This is a joke
I don't see how it's possible to have any kind of confidence in a product that can't do the simplest things correctly.
Grover pointed out in another thread that if you edit a backup definition, it would run a full backup instead of an incremental/differential backup the next time it runs.
I had assumed (ha) that he was talking about relatively major changes, e.g. changing from unscheduled to scheduled, changing from full to incremental, changing the drives selected, or something like that.
It turns out, that (apparently) if you change any single item in the backup definition (e.g. uncheck the "validate after backup" checkbox), it will result in a full backup the next time it runs.
This is a joke. And it certainly does nothing to give me any confidence in the product. Although I have tested it by restoring from a backup, I have zero confidence that if I suffer a disk crash, and really need to restore (e.g. possibly to a different disk, possibly of a different size than the original disk), I'll have any success. I don't want to stick around long enough to find out because I've wasted far too much time already on this flaky product.
Here's the thing: I haven't seen the source code for this product. I don't know how it works "under the hood". Maybe there's a logical reason why it can't do an incremental backup properly after you change the backup configuration file.
If that's the case, then at least TELL THE USER WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN. You know, like an alert box that says "Changing this configuration will result in a full backup being performed. Proceed? Yes/no".
And if you're going to perform a full backup, treat it like a full backup. Delete the old backup. Delete the old incremental backups. Instead, I'm left with two 300+ GB backup files and no idea whether I can safely delete the old one or not. Sorry, but I "only" have 2 TB of backup drive, so I can't really afford to keep around multiple full backups just because I rescheduled a backup from 6pm to 6:30pm.
So to get back to "Square One", I have to run *another* full backup after I've just waited six hours for my last "incremental" back up to finish.
In other words, because I made a trivial change to the configuration of a backup, I had to spend twelve hours backing up instead of the approx. 10 minutes that an incremental backup would have taken.
That's a twelve hour window during which, if I suffer a disk crash, the best case scenario is that I lose one day's work, and the worst case scenario is that I have no functional backup at all because the Acronis developers were unable to change a boolean value in a configuration file without forcing a full backup, and without informing the user of what was going on.
That's just not acceptable. Once again, if the software is, for some reason, incapable of performing an incremental backup following a minor change to the configuration, the user should be informed of this, and the software should handle the situation in a graceful manner. That's how competent software developers handle situations like this. If the Acronis developers can't handle a simple situation like this properly, I have zero confidence that the software will actually do what it's supposed to do when I actually need to restore from a backup.
Windows Backup is looking better all the time, and this piece of junk is going back to Amazon. I just hope it will actually let me uninstall it!
You are correct; I am backing up up over 300GB of data. I would expect it to take many hours to do a full backup and have no problem with that. My problem is that if I then decide that I want to change the schedule from 6pm to 6:30pm, I have to do a whole new backup again, *and* that the software does not notify me that it's going to do so *and* that it does not delete (or offer to delete) the old complete backup, so I am left with >600GB of backup data.
Have you ever written a program worthy of commercial use?
Yeah, only for 20 years, and I know that if I (or someone who works with me) is unable to implement a feature, they are expected to remove that feature, or at least notify the user that it is not going to work as expected.
And while there may be "many many people" who are satisfied with this product, a quick glance at the user comments on Amazon.com (or, for that matter, a quick scroll through this very message board) will show that I'm hardly the only person who is dissatisfied.
Have you ever written a program worthy of commercial use?
Cheap shot. I am part of a team that write commercial softwares and we're not without faults. I don't fault ATI for having some bugs here and there. I fault them for their lack of support, unrealistic time to response to support tickets, and crawling speed in fixing the bugs. It took a whole month for my support ticket to get a response and only because I came to complain on the forums.
I've never manufactured a kettle, but I still expect it to boil water.
I find the premise of this thread a joke. The manual clearly states on page 72, under section 9.3.4 "Backup Method":
You can set a backup policy for the backup task. Acronis True Image Home offers three types of backup policies: create full backups only create full backups after a specified number of incremental backups create full backups after a specified number of differential backups
When the first backup on a schedule is executed, Acronis True Image Home always creates a full backup.
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The way I read this, if you change anything in the backup definition, no matter how trivial you might think the change is, the schedule is now a new schedule, and a full backup will be performed. This does tell the user what is going to happen. Very clearly.
If assumptions are made that are in direct opposition with the product documentation and actions occur that you don't want happen, it is not the product's fault. This is not a flaw in the software. It can't anticipate that you ignore the documentation and give you some message to "warn" you.
I think it's fair to say the vast majority of users don't read software manuals from cover to cover, no more than they would a car handbook or a motherboard manual. Yes, you could argue that by not doing so, they have no comeback, but I'd say that there's nothing wrong in making reasonable assumptions. Pretty much every software review I've ever read at some point mentions intuitivity - decisions or assumptions arrived at spontaneously, derived from or prompted by a natural tendency. I'd say it's perfectly natural assumption to expect an 'edited' task to behave in the same way it did prior to the edit, bar the changes you've made. Anything else is a 'new' task, or 'new' schedule.
Even if we were to take the manual at its word..
"When the first backup on a schedule is executed, Acronis True Image Home always creates a full backup."
I'd read this as being the very first time a backup task is run. Any further runs of that task, edited or otherwise, wouldn't qualify as being the "first" time.
OH GEEZ, I CAN'T BELIEVE I DIDN'T READ THAT AMBIGUOUSLY-WORDED SENTENCE ON PAGE SEVENTY-TWO OF THE MANUAL!! WHAT A MORON I AM!!
Well, I still think that any change, no matter how small, make the backup task/schedule "new" from the software's perspective, so the next time it runs will be the "first" time with the "new" definition.
Before I bought ATI, I was warned that it was not intuitive. Powerful, but not intuitive. Making assumptions can have consequences. Ignoring the manual and the advice of Grover (who is very knowledgeable and has read the manuals, most likely cover to cover, and most likely multiple times) and operating under assumptions will lead to unexpected and undesirable results. I still don't see how this situation is Acronis's fault.
Well, I still think that any change, no matter how small, make the backup task/schedule "new" from the software's perspective, so the next time it runs will be the "first" time with the "new" definition.
Well, it's nice that you think that, but that is not a definition of "new" that most people would recognize. That's like saying I have a new car because I bought new wiper blades.
Before I bought ATI, I was warned that it was not intuitive.
I was not. Somehow that information seems to have been left out of their marketing materials.
Ignoring the manual and the advice of Grover (who is very knowledgeable and has read the manuals, most likely cover to cover, and most likely multiple times) and operating under assumptions will lead to unexpected and undesirable results.
OK, first of all, no offense to Grover, but if the advice of a non-employee on an internet forum is a requirement to use this software, that's already (as the kids say) an epic fail.
I appreciate Grover's attempts to help, but his advice to me came off more like guesses than authoritative answers (i.e., first "Maybe it's because you edited the backup definition", then "Maybe it's because you have the wrong name for your backup file", etc.). His own use of expressions like "might explain" and "IMHO" indicate that he isn't offering any more than suggestions, not authoritative information. And even he says that "the tasks do not accept the edits *accurately*" (emphasis mine). I don't know about you, but that sounds like a software flaw to me.
And finally, in case you hadn't noticed, it's the 21st Century. "Intuitive" software for home computers has been the norm for 15-25 years depending on platform. I have neither the time nor the interest to wade through a 200-page manual to figure out what other common-sense assumptions of mine will result in unexpected software results, because I am not interested in backup software that produces unexpected results.
I still don't see how this situation is Acronis's fault.
Who cares? You're not the one who determines whether I get my money back or not. It sounds like you wouldn't recognize any fault on Acronis's part even if it reformatted my system disc, as long as that behavior was vaguely implied (or at least not ruled out entirely) in footnote #34 on page 198.
I agree that more than one meaning could be construed from the Acronis manual, and it could be perhaps more precise in it's phrasing.
If one thinks about it though, TI making a new full after any alteration of the actual task is actually a 'fail safe'. What's the safest thing to do if a task has been fiddled with - make a full image.
Having said that, I can't say that I've noticed that behaviour when I've changed schedules.
One thing you do have to watch out for, is that if imaging to an external drive, that drive must be attached and switched on when making any task changes, otherwise your image will be stored in the default location of your documents folder.
Grover is quite right to use the terms maybe or perhaps - he (and none of us) are in front of your machine, seeing what you are seeing and watching what you might have done, therefore assumptions have to be made. Not everyone explains their problem using the same choice of words or even that accurately, so some hedging of bets has to be made, given also that PC's running MS and Linux can have a myriad of different hardware installations, broken parts of the OS and other software that causes conflicts having lain dormant until knocked out of their slumber by another piece of software demanding part of their room space.
I agree that more than one meaning could be construed from the Acronis manual, and it could be perhaps more precise in it's phrasing.
I don't think that most reasonable people would construe "more than one meaning" from this sentence:
"When the first backup on a schedule is executed, Acronis True Image Home always creates a full backup."
Most people, I suspect, would take this to mean (quite logically) that if you create an incremental or differential backup, the first time it runs, it will always create a full backup.
By the same token, though, I see nothing in that sentence that could reasonably be taken to imply that changing any aspect of an existing task will cause it to be considered "new" again. Virtually every piece of software I know makes a distinction between "creating a new document" and "editing an existing document", and behaves differently accordingly.
If one thinks about it though, TI making a new full after any alteration of the actual task is actually a 'fail safe'. What's the safest thing to do if a task has been fiddled with - make a full image.
Well, I could possibly see this argument having merit if you're talking about changing something significant, like the selection of drives/folders to be backed up, or the type of backup.
But if you're talking about unchecking the "Validate after backup" box, or changing the schedule of the backup, why on earth would they need a "fail-safe"? That sounds to me like they (the software developers) don't have any confidence that the software will actually do what they tell it to do. I mean, the validate process is actually a completely separate process from the backup process... so unchecking the "Validate" checkbox should not have any effect on the backup process. For you to say, essentially, "Well, they have to do a full backup just to be sure" doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.
And, once again, to reiterate my original point... regardless of whether it is or isn't or should or shouldn't be possible to edit a backup plan without triggering a full refresh, the "user-friendly" way to handle this situation is to *inform* the user that their backup task is going to take (e.g.) six hours instead of ten minutes and that they will now have (e.g.) 600GB of backups instead of 350 or so.
Grover is quite right to use the terms maybe or perhaps - he (and none of us) are in front of your machine, seeing what you are seeing and watching what you might have done, therefore assumptions have to be made.
Quite right, but the only reason I mentioned it was to point out how ludicrous it was for Gary Darsey to imply that failure to heed Grover's advice "will lead to unexpected and undesirable results" when Grover himself was only offering guesses and speculation.
I think it has been made clear, whether anyone likes it or not, that changing a schedule will result in a full backup being done - rightly or wrongly that is how it works and this may or may not be altered in future.
Gary and others are only trying to help, implications and such are simply your own interpretations of comments made - I can't find anything intrinsically wrong in anything anyone is trying to say - this just leads to quotes, counter quotes, and arguments about symantics and then where do we go? - argue about the meaning of symantics :)
Grover and others do not offer guesses and speculation, rather informed advice and suggestions based on experience and a willingness to help out. Non of us can stand over your shoulders to see what you are doing, in what order you did them, what is installed on your system, bla bla. It would be very simple if we could.