False reporting image size when data excluded

Yes, this issue has been reported before as it relates to restoing to a smaller drive.
Sometimes the target disk will not be displayed due to this miscalculation.

Thanks GroverH.

In my case the target drive is grayed out, backing up and trying again provides selectable partition entries, and when I try to select one both are selected whereas normal behavior is only one at a time can be selected then an opportunity to select the other is provided.

I will be trying some things such as wiping the test target drive.

And I'll push Acronis to read problem reports, including what should be in their product support database, and release notes. Their notion is that I should pay for an upgrade to TIH2014 despite no knowledge from them that it fixes the defect.

I have now tested TIH2013 with a very different source drive vintage and technology - HDD vs SSD, with different o/s and most of the applications different.

Same behavior, plus inability to look at the files/folders when going down that recovery option path – none shown (want to check that excluded directories are not listed, can compare image sizes on USB stick).
The source drives have MBR, not GPT, and AFAIK are not dynamic (those two factors are known limitations of at least some vintages of TIH).

(I think it likely that the odd behavior in selecting target partitions to over-write results from TIH thinking there is not enough space on the target drive and not handling that well. Wouldn’t be a show-stopper if TIH measured required space correctly.
However, the mis-reporting of size needed for recovery has to be from creation of the image, nothing to do with the target drive, as it is not known when the image is created.
I don’t think computer hardware is a likely cause, o/s is a suspect besides Acronis SW, especially as Windows Explorer has defects (it is part of the o/s).)

I think that TIH2013 does _not_ correctly report the capacity needed on the target drive, when data has been excluded from the image, but that’s only noticed by the user when the target can’t accommodate that incorrectly reported amount.

I tested three different source drives, spanning two different versions of Windows, two technologies (conventional and SSD), three drive manufacturers, two different interfaces to the drive (normal PATA IDE, and a SATA drive through an adapter to PATA), two different computer manufacturers, and most application software different. I tested where claimed needed capacity is within the target’s capacity, and where it exceeds.

In some tests I was able to verify that the excluded data was not in the image, looking at it with the Recovery option to only restore files/folders not the whole disk. (From one conventional source drive that option does not work – no backups are visible, yet they are in whole disk view and they are usable.)

Logically the target drive cannot be a factor, since TIH does not know anything about the target when the image is made. (TIH has to read the target capacity correctly, existence of a service partition commonly used on laptops to hold the factory o/s load in compressed form for recovery can be a challenge, but I have seen TIH correctly measure the partition and recover to such a target. It does have anomalies when target capacity is not sufficient, but that is a side problem.)

TIH automatically resizes to the target partition (a manual method is also available), and can use as many of the target’s partitions as you want to.

As time priority permits, I will test other hardware combinations with the limited resources I have, and check with ESET’s web site (security software) as well as the Internet. (I have to put priority on validating other ways of imaging rather than on fixing TIH, in part due to the difficulty of having productive dialogue with Acronis.)

Note that the incorrect size information has to come from the image, it cannot come from the target drive as it was not known nor connected to the computer when the image was created by TIH.

Having obtained the needed size from the image, TIH must then check the target drive’s capacity and compare the two. It must deal with multiple partitions (user selectable) and compression. While I see some awkwardness in dealing with a service partition containing os files for recovery, that is not the barrier here. (Compression is not a factor on the drives here, of course the image is usually compressed on the transfer media – USB stick in my case, compression level is user selectable including none, I usually stay with the default value which is a middling amount.)

Note that TIH 2013 displays the size of data on the source drive _before_ the exclusion can be commanded by the user. TIH should then update the size information before embedding it in the image. I don’t think it is doing so.

So I think Acronis’ first focus henceforth should be on how the required-size information is calculated in preparing to make and making the image. That’s a fairly small part of the program to examine.

Meanwhile I tested more target drives, mostly because some Acronis people seem to think the target drive could be a factor. (So far I’ve tried two conventional SATA drives on one computer, and two sizes of conventional PATA through adapter to SATA motherboard interface on another computer. Testing includes where correct capacity value in image is needed to fit target, where target is of ample size regardless, and where even correct capacity value would not fit target. I’ve seen awkwardness in handling of the service partition on the target of both IBM/Lenov and HP configurations.)

And a correction and addition, the source drives I tested were one of SSD (PATA interface through PATA>SATA adapter to motherboard), conventional HDD PATA interface through PATA>SATA adapter to motherboard), conventional HDD (SATA interface to motherboard), and a SATA drive setup by HP, via a Cables2Go adapter to USB port, running TIH from a USB memory stick that has a different image on it. I did the latter to eliminate ESET Security Suite 7 software on the source drive, but have not eliminated it from the computer running TIH to make the image (TIH run from a USB stick will not make a second stick bootable, deleting ESET would require going through their reactivation on re-installation which is more work). Missing is PATA to PATA, an older configuration, but I doubt that makes any difference.

I looked at an image using the “mounting” procedure that Acronis pointed me to. That shows the image as a virtual drive, so is dependent on quality of Windows Explorer not just Acronis TIH. That confirmed that TIH falsely reports data size at the top level, and that data commanded to be excluded is not in the image.

(Keeping in mind sometimes there are two root problems that tangle to create the evident problems.) I may test a DVD set as the transfer media, though I doubt that is a factor (an MS-DOS versus DR-DOS mismatch is a thought, Acronis didn’t answer my question as to what format they were using on the transfer media, but “never say never” is a maxim for inadequately developed software such as from Acronis, Microsoft, and Novell).

I’ve also checked that TIH says it will be resizing the partition to suit the target.