TIH 2011 - poll on bugs

ABR 10. Costs the same $90 as Home+PP, but for is not targeted to beginners.

Well I don't see a poll, but this program is abysmal. It is no where near ready for release. That didn't stop the scam artists at acronis from stealing our money for this dismal load of garbage.

Eric, you're right. I originally wanted to make a somewhat constructive poll, but while writing the msg my frustration gained upper hand. Sorry for the content not matching the subject :-(

I would also be interested in an alternative to Acronis.

Does anyone know anything about Paragon Backup and Resore?

I hear you, guys... I have been writing here for years that, in my humble opinion, each new version of ATIH has been worse than its immediate predecessor. I certainly DO NOT consider myself an expert in this area but I'm not an "absolute beginner" either; in school parlance, I would say I can read, write and do some math...
HOWEVER -- every time (and they were many) I looked around for similar products from the competition, I invariably came to the same conclusion: For under 75 US dollars, I found no product that could be considered better that the Acronis'. Not Norton Ghost, not Genie, not Nova, not Turbo -- NONE.
Am I saying there are no better competitors out there? Of course not. I am just saying I never found them. So, if anyone knows of a better, more reliable product that is still simple to handle by the average user, even if it is more expensive, I'll take it. I do not need anything particularly sophisticated or loaded with features, as I only need to backup three laptops regularly and hope to never having to restore any of them, which I know I will, of course, as much as I already have in the past...
Thanks for any ideas anyone bothers to share.
Cheers
Lin Yu

I only image my C drive which I do manually so I don't worry about task creation, non-stop backups, email notifications, I don't even use the database system of image tracking - I assign my own meaningful file names and browse when I need to find an image. I also have a few friends who use TI this way and we don't really have any problems. My only problem issue was a validation issue caused by a marginal SATA cable.

Because of this I've had no compelling reason to look further but I have done a bit of investigating because I do get annoyed at some of the bugs released in new versions that shouldn't be there. Being a PC environment and dealing with a program that gets down at a lower level than most other apps to handle huge amounts of data at the highest speed I do not expect every bit of hardware to work without a problem and it is impossible for the vendor to check every bit of hardware in every configuration let alone worry about how the user has Windows and possibly other conflicting apps setup. This is why they want a report of your system when you have trouble!!!!!!!

That said, there have been releases of the program where a feature didn't work at all; that is what I intensely dislike. I also hate their fooling around with the UI each new version and unfortunately now making it absolutely ridiculous. They should be aware that most people prefer one workable program over another that does the same thing is because it is "the devil they know".

In the past I criticized Acronis for using the Linux recovery environment instead of WinPE because many issues were due to the Linux. While they haven't provided an included WinPE recovery disk they have made it easier to create one and based on the types of problems reported in the forum it appears improvements in the Linux recovery environment have reduced the number of problems with it - not scientific, just my impression from reading about TI from V9 onward.

I dislike additional features being added that I don't want. However, I'm not so naive to think a company can compete for marketshare by selling a basic app when the competitors list a whole bunch of other features. It's human nature to want the one that supposedly does more because someday maybe you'll just want to do one of those strange things. Where Acronis is always poor is in the area of inadequate testing before a product is released and it has been often believed over the years that the new releases are driven by the marketing department not the engineering department.

I tend to agree with Lin Yu, it appears to me TI is still one of the better products. You will not find any of the competitors with no issues. Sure one product may work on a particular PC when another won't but it won't work on every one.

This is a forum sponsored by Acronis, so I hesitate to get real specific with recommendations for competitor's backup software, but in this case the competition is Microsoft, so hopefully Acronis won't mind. Here is my list in order of preference:

1. Windows Home Server
2. Acronis True Image 10
3. Acronis True Image 2011
4. Windows 7 imaging

1) Hands down the best imaging solution for a home user running only Windows. You can buy the software only and use an old PC as your server or you can buy a pre-made server. Extremely reliable, and the de-duplication feature (the backup database stores only unique sectors) makes for a very compact backup storage. For example, in 150 GB I have monthly images for the last 12 months, plus weekly images for the last 3 weeks, plus daily images for the last 7 days for three PCs. Fully automatic hands-off backups occur in the middle of the night like clockwork.
2) The zenith of the Acronis imaging products and my favorite for backing up a mix of Linux and Windows partitions. Very flexible. Works with Windows 7 if you're aware of its limitations.
3) Compatible with Windows 7 but quirky and has a frustrating User Interface. Not always reliable.
4) Included with Windows. Extremely reliable but inflexible. However, it does work and is "free" if you already have Windows 7.

Graham H wrote:

I would also be interested in an alternative to Acronis.

Does anyone know anything about Paragon Backup and Resore?

I use Acronis TI2010 on my three win7 systems to do just the basic scheduled image and occasional restore and it does the job for me very well. Some minor quirks but I have grown to live with them. I have no reason to upgrade or change at this time and from feedback it appears there are some issues to consider with the later version.

I have steered many of my friends towards the free versions of the above competitor product where they cannot afford to shell out hard earned cash.

Sorry this is a bit off-topic.

PM me if you want further information.

ABi wrote:

Hi,

Can anyone advise me a good alternative (especially in terms of speed when it comes to backing up to a network location)?

Thanks,

Andreas

Andreas,
Hello... yes there is a free program that works .... Macrium Reflect... I use this along with Acronis 2010 v-7046... http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp .It will do most of the basics ..and you can upgrade to do the rest. I have used this on "Windows" 7 \ 64 and 32 and on Vista. Both recoveries and backups without a snag. You can also make a boot-able recovery disk as well. Regards Fred

PS: Paragon is a waste of time when compared to "Macrium"

Mark Wharton wrote:

This is a forum sponsored by Acronis, so I hesitate to get real specific with recommendations for competitor's backup software, but in this case the competition is Microsoft, so hopefully Acronis won't mind. Here is my list in order of preference:

1. Windows Home Server
2. Acronis True Image 10
3. Acronis True Image 2011
4. Windows 7 imaging

1) Hands down the best imaging solution for a home user running only Windows. You can buy the software only and use an old PC as your server or you can buy a pre-made server. Extremely reliable, and the de-duplication feature (the backup database stores only unique sectors) makes for a very compact backup storage. For example, in 150 GB I have monthly images for the last 12 months, plus weekly images for the last 3 weeks, plus daily images for the last 7 days for three PCs. Fully automatic hands-off backups occur in the middle of the night like clockwork.
2) The zenith of the Acronis imaging products and my favorite for backing up a mix of Linux and Windows partitions. Very flexible. Works with Windows 7 if you're aware of its limitations.
3) Compatible with Windows 7 but quirky and has a frustrating User Interface. Not always reliable.
4) Included with Windows. Extremely reliable but inflexible. However, it does work and is "free" if you already have Windows 7.

I went with Acronis True Image 2010 because there is a bug in Windows 7.  Basically, Windows 7's backup feature works does not leverage the traditional archive bit.  Instead, it determines file modification by some NTFS attribute (I forget which one but I think it is changeTime or something like that).  That's fine, except that the Windows Media Player Network Sharing service scans and consequently updates this attribute for any file located in one of the folders configured as part of a Windows 7 Library every time it starts.  It seems this usually occurs after a reboot or after the return from suspend or hibernation but other things trigger the reindexing as well such as firing up Windows Media Center or using a Media Center Extender after not having used it for some time.  Then Windows 7 backup will see these as changed files and back all of them up again.

That's no good.  I had several multiple gigabyte movie files and thousands of multiple megabyte music files backing up every day even though nothing had really changed with the content other than that stupid changeTime attribute.  My 1 TB external was filling up completely after just a handful of days.  Microsoft acknowledged the issue way back in 2009 but has yet to fix it (I'm guessing they never will).  Their workaround is to move the data you want to back up out of the Libraries or to disable the Windows Media Player Network Sharing service.  Both of these things do correct the issue with the changeTime attribute constantly changing and triggering another backup, but they also basically make the Windows Media Center worthless.

So you can either use Windows Media Center or Windows 7 Backup and Restore, but not both.  Not efficiently, anyway.

I bought Acronis TIH 2010 as a replacement.  I was somewhat happy with it although I thought the incremental backups were quite large considering the amount of data truly changed but it was performing vastly better than the native Windows 7 backup.

I ended up getting luring into upgrading to TIH 2011.  I severely regret it.  The new version is horrible in many ways.  It's design is confusing to me and features that worked fine in 2010 no longer work in 2011 such as unauthenticated SMTP notifications and SMTP notifications using Gmail via TLS.

I have added another item to the bugs list : Acronis True Image Home 2011 boot CD destroys RAID5
I am going back to ATIH2010

I have had a vast amount of BUGS in version 2011, but have now reverted to version 2010 which DOES NOT have ANY of the BUGS that are in version 2010 and Aconis Support keep blaming their Development Team for the constant delay in solving any of the bugs i have raised with them. See my other posts by "Leslie" in this forum. I've even report the none fix to Acronis Managers but they don't take any notice.

Crap Support and Crap version 2011.

Possible Alternative to True Image 2011 - Image for Windows?

See post #9. TI tends to have a lot of features so make sure either will do what you want it to do, especially the free versions and I'd treat both listed with an open mind. I don't know his reasons for the Paragon comment. There are others that you can search for with Google as well.

After re-installing and looking for update for my usual programs i noticed latest version of TI2011 said it "now" supports SP1 for win7 so i was sort of lured into upgrading. Not sure if TI2010 is compatible with Win7+SP1?
Any how All i ended up with was a buggy version of TI which freezes every second/third time and has a very confusing GUI. TI2010 was pretty clean so i hope Acronis really revert back to that and makes TI2011 stable.
I'm just afraid they will soon go TI2012 and make us pay for something we should have received for free (stable TI2011).

ps. sadly i have not found any other program like Acronis that offers all the features i use. I'm a big fan of doing backup in windows (ok this part is possible with other programs). The other part i really like about TI is the feature where you can convert the .tib to .vhd and simply choose to use that to boot from in "boot manager". Its very easy to use and its very powerful tool.

Reza,
Hello... I use Acronis 2010 V-7046 with Windows 7 \ 64 SP-1 ..... 7 \ 32 no updates, and Vista no updates, and 7 \ 64 no updates, And it works in it's basic function Manual Backups \ Full images ... Also T&D. Can't say anything more about other functions ...I'm not "messing" with it by updating to a later version .Regards Fred

Hi guys,
Being a faithful user of Acronis for many years, I look forward to the announced 2012 version. In fact, I bought and used for a while the 2011 version after having used 4 previous Acronis backup and restore products, and I felt obliged to go back to the 2010 version. In my layman's opinion, Acronis 2011 is the most awkward, most beta-like version of all Acronis versions I had ever had before. So I hope Acronis puts a little more effort into this new 2012 product and delivers a better-looking, more user-oriented, less bug-prone, with a more decent working clock on "time remaining" and... of course, keeping Acronis great performance on its core functions of backup and restore.
I don't think this is too much to ask for.
Cheers
Lin Yu

The question for me is if and how Acronis will deal with the disappointed 2011 users.

Going thru this forum database and offering *something* to the users helping them to QA their product would be a first step...

Cheers

Andreas

ABi wrote:

The question for me is if and how Acronis will deal with the disappointed 2011 users.

How...?.... I will tell you. Based on my past experience with Acronis... They will offer you an "Upgrade Deal" For Acronis True Image Home 2012....... Regards Fred

A free upgrade *and* a stable 2012 release would be appropriate. ;-)

Actually, the latter is the more important part. The time I wasted for dealing with the issues outweighed the value of the product by far...

Cheers ABi

JustPlainFred wrote:

Reza,
Hello... I use Acronis 2010 V-7046 with Windows 7 \ 64 SP-1 ..... 7 \ 32 no updates, and Vista no updates, and 7 \ 64 no updates, And it works in it's basic function Manual Backups \ Full images ... Also T&D. Can't say anything more about other functions ...I'm not "messing" with it by updating to a later version .Regards Fred

Thanks allot for the tips Fred. Although i must admit my problem seems to be my environment this time (pretty amazed myself). After about 30 windows re-installs using different partitioning, driver testing, Backup testing (acronis, windows own image tool, others) i noticed even windows backup tool froze the pc. my disc are setup like this seen from the bios:

Channel 0 - 120Gig SSD Corsair
Channel 1 - 2 TB Western Digital

But for some reason Windows kept showing this the other way around like this:
Channel 0 (Disk 1) - 120Gig SSD Corsair
Channel 1 (Disk 0) - 2 TB Western Digital

Also on this setup my "System Reserved" partition was on the SSD drive (same as OS)

Now i swaped the SATA cables around so that Bios sees it like:
Channel 0 - 2 TB Western Digital
Channel 1 - 120Gig SSD Corsair

And Windows continues to see it like (which is actually correct now):
Channel 0 (Disk 1) - 2 TB Western Digital
Channel 1 (Disk 0) - 120Gig SSD Corsair

Also another different when i re-installed windows is that my "System Reserved" partition ended up on the 2TB WD drive this time (attachment shows how it looks).

So after all of this i tested TI2011 again and so far so good. So far i hadnt had any system freeze but its to early to tell.

Honestly i dont understand how the "System Reserved" partition and swapping the cable can have such impact but it seem to be the case (so far).I wouldnt call my self a beginner but i have no clue about how windows partition the disc on its own and how the partition and backup tools prefer to have the partitions to function properly.
Maybe someone can see a obvious  problem/mistake with my previous setup and care to explain this to me? (love to know the reason to avoid future problems).

ps. I actually did test the trial version of TI2010 (i only own 2009+2011 version) but since my system freeze problem wasnt caused by TI i went with TI2011 so that i can actually request support from Acronis. they refused to do so when i used 2010 (chatted with them). As long as i can take a image and restore i'm happy. i love to use the virtual environment also but i dont dare to mess around to much before a new update comes around.
Truth be told i tested several other tools and non of them were close to being a real alternative to TI so hopefully Acronis will shape up and improve the interface and the bugs people see here.

Cheers

Since the leading System Reserved Partition is no longer there I'd check that the partitions on your SSD are properly aligned for performance. A mis-aligned SSD can lose 50% of its performance if the partitions are not properly aligned.

Seekforever wrote:

Since the leading System Reserved Partition is no longer there I'd check that the partitions on your SSD are properly aligned for performance. A mis-aligned SSD can lose 50% of its performance if the partitions are not properly aligned.

Sorry to bother but can you please elaborate how this can be checked? this is a totally new field for me :)

I thought system partition was mainly for some flags and stuff (after all its 100Meg) but never knew it had such a huge impact. Thanks for the tips!

ps. i have made several more backups and now installed all my usual apps and 2 games (witcher2+wow) and still no crash so i'm getting more sure the cable switch and system partition must have been the root cause (scare to say 100% sure yet ;) )

Reza Ghorbani wrote:

JustPlainFred wrote:

Reza,
Hello... I use Acronis 2010 V-7046 with Windows 7 \ 64 SP-1 ..... 7 \ 32 no updates, and Vista no updates, and 7 \ 64 no updates, And it works in it's basic function Manual Backups \ Full images ... Also T&D. Can't say anything more about other functions ...I'm not "messing" with it by updating to a later version .Regards Fred

So after all of this i tested TI2011 again and so far so good. So far i hadnt had any system freeze but its to early to tell.

Reza,
Hello...I do not think that the "Freeze" problem is related to Acronis... I have been "battling this on both "7" 32 \64. I have minimized the effect to a great extent, by adjusting my Nvidia control panel settings (depends on your VGA card... Mine is ENGT-240) ... setting everything that could to "Maximum Power" This may not apply in your case... Regards Fred

JustPlainFred wrote:

Reza Ghorbani wrote:

JustPlainFred wrote:

Reza,
Hello... I use Acronis 2010 V-7046 with Windows 7 \ 64 SP-1 ..... 7 \ 32 no updates, and Vista no updates, and 7 \ 64 no updates, And it works in it's basic function Manual Backups \ Full images ... Also T&D. Can't say anything more about other functions ...I'm not "messing" with it by updating to a later version .Regards Fred

So after all of this i tested TI2011 again and so far so good. So far i hadnt had any system freeze but its to early to tell.

Reza,
Hello...I do not think that the "Freeze" problem is related to Acronis... I have been "battling this on both "7" 32 \64. I have minimized the effect to a great extent, by adjusting my Nvidia control panel settings (depends on your VGA card... Mine is ENGT-240) ... setting everything that could to "Maximum Power" This may not apply in your case... Regards Fred

Dear Fred,

As i mentioned earlier i too think this problem is not TI. I believe the problem was my system alone. Regarding the graphic card i am using EVGA GeForce GTX580 1536MB (this is a new rig i just bought). i have tested most times without nvidia drivers installed (freeze happens) but i have also tested with the latest nVidia drivers (also freeze happens).

Right now i been using the pc for a whole day playing game, surfing and taking a few backups and no freeze. So i dare to say (90% sure so far since i want to test it more) the problem comes from the SATA and system partition somehow. I know its not very logical but truth is my system is stable so far. Before it froze after 10 minute sometime. Most times when i push the HD's using backup (which is why i first suspected TI).

I really really appreciate your (others people's) advice so please let me know when you manage to find the root cause of your problem too, its good to know what things to avoid.
I will also let you know if the freeze problem comes back, now back to some gaming (Witcher2 rocks hehe).

Cheers.

Reza Ghorbani wrote:

Seekforever wrote:

Since the leading System Reserved Partition is no longer there I'd check that the partitions on your SSD are properly aligned for performance. A mis-aligned SSD can lose 50% of its performance if the partitions are not properly aligned.

Sorry to bother but can you please elaborate how this can be checked? this is a totally new field for me :)

I thought system partition was mainly for some flags and stuff (after all its 100Meg) but never knew it had such a huge impact. Thanks for the tips!

ps. i have made several more backups and now installed all my usual apps and 2 games (witcher2+wow) and still no crash so i'm getting more sure the cable switch and system partition must have been the root cause (scare to say 100% sure yet ;) )

If you have 32 bit Windows 7 look at this link:
http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/checking_ssd_alignment

If not, Google: SD partition alignment or words to that effect and your OS name and you'll likely get lots of info.

Seekforever wrote:

Reza Ghorbani wrote:

Seekforever wrote:

Since the leading System Reserved Partition is no longer there I'd check that the partitions on your SSD are properly aligned for performance. A mis-aligned SSD can lose 50% of its performance if the partitions are not properly aligned.

Sorry to bother but can you please elaborate how this can be checked? this is a totally new field for me :)

I thought system partition was mainly for some flags and stuff (after all its 100Meg) but never knew it had such a huge impact. Thanks for the tips!

ps. i have made several more backups and now installed all my usual apps and 2 games (witcher2+wow) and still no crash so i'm getting more sure the cable switch and system partition must have been the root cause (scare to say 100% sure yet ;) )

If you have 32 bit Windows 7 look at this link:
http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/checking_ssd_alignment

If not, Google: SD partition alignment or words to that effect and your OS name and you'll likely get lots of info.

Thanks for the link. Learned something new :)
Although after allot of thinking (after what you said) i actually again re-installed so that i'm not dependent on my second disc in case it breaks or i want to raid it or whatever later on.
Sadly i hit a wall thanks to AHCI (and its driver) and the buggy windows partitioning shenanigans. Windows simply refused to create the system partition on my first disk (during installation) which is the SSD no mater what i did. The only way it could succeed was if i pulled out the cable to my second disk so it didnt see more then 1 disk. This way i installed windows and then put back my second this and everything went fine.
So far everything seems to work fine and stable so i'm happy. TI2011 actually works quite good (do i dare to say hehe). Its blazing fast to take images frankly (just over 1min or so).

Word of warning! Stay away from Corsair SSD Force Series™ 3, 120GB! finally after one week of headache i find that its been my SSD all along.
Using Intel 510 SSD now and its rock steady :)