Update 1 - continuing problems with backup scheduling and sleep
From what I see from the release notes and from a brief test Acronis 2011 still does not disable sleep whilst a backup is running. Can someone confirm?
This is a clear regression from 2010, has been raised here and in a support ticket, yet it is not even mentioned in the known issues, let alone fixed.
It is mightily inconvenient, to say the least, that my PC will sleep in the middle of a backup. Backups are scheduled to run overnight precisely to avoid conflicting with regular usage. Do I really have to abandon the Acronis UI and schedule all my backups using Windows Task Scheduler, just to get sleep behaviour right? Even uisng Task Scheduler does not fix the issue that a manually started backup may be paused by a PC entering sleep. This should not happen and did not (eventually after an update) with 2010.
At the moment I am trying to use Pre and Post commands to change from my normal "Balanced" Porer Management state to/from a "Stay Awake" state that not only disables regular sleep but also extends the "return to sleep on automated wake" option to 4 hours. I'll see how/if it works. Not sure if this is better or worse than setting all the backups using Windows Scheduler.
Windows Task Scheduler should avoid all the messing with Power Management settings, but then it is a mess to have to administer backups in two places, with a process that involves copying and pasting Acronis GUIDs!!
And I'm not 100% sure that the backup plan options are respected when run this way. Does anyone know for sure? I have read that manual running of the backup always produces a full backup, regardless of plan settings. And how would you run validation this way? I'm not sure it is possible.