TIH 11 - DD 11 incompatibility woes

Hi all.... I've been using True Image Home 11 (build 8,101) for years and (until now) I've had nothing but praise for Acronis, and complete trust in the company and their software. TBH I actually felt a bit sorry for Acronis because I was (and still am) reluctant to upgrade the rock solid tried and tested reliable (TIH 11) backup strategy which had bailed my (admittedly somewhat aging) system out of disaster on countless occasions, and which I'd learnt to depend upon and trust implicitly.

Recently I received an email from Acronis informing me of the (time limited) opportunity of purchasing Disk Director 11 with an 80% discount. Seemed a great offer, but before rushing ahead I thought it sensible to first check the Acronis DD 11 product page where I was reassured to read "Use with Acronis® True Image Home 2011 - When used with Acronis Disk Director 11 Home, it provides comprehensive partition management and system protection." After reading what I interpreted as reassurance from Acronis, frankly it was then a no-brainer for me to go ahead and purchase DD 11, which I duly did on Wednesday last (24th Oct). But having subsequently wasted too many hours battling with serious backup problems.... what I now of course realise is that Disk Director Home 11 and True Image Home 11 (my setup) is not the same as Disk Director Home 11 and True Image Home 2011 - though I'm sure I can be forgiven for a lack of acuity in the 20/20 vision which falsely afforded me some reassurance.

As Acronis targeted TIH 11 users with a mailshot encouraging purchase of DD 11, I suspect many other TIH 11 users will have recently purchased DD 11 at the greatly reduced price. Though I'm no techie expert, I'm opting to post my own experience in the forums in case the problems I encountered soon become apparent amongst other new DD 11 users?

Disk Director 11 installed smoothly without issues (I didn't install the OS Selector component as I didn't require it). Neither did I use the software to commit any changes. But after a cursory first inspection I continued to be very impressed with Acronis software and was glad to have added DD 11 to my toolbox for later use.

What I had not anticipated (or expected from Acronis) was that when I subsequently attempted to use TIH 11 to backup one of my partitions (exactly as I've been doing oh so reliably for years) I then began to encounter problems where image creation would (more often than not) fail with the Error Message Dialogue "E0000007 Unable to create volume snapshot" and logs informing e.g. "Operation with partition "K:" was terminated. Details: Unable to create volume snapshot (0x70021) Tag = 0xA5695862AAF8E64E Failed to lock volume snapshot. (0x10C449) Tag = 0x14181C22EF45AF29 Already locked (0x9) code = E0000007) Tag = 0xABF5B651C7D88E41"

From looking at various forum posts, rightly or wrongly I've gleamed that the snapAPI.dll driver version(s) could be related to this (already locked disk) issue? I'm very careful at logging all changes to my system and registry whenever I install new software.... and what I can add is that my original installation of TIH 11 (build 8,101) installed a solitary instance of snapAPI.dll (ver 3.3.0.345) in C:\WINDOWS\system32. The recent installation of DD 11 (ADD11H_2343_en-EU.exe) overwrote that existing snapAPI.dll with a newer version (3.12.0.640) as well as installing a second copy (of 3.12.0.640) in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Acronis\SnapAPI.

I observed that some users (such as reported here) had resolved similar issues by re-installing True Image (2009 in that particular case) and apparently 'down-grading' their existing version of snapAPI.dll in the process. I did contemplate re-installing my TIH 11, but I hope I needn't explain why I was reluctant to set about down-grading possibly essential components of my yet untested disk partitioning tool prior to putting it to first use! Fortunately I'd had the foresight to create a backup image of my system partition immediately prior to installing Disk Director 11.... and I'm happy to report that restoring my system to pre-DD 11 state appears to have totally cured all my problems with True Image Home 11. Once again I'm beginning to trust my True Image Home 11 backup strategy, but whatever caused the problem definitely seem to be related to a conflict with Disk Director 11.

At the risk of only demonstrating my (acknowledged) ignorance in understanding of hardware issues, I will add a few further observations in case they supply any diagnostic clues as to where possible problems/conflict might take root? During the brief time when I had DD 11 installed, I used the program (and also tried using TIH 11 with identical results) to make a bootable CD combining both programs. My resultant experience was exactly the same as that reported by another user in this message. I could use my CDs to boot to the Acronis loader, and then select to run True Image Home which would load without any problems whatsoever. But if I selected to run "Acronis Disk Director 11 Home Update 2" from the loader menu, I'd get the message "Unable to load initial ramdisk. Press to proceed..." (then nothing).

However, I was able to use the DD 11 iso image which I downloaded from my Acronis account (ADD11H_en-EU.iso Build: #2343) to create a bootable CD which successfully loads Disk Director with no problems. Of itself that isn't a big deal for me. I could live with two separate CDs. However, what I do find interesting is that whenever I load True Image Home from CD (either from my original TIH boot disk, or from the two partially working combined disks created when DD 11 was installed) I always see Linnux environment drive letters (as in attached screenshot). Again of itself that's no big deal - I've lived with such behaviour ever since I first installed TIH and never had any practical problems. BUT I couldn't fail to notice that when I loaded DD 11 from the Acronis bootable media, all disk letter assignments were correctly in harmony with XP Pro drive letters - albeit with "Microsoft Windows XP SP3" selected as default in the Disk layout options. However if I then selected "Bootable media environment" as Disk layout, all drive letter assignments just disappeared completely (rather than mimicking TIH's boot environment?).

Though my knowledge of Linux environment concerns is non-existent, when I read the KB4831 which states that "Acronis Bootable Media downloaded from the website is the same with what you can normally create with the latest build of your Acronis product" I did find myself scratching my head a bit. Again at the risk of only showing ignorance, given that TIH 11 and DD 11 apparently have different ideas about drive letter assignment in the boot environment, I started to wonder whether it was not surprising that only one program would load successfully from the combined bootable CD? (even though it was created from the latest build of the still current version of DD 11). I've ventured to draw attention to these observable differences in letter assignments, just in case any conflict in volume identification (that possibly prevented DD 11 loading from the boot disk) might extend itself further (i.e. beyond Linux boot issues) to explain more specifically why TIH 11 began to encounter volume snapshot problems immediately after having to update some of 'it's own' essential core files with (incompatible?) files from DD 11?

Although I no longer have Disk Director 11 installed, I'm guessing that I'll still be able to use the program in isolation as a standalone loaded from the Acronis bootable CD? I haven't (as yet) contacted Acronis support, because my problems are really concerned with an incompatibility with True Image Home 11 (which is no longer supported). But if there is a known (potentially serious?) incompatibility issue, then at the very least I would have appreciated (and expected) some forewarning from Acronis, rather than allowing the DD 11 installer to update my TIH 11 files, in a manner which destroyed the functionality of the imaging process that I depend upon.