Acronis True Image and Windows 7
I am very upset with Acronis.
Back in 2006 I got an external hard drive and began the process of coming up with a backup solution and backup scheme. After months of fiddling around with Norton Ghost, and it not being able to make Boot CD's and boot floppies not seeing my external drives, etc., I was told about Acronis.
I downloaded TI9, installed it on my computers and fully tested it. I was very impressed and bought the program and have been using it ever since. I even installed TI9 on my Vista Home Premium x32 and it worked for me just fine. I have also worked with TI10 and found it to be pretty good too.
Now, I have a computer with Windows 7 and I tried to setup backups on it. First off, TI9 would not even install. Some kind of unsigned driver message and then it damaged something and on reboot, Windows had to repair itself, (it did a System Restore). Then I tried the copy of TI10 I have. It installed but would not run. When I try to run it, it says, this program is not compatible and when you let it try to find solutions, nothing happens. Next I even tried booting to the Recovery CD and just making a full image backup that way. Well for some reason, the Recovery CD did not see the hard drive in my laptop. this was true for both the TI9 and TI10 recovery CD's.
I do not understand why so many older programs I have, that work in XP, Vista and also Windows 7, yet for some reason True Image 9 or 10 will not. I have loaded on my Windows 7 Home Premium x64, CCleaner, Spyware Blaster, Spybot, Avira Anti-Vir, Malwarebytes AntiMalware, Office 2007, NERO 8, DVD Fab, DVD Decrypter, CloneDVD, Acrobat 8 Professional, PowerArchiver, etc. All of these are the same version I've been using on XP & Vista.
So at this point I figured, OK, maybe I'll just upgrade to the latest version. But then I am led here and see all kinds of negative reviews and comments regarding the newest Acronis, (now called Backup and Recovery). Some remarking about it crashing their system and/or not having reliable backups and others talking about Acronis has put too much "bloat" into this latest version.
Why can't Acronis just release a basic Image Backup and Restore program, with features much like TI9 and TI10, that will work on almost any Windows platform? All I do is make FULL IMAGE backups, one of the entire hard drive, and then periodically of just the C Drive. This allows me to restore the entire drive, (including any manuf partitions), in the event I have to change the drive. Then after that is done, I can overlay the full C Drive backup. Of course, I love the fact that I can use this Full Image Backup to "drill down" and recover individual files or folders. So that functionality should be retained, as well as the ability to create backup locations and schedule backups. Other than that, I once in a while use the CLONING feature, so it'd be nice to retain that too. But all of these features are part of TI10. These are all the features I use, and I'd be willing to bet, this it true of a large number of Acronis Users.
For now, I have installed Macrium Reflect and it is working and I booted to it's Rescue CD and could access the image I made. But I would gladly switch back to Acronis if they would give us a basic product, as I described, that works on Windows 7.
First off, the newest for home users is not called Backup And Recovery - this is for the old Workstation series. I know, it is very confusing - it's not like there is a shortage of names in the Universe. For home users it is still called True Image Home and the version is 2010.
Your previous version Rescue CDs don't see your new system drives probably because it has Sata drives. Try the Trial version of 2010 - it might work for you in spite of the problems you read about here. I'm surprised at some of the problems users run into with 2010.
John,
If you read the thread, "Windows 7 and Acronis support", you will see why I am not optimistic that you will hear from anyone at Acronis. I first attempted to contact Acronis support a week ago but have had no response so far.
It seems clear from my experience and postings on this forum that the latest version of their backup software doesn't work properly under Windows 7.
I'm trying to get a refund but it seems to be company policy at Acronis not to reply to emails so I suspect I shall just have to write off the money I paid for it.
I agree with you that there are too many bells and whistles on their product and it would be much better if they produced something simpler and made it work on Windows 7.
I haven't heard of Macrium Reflect but I have just had a look at it and it looks good. Only the paid for version has the ability to do incremental backups which I need but the price is reasonable. Thanks for the info.
David
One of the reasons TI9 and others won't install or run properly on W7 is that Microsoft took a deliberate decision to change some fundamental behind the scenes operations. This has affected other programs such as some Firewall and A/V programs, some disk defragmenters as well.
It is probably expecting a bit much for some software to be ready and able to run in what would be vapourware at the time.
Personally I'm annoyed that I can't run Boggle in Vista or W7 even in XP compatibility mode, it's th eonly computer game I play!
Personally I'm annoyed that I can't run Boggle in Vista or W7 even in XP compatibility mode, it's th eonly computer game I play!
Are you running the professional version of Windows 7? If so try running Boggle in the windows XP virtual machine environment. This is something that doesn't come, by default, with Windows 7 but is a downloadable optional thing. Your PC must be able to support virtualisation to run it but I've found it to be quite powerful and I am running all sorts of softwares and games in it that aren't Vista or Win7 friendly by default...
David, I now have 2 comptuers with Win7 running the paid version of Macrium Reflect. I made their WinPE Recovery Disk and booted to it after making a full image backup and I was easily able to mount the image and then restore just 1 file. So just like I used to do with Acronis, I make a full image backup periodically, (protected in case of a catastrophe ... HDD failure, major virus infestation, etc.), yet I can have individual file and/or folder backups readily available if needed.
I too invested in B&R10 and have had no success with my Windows7 Pro RTM installation. Trying to make backups and restores with the latest Recovery Media is unreliable and results in crashes or corrupted images. I was able to install TI Echo Build 8163 by renaming the executable to "TI.exe" and it is more reliable for backups than B&R10. The problem with Echo is that it has limited functionality as far as data folder backup goes. I've also found it impossible to restore a tib image made with B&R10 with a Echo Recovery Media.
I relied heavily on Acronis for daily folder and partition backups for years and I am very disappointed in Acronis releasing such crap.
I've also found it impossible to restore a tib image made with B&R10 with a Echo Recovery Media.