True Image Home 2011 Task Management

I've been using Acronis for years, and I'm shocked by what it's done to task management. Apparently, everyone else is too!!

An upgrade today addressed some of the issues with the "backup list" including sorting and filtering, but it's still cumbersome, if not impossible, to manage a few tasks in the muck of backups listed. Up to 2010, there was a separate list for scheduled and unscheduled tasks. Now, it's all mashed together. It's not a matter of asking for a "new" feature, it's a matter of re-engaging a quiet, yet important interface component. It boggles the mind that this "improved" interface now makes it so difficult to manage a handful of tasks.

This is very disappointing. I love Acronis products, but this really feels like a "lite" version or some kind of downgrade.

SEPARATE OUT THE TASKS!!! PLEASE!!!!

Dimitrios Fliakos wrote:

I've been using Acronis for years, and I'm shocked by what it's done to task management. Apparently, everyone else is too!!

An upgrade today addressed some of the issues with the "backup list" including sorting and filtering, but it's still cumbersome, if not impossible, to manage a few tasks in the muck of backups listed. Up to 2010, there was a separate list for scheduled and unscheduled tasks. Now, it's all mashed together. It's not a matter of asking for a "new" feature, it's a matter of re-engaging a quiet, yet important interface component. It boggles the mind that this "improved" interface now makes it so difficult to manage a handful of tasks.

This is very disappointing. I love Acronis products, but this really feels like a "lite" version or some kind of downgrade.

SEPARATE OUT THE TASKS!!! PLEASE!!!!

I totally agree. I am an Acronis User since 2007 and I bought every version, I recommenced to many people and companies BUT I do not know if I will carry on with the new version if the task manager is not BACK.

I hope the marketing people will be award and take it consideration for the users needs.
Acronis PLEASE ACT !!!

When creating a "target", versions prior to 2011 allowed you to directly modify the target folder entry (i.e. c:\documents\my backups\weekly is a text string that can be modified under backup options). It seems like 2011 is strictly "point and shoot" in this regard. If you make a mistake in identifying the target (or mess up the date/time variables, or your own personal naming convention), you have to "point and shoot" (at an incredibly large destination hotspot) all over again. Seems like you can no longer tweak backup targets through a simple text edit, but rather have to go through the process from scratch, hoping you don't make ANOTHER mistake. Really cumbersome for those that actually know how to use a keyboard and a file tree listing. Picture of offensive interface is attached.

Oh yeah, that "target" thing! TI2011 has made some pretty entertaining automatic choices with regard to the target file name. In build 6574 it selected ")"

(An interesting choice, I must say. If I had to choose one character for a file name, I would have gone for "§"... I think ;-)

LOL!! Yes, that happened to me as well. I though maybe I typed in a "(" by accident. Other problems include the fact that variables will be appended to your target file name, rather than inserted at the cursor point. And then, when you go to name your backup task (especially when 2011 gives it some wild name like you pointed out in your screen capture), it literally struggles to get the characters in place, as if it is validating something somewhere the hard way. The letters eventually come up, sputtering into the name you typed in. Can't get clone to work right, even though that sounded like an exciting option. Also, I find that it's easier and safer to create a backup job completely from scratch rather than from an existing backup. Otherwise, I get weird results.

The backup list is better, but I really miss the scheduled and unscheduled tabs, and the alphabetical sorting of jobs under those categories.

This is all very distressing and disappointing, because I can't tell you how many times Acronis has saved me and other people that I've referred out. It covered everything from drive failures to project file blowouts. Witnessing a whole scale revamp with obvious bugs and problems (after such an incredible track record), is a very scary thing. I really hope I make it through this beta test of a version without a failure. It's like an old friend died.

While I agree that the interface for managing tasks was better in previous versions, I'm having lots of issue with the backup to DVD. I cannot get incremental backups to work with DVD as each iteration builds a full backup. I can't get a straight answer from Acronis support, whether this is even currently supported. I tried the chat support and the guy went from telling me that it should work to telling me that it was never supported. Worked fine with 2009.

Maybe it's some set up bit that I'm missing in the configuration. I don't find this version's configuration to be very intuitive...

double post

Duane,

Could you post a screen shot of how you've got your task9s) set up?

Is TIH imaging correctly to disk?

What build of TI 2011 are you using?

Does it make any difference between DVD +/- of RW?

Thanks for the reply Colin.

BTW, I'm using Windows XP Pro with the latest service packs if that makes a difference.

>Could you post a screen shot of how you've got your task9s) set up?
I removed my incremental tasks since the chat guy told me that they aren't supported.
I created the tasks to backup incrementally to my second hard drive. This seems to work. Then I periodically do a full backup on that drive.

But to create the incremental backup, I chose "File Backup", selected the files and set the target as the DVD. Since upgrading to the latest build, 6597, it looks like it sets the type to Custom/Full and won't let me change it. With the initial build that I received, it would default to Full but then I could change it. BTW I prefer the old UI that let me choose the type without modifying the exising default. Anyway, I've attached a word doc with a screen shot. Don't know how to put a screen shot here.

>Is TIH imaging correctly to disk?
I think it's ok when I use the hard drive as a target. It seems that I can read these files in file manager though which is sort of odd.

>What build of TI 2011 are you using?
6597

>Does it make any difference between DVD +/- of RW?
I've tried +R and RW. Not -R. But these are the DVDs that I was using with 2009 with no issues.

So are you telling me that TI 2011 is supposed to be able to do incremental backups to DVD? Even to
multiple DVDs? I'm very surprised at the different responses from your support group.

Thanks for any assistance.

I didn't realise you were making files and folders backups, I'll have to do some experimenting when I get home.

One thing to bear in mind is that recovering from an archive that is more than 3 DVD's in size will give you wrist ache from the amount of swapping that is required.

I just installed TI2011, wish I'd have read this thread.
I cannot figure out the interface, it makes NO sense.
I have repeatedly told it to NOT display backups, actually VHDs they reappear when I reopen it.
It won't let me change the destination, actually I can't select destination.
And just opening it consumes HUGE amounts of CPU nothing else running, not clicking on anything nothing.

OH and it trashes the installation of SQL Server tools, MSVCR71.dll not found ???
Why did they do this.
I verified this by acident, I had to recover to a 2009 image, then reinstall 2011 and it's broke again.

Sorry guys, I'm returning to 2009 and asking for a refund !!!

>I didn't realise you were making files and folders backups, I'll have to do some experimenting when I get home.
You mean as opposed to disk/partition? I thought that I mentioned that. Sorry.

>One thing to bear in mind is that recovering from an archive that is more than 3 DVD's in size will give you wrist ache from the amount >of swapping that is required.

I keep one for my email and online banking and I do a weekly incremental backup. I would fill a DVD every couple of months so I'd start a new one. I have a couple of multidisk incrementals that I use for my docs and for my son's docs. I wish that it wouldn't prompt so often to replace disks either. Acronis should try to make that less painful. The thing is, I want to backup files every week but I will only restore them in case of a problem. I don't want to have to do regular full backups to DVD. It's slow and time consuming.

Backing up to the hard drive is not the best idea, even with a separate drive. Drives fail. As it is, I've been forced to do my weekly incrementals on a separate drive and then I have to back up that drive to DVD as a full backup. So now it takes me 8 DVDs each time I backup the drive. But I change docs or music rarely so the incremental is small.

Anyway, I was more or less happy with 2009. I have had some issues with it not being able to lock the DVD, mostly if I start the backup when windows is accessing the disk. I thought that this would be fixed in the new version.

Thanks for investigating.

Duane,

Unfortunately I can't test the DVD aspect as both of my drives have decided to die together in sympathy I suppose.

Looking at the latest user guide I can see no reason why 2011:6597 cannot do what you want. So long as you haven't chosen to store the images as Acronis Zip files which do not support multi volume archives.

After I have purchased some new DVD drives, I'll be able to run some tests.

>Looking at the latest user guide I can see no reason why 2011:6597 cannot do what you want. So long as you haven't chosen to >store the images as Acronis Zip files which do not support multi volume archives.

I have no idea yet how to choose to store the images as zip files. The ones created on disks look like exact copies which I can view in windows file manager. I was sort of surprised that there is no compact/enrcypt.

At any rate, you can see from the screen shot that now I cannot even select other than the full backup.

Hi,

in 2010 version (with Plus pack) I had a task for "application's parameters" only

(wich was in error almost every time because of Firefox still opened, so its status is "the last backup has failed")

- I translate from my French True Image -

I just updated to 2011 today (build 6597)

I found back all the defined tasks but I just can't do anything with this particular job (application parameters backup )

• There's no "modify backup parameter" on its right click menu.
• Also where's the hell is now this kind of task ?? Where can I redefine a new one? Looks like it disapear from the software isn't it ?

Hope the cpu eating will be better with this release.

Thank you

zdit and now this morning the service is running with an error (destination full, wich is absolutly unbelievable) most of all no indication of wich task we are talking about! and the Acronis console is not loading any more !!!

What the H is this ?!

Duane,
Open TrueImage and look at Tools & Utiities for converting to zip files.

For information about posting a screen shot, click on my signature index below and look for items 8-B & 8-C inside the index.

TrueImage will not allow allow an incremental backup to the optical drive. I have tried as you did and 2011 will only allow full disk backups to be stored on the DVD/CD.

If you want to store the backup on an external drive, you can create a full with subsequent incrementals on any interal or external disk drive.

Or, you can create your backups on a hard drive using the "archhive splittiing" option which will resut in normal backups in DVD size chunks. These chuncks could then be copied to DVD's. However, should you want to restore any of the backups on the DVD's, you would have to copy the DVD back into a single folder on a hard driver before they could be restored. This would be an alternative to your inability to create directly top DVD.

Eric,
Version 2011 has dropped some of the least used features of prior versions.

2011 is completely different than past versions. The link below may be helpful. It tells you how to use some of the 2011 features.

Acronis TrueImage Home 2011
Check out the "How to's"
http://kb.acronis.com/content/13414#

Hi GroverH

"Eric,
Version 2011 has dropped some of the least used features of prior versions."

hmm.. for the same price Acronis decided to cut off some of th emost needed features!

this morning nothing is working any more. No loading od the manager (launched 7 times, see 7 process but no application running!)

Tells destination is full..not believable and I don't know wich task its talking about!

>TrueImage will not allow allow an incremental backup to the optical drive. I have tried as you did and 2011 will only allow full disk >backups to be stored on the DVD/CD.

This is a problem for me. I've been using Acronis for years. Before Acronis, I had two applications. One to create disk images and one to do my weekly backup. The reason that I bought Acronis was that it could do both. I see no value at all to do a file backup to the same drive that the files are on. In order for this to work for me, I then have to copy the incremental backups to DVD. This is a big minus for this upgrade. If I would have known that you were removing this feature, I would not have purchased the upgrade.
On top of that, the UI is mostly incomprehensible to me as opposed to the older version. And I'm a software developer that has some experience with creating user interfaces.

There are several other bugs with this software.
-Renaming backup sets crashes the application.
-When doing a full backup to DVD, if you set it to not prompt for the first media, when it gets to the second DVD it doesn't try to format it and errors out with a disk full error.
-When doing a default full disk backup or file backup with default compression, the result is basically a file copy. You can open the backup folder from windows file manager and read the files. To backup 28Gb of data on a drive took me 8 DVDs.
-The compression level is now under the Performance Tab (??) and changing it no longer estimates the number of DVDs required.

This version has pretty much dropped most of the functionality that I needed and changed the UI into something that is tedious and buggy. Perhaps it's now intended for a different user. I will be uninstall it and revert to the older version until I can find another application.

I have filed two separate tickets online regarding this issue and have not received one response. I talked to the support guy via chat and he couldn't help me. He did reply to me later by email telling me that it should work and asking me to make sure I didn't have disk defragging automatically happening at the same time. This was #00975387.

The first real answers that I have received from Acronis have been here. As a result, my 30 day free support is probably gone
and the product is probably now out of warranty.
Is it possible to get a refund? If so, how?

>If you want to store the backup on an external drive, you can create a full with subsequent incrementals on any interal or external >disk drive.

I'm not sure what you mean by this? But I've tried to create incremental backups on a USB drive and they failed as well as on DVD.

Thanks for your assistance. It was good to finally get a straight answer. You should inform your support people of this issue as they have no clue.

Eric,

In version 2011, the log file can be accessed via the help section in upper right screen when TI is open. Look at some of the most recent logs.

This 2011 is not stable and crash every day. It does not do anymore what it is sold for.

I want to reverse to 2010 version I've been using for a year in the same environement with no issue and ask for refunds (TI + PP)

Would you look at this junk?!

More sloppiness from Acronis TI2011 build 6574. Using a resolution of 1280 x 800 on a 15.4" notebook screen. For every problem resolved, other are introduced.

TI still does its job excellently. It's like having a great running car that looks like shit and in order to roll down the window you have to press seven buttons.

(deleted double entry)

Just as a follow up, I've received a refund for this upgrade and switched to a different application. The only thing that I think is more ridiculous than removing the incremental backup to DVD without telling me is that it took so long to get any of the support people to figure out that was the case. I spent hours trying different suggestions and wasting time and DVDs.

The support situation was a prime reason for me to find another product rather than just revert to the older version. I'm still getting these stupid form like emails telling me that they understand my frustration and are here to help me solve the problem ... This is after they've already set me up with a refund.

Later.

I'd started this thread, and didn't know that it would grow so big (which is good).

I'm using TI 2011 for some time now, and I must admit that apart from the Task Manager it works flawlessly for me. This was with my old PC, same with my new PC with Windows 7 64 bit, whether I backup to the external hard drive or DVD. Unlike the previous versions that were giving me so many errors that I finally gave up on Acronis, this version doesn't give me any troubles, whether I backup or restore. And I'm addicted to backups, so I backup a lot!

To kill the Task Manager and replace it with "editable" backups was a very bad idea, hopefully this will be corrected soon. But other than that I love this TI release, it does a great job for me, it works much better for me than any other backup program I used in the past.

Also, TI 2011 has some tools like Boot Manager that were very helpful to me.

At least this is my personal experience.

I, also, have to express my disappointment that the task manager has gone away. I hope Acronis brings it back! The new method is much, much more cumbersome.

Furthermore, let me describe another annoyance (and the "solution", which might help out some other poor soul). I was running TrueImage V11 before upgrading to TI-2011 (build 6597 with Plus Pack) and had a scheduled incremental backup task with the old version. As an upgrade, I expected TI-2011 to understand and upgrade the previous task list; my naive and foolish hope! There seems to be no way to make TI-2011 show me the old task, even when I "browse for backup" in the main window and find one of the files in the sequence. No "schedule" is shown and the "operations" link does not seem to know that there was a scheduled task. However, the incremental backup task did keep running every week. I did not want it running anymore because it was a straight incremental backup and I wanted TI-2011's new version-chaining behavior with full backups after every 4th incremental. Since TI-2011 did not display the old task schedule, I had no way to delete it. (I did successfully set up a new backup with the version chaining feature but this created two backups running periodically.) In the end, I had to go into the guts of the file-system, find that there were 3 files (though only 2 backups were scheduled) of the form "xxx...xxx.tib.tis" in the "Scripts" folder, determined that the odd man out with an older date seemed to be an xml file containing the file-name of the old backup sequence, and deleted it. I am hopeful that without the script file, TI-2011 will stop creating more of the old incremental backups.

The final annoyance with the new backup task scheduler (though I can live with it) is that there seems to be no way to set up a backup to run every two weeks on a Sunday like Version 11 did. Now, I can create a weekly backup on Sundays, or a backup on the 2nd Sunday of every month, or a backup on particular days of the month (1st, 15th). However, once a week is more often than I like; once a month too seldom and I don't keep my computer on 24/7. It was much easier to remember to leave the home computer turned on every Saturday night and let backups happen every other Sunday morning while I was asleep. Oh well, I suppose it is too much to hope for Acronis to put back some of the features that I thought were working just fine, before.

(running Windows XP SP3 in Classic Mode, with full updates and hating the slow speed of the AERO styling)

(deleted)

TI User,
You can have your backups every other Sunday or every two weeks but it is done by using your Windows Scheduler to schedule the running of a TrueImage Home Shortcut. It is easy and quick to do. This link (post #13) shows you how.

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/16086#comment-49269
---------------------------------------------------

TI User,

You can also schedule using the Acronis scheduler, it's just not quite as intuitive as it used to be.

Select MONTHLY schedule and then select EVERY Second or Third Sunday or create two schedules one for first of and one for last of.

Under the "List of Known Issues" you will notice that there is no mention of the horrible Backup List in the Release Notes for the latest build 6696.

Nearly two years ago (correction:) five months ago Anton, our Forum Moderator, said this:

"Our Development team is aware of this inconvenience and are currently working to fix the situation. Most likely this will be resolved in a future update of the program, although it is not possible at the moment to commit on a time frame, I am terribly sorry for that."

Try "least likely" or "most unlikely" since it is not even mentioned as a known issue.

Could you at least let us know when TI2012 needs beta testers, so that we can get this resolved before Acronis releases another new improved headache?

Two years ago, TI2010 would have been the current version.

I suppose it depends on how 'issue' is defined. As the GUI doesn't actually stop the product working, perhaps just makes it less intuitive then it comes under the heading of 'annoyance', where as the product refusing to image to a NAS or similar would be an 'issue'.

I would think at most during the lifetime of 2011 all you will see is minor cosmetic changes to 2011.

Oops - sorry, you're right, Colin B. I took the "Joined" date instead of the post's date of Thu, 2010-09-02 10:13, which makes it only 5 months ago.

Silly of me, really, but it just goes to show how this frustrating interface leads to frustrated customers.

I disagree, however, that the Backup List is just an "annoyance". If the user interface in a word processing program has a menu structure which is cumbersome and confusing or has menu entries that do not behave as "expected", then you have an issue even though you can still type in text and save a document.

>I disagree, however, that the Backup List is just an "annoyance". If the user interface in a word processing program has a menu >structure which is cumbersome and confusing or has menu entries that do not behave as "expected", then you have an issue even >though you can still type in text and save a document.

The UI is more than just an annoyance. In my experience, in addition to being unintuitive, it caused me to waste a bunch of time and several dvds to find that the product in fact no longer supports incremental backup to DVD. Add to that the fact that any the Acronis support people didn't seem to initially know this either and asked me to try again several times before someone here finally told me that it was no longer supported, and you have a fairly frustrating experience.

So, after several years as an Acronis customer, I returned this version and switched products. I have to say that if it wasn't for the outsourced support guys giving me the runaround with their canned responses to questions, I may have just reverted to the previous version and waited for a fix. I don't blame them but Acronis seems to have taken their customers way too much for granted. Probably explains why there have so much competition these days.

Duane,
??What did you switch to?? Are you happy with it??

Sorry but I won't post that here on Acronis's forum.

Then how are we going to know?

Perhaps a little competition will move Acronis to reverse these bad "improvements"...

Warmly, Al Stearns
Pisgah Forest, NC
USA

I agree. I will not buy another version of True Image from Acronis until they fix the task management and the entire GUI. It's that simple.

This forum is run by Acronis. I don't think it's the place for discussing their competition. Sorry.

If you're not happy with the product, let Acronis know. If you want to test drive alternatives, google for Backup Software comparisons. You'll find links like http://www.backup-software-reviews.com/ or http://data-backup-software-review.toptenreviews.com/ Read the revues. Find the ones that do what you want and try them out.

That's an unexpected view considering your said you left Acronis for another product. Nevertheless, I disagree. I think this forum is the ideal place to let prospective customers as well as Acronis know that I think TI2011 has serious issues. Besides, I didn't discuss the competition.

@Marc,

I would guess that Duane was replying to post #87 rather than your one.

Fair enough. But I posted my complaints here, including Acronis's response. I posted my decision to change vendors. If Acronis wants to monitor these forums they can possibly get some useful feedback. But I think that they've changed their target customers. I wish you luck getting your issues resolved.

At any rate, I see no point on posting the name of the product that I'm now using. I wouldn't have posted at all except that bit about the UI problems being insignificant really annoyed me. That sort of response sums up the attitude that I got from these guys.

Thanks Colin but I was replying to post #85. The user that asked me which product I switched to. This forum makes it hard to follow threads.

For those of you who would like to explore alternatives to TI2011 and, in the event the user interface and task management aren't greatly improved, to future TI releases (and possibly to Acronis altogether), check out the posting of Jesse Wheeler et al. who were not so timid in suggesting alternatives.

Much to my astonishment, the development team contacted me to discuss the issues with the TI 2011 GUI! They are working on TI 2012 (no beta release dates were available) and via conference call we discussed at great length today and some detail the inadequacies of the user interface. It was nice (and, quite honestly, kind of surprising) to learn that they actually went through the forums to gather information for improving the product!

They were very patient and understanding - even though I unintentionally (and uncharacteristically) tended to be long-winded in answering their questions and went off on some tangents (an easy thing to do when since there were so many design elements to complain about). They seemed to be aware of the interface issues - and now that I know they will be making interface changes I am actually looking forward to TI 2012! I hope none of us will be disappointed with what they come up with!

I have never been contacted directly by a software manufacture before regarding improving their products, so I feel this effort by the devs should be not only recognized, but praised!

Thanks for letting us know you are listening, Devs!

Yes, they do this. They contacted me as well via private messaging regarding the user interface awhile ago. This definitely should be praised.

If anyone else feels like encouraging the devs through a little praising and recognition, then feel free to do it more directly on the feedback here as well!

Alfred E. N. wrote:

Thanks for that BP!
I've been screwing around with the idiosyncrasies of 2011 for so long I had completely forgotten how the 2010 Task Management worked. (BTW: In Germany "intuitive user interface" is a feature appearing on the TI2011 front web page.)

I have been informed that another build of 2011 will be coming out in about two weeks. Depending on the results, I may go back to 2010 as well, but I remember not being so happy with the recovery listing there either. I remember many inconsistencies in the list. Still, it was easier to deal with these in 2009/2010. In the end I may go back to Version 7 or 8.

@ GroverH
No, we've got the same version Grovers - although all it takes is a single click on the task name to get that slick-looking, sliding multipanel Time Viewer. I haven't spent much time with the Time Viewer level of the Acronis True Image 2011 game, so I don't see where it mentions the actual name of the file it is accessing in a particular panel. Not that I would care about that at this point. I have very mixed feelings about the Time Viewer, but I personally would still prefer a simple familiar directory-tree-like style to manage backups and recoveries.

Interestingly enough, when I clicked on Volume-Backup XPG(1) in my Backup List, I got a message saying the backup doesn't exist. Clicking on "ignore this backup" removed the invalid entry from the list. Apparently, TI2011 isn't smart enough to do that on it's own.

Reply

It is a bad day when Acronis users have to consider and do go back to previous builds
. Lets hope the the new build might be the nswer to al lour prayers !! Let us be thankful for small mercies
BWEP

@Acronis Dev Team: As a long time user of ATI on 2 machines, I was happily using ATI Home 11 when I was offered an upgrade to v.2011. I went ahead with the upgrade on my HP Pavilion dv6t-3100 CTO notebook running Win 7. I still used v.11 on my Dell Vostro 420 desktop PC.

I will not go into a detailed list of issues for two reasons: 1) they have already been effectively articulated in this post string. 2) I have learned through experience that a simple backup scheme that is straightforward and manageable is best for me with ATI. I really try to keep things as simple and as straightforward as possible.

In v.11, the ability to create, schedule and manage Tasks made this fairly easy and manageable as I mentioned in 2) above. Now this functionality is gone in v.2011! Because of this, I have not "upgraded" my desktop PC on which I still run v.11. I feel the loss of the direct and intuitive ability to create, schedule and manage Tasks is a significant step backwards. I feel that I've lost a lot of control over the software.

This loss of functionality was an extreme shock to me as a user and long time Acronis customer. I could go into "what were you thinking?" but that would not be constructive. Instead, I want one of two things to happen. Either restore the direct ability to intuitively manage tasks as this was done in ATI Home 11 or provide me with a path to restore ATI Home 11 on my HP notebook. In either case, I expect a timeframe to be provided to me. Since this situation has already gone on for some months, I would appreciate a resolution in a timely manner.