of causes in previous tread). So first of all, please follow the suggestion given by Seekforever: try to run your backup manually. Also, where do you store your backups? Have you checked the drive for errors?
To give us more information about your drive, could you please download Acronis Report utility and run it, create a report and send it to us? Please compress the Acronis Report output file into an archive (e.g. with WinZip) and attach to your message by browsing for the archive.
This would provide me with detailed information on the hard disk partition structure.
HERE IS MY QUESTION: I backup via partitioning my C drive (main drive) and not externally. How do I restore where my OS was prior to the Acronis install? And Yes I read through the so-call manual and it is too techie for me. I appreciate any assistance you can provide. Thank You!
Diane Mortensen, our program can restore data from backups only. So for example if you do not have an image with system state prior Acronis intallation, you won't be able to recover it. Basically, our program installation does not involve sound drivers at all. For hard drives and RAID controllers - yes, but not for soundcard. Have you tried to reinstall sound drivers? What do you see in Device Manager under sound device? (right clink on My Computer -> Properties -> Hardware -> Device Manager)
We are looking forward to hearing back from you at your earliest convenience.
Thank you.