MY FIRST IMPRESSION WITH ACRONIS 12
Acronis 11.7 was quite fast and quite stable but for the adventures I had with NVMe support that works but gives the impression it does not... so I wanted to get an impression from v12.
Well I was able to download it and even do some tests and here is what i found:
The GUI is unclear and not very user friendly. I had problems fiding an using features and it gave me the feeling I don't know or see what is going on.
I assume this GUI was never tested on "real people" and I also assume that whoever designed it had no practical experience doing some real work with Acronis. He did every possible mistake starting with bad choices of colors, deciding how to go ahead from one screen to the next, leaving only 30% of the screen to the current action while the rest of the screen was disabled and unclear, multiple and ambiguous menus, no intuitive flow of action, many unpredictable "jumps", much info hiddes or not obviously accessible, etc...
I do not think something was "broken" in Acronis 11 GUI - so if it ain't broken don't fix it!
I really liked the 11 GUI... and also the GUI of 2016 was really nice, friendly and usable.
In my oppinion, an experienced Acronis user will hate the new GUI and a new client will never go past it.
Also if the support will be lacking, as it the case of late, bad things are going on.
I hope somebody will read the sales numbers in the near future and see the reasons behind them.
I hope it will not be too late.
Regards,
Marcel
Please see my comments here: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/124426#comment-384606
Hi Vasily,
I read your comments and I still will hold to my oppinion that the GUI is awfull.
Acronis efforts to optimize/minimize/improve development are not really connected to the GUI topic.
You will get the real feedback from 1) Sales of v12 and 2) Customers comments and complaints in forums.
Best regards,
Marcel
I forgot to mention that before releasing v12 it could have been better to deal with NVME support in v11.7 and make sure the drivers are identical in all existing Acronis products.
Regards
Marcel
Absolutely it's awful. No logic to it in many places and oh so fragile. I maintain that given Acronis' dismal track record for fixing bugs in a reasonable amount of time, the first time Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, or Apple changes their code and it breaks v12 Acronis is out of business because it could take them a year to fix it.
I also reverted to 11.7 after upgrading to Acronis 12. Once I had 11.7 running again I really appreciated just how good 11.7 is. The console is very clear, all the features are easy to find through simple exploration, and the help files are quite good.
The 11.7 console makes it easy to find important information that is often buried or wedged into small columns in Acronis 12. It's a simple, classic layout. I can see the full listing of backup plans and add any column data I wish. Checking vaults, alerts, or log is simply a matter of a single click. The menu is simple yet complete and right-click will display all the applicable options.
I agree with the other commentators who take a dim view of browser interfaces. APC's Powerchute was a mess for years, and in fact Powerchute now uses a dedicated console for all the core monitoring features. The Powerchute browser console is only used for configuration and individual UPS settings. There is no danger that a glitchy browser will make the UPS status inaccessible. In Adaptec's case, it literally took years for the MaxView browser console to become usuable, let alone match the functionality of the previous dedicated console. The current readme features a long list of bugs and workarounds for different browsers.
I strongly urge Acronis to give Backup 12 a dedicated, cleanly laid out console based on the 11.7 design. The customer base of Acronis True Image may appreciate experimentation and change with every release (I didn't, which is why I switched to Acronis Backup), but users of enterprise software need reliability, consistency, and a cautious attitude towards changes that aren't clear improvements to functionality.
I agree with the disappointed comments. Upgrading to Backup 12 from Acronis Backup 11.7 was a nightmare.
The console does't show a lot of options and informations available in 11.7
There is no way to know what kind of backup (complete, differential, incremental) is running in case of presonalized pianifications
There is no way to launch manually a specific type of backup (complete, differential, incremental) in case of presonalized pianifications. This was really helpful in case of failed backup
There is no way to explore le list of backup files on storage to identify complete, differential, incremental ones.
Restore procedure is unclear.
I found in log file that the backup routine consolidated older backups even if I told not to do so in the backup job configuration.
The web GUI is unclear and poor of informations.
The look and feel is modern but the price to pay to have it is to have much less informations. Those informations that are still available have been moved and are arranged in an unclear mode.
I think it's a GUI for those people who think "few buttons, few options, I don't understand what's going on but I hope everything is all right. Cross fingers"
I agree with the above, plus I used to be able to attatch a drive to my machine and image just that drive for backing up or cloning purposes, now it is very difficult if at all posible, plus no more creating images with the bootable media, only restore is available, not good
I have to chime in on this as well. Acronis v11.7 is superior to v12. I could live with the clunky GUI if only the program did what I wanted it to do.
It is very simple Acronis, I want a full back every Friday night, an incremental on Saturday and Sunday, and hourly backups starting at 9:00 am until 6:00pm Monday through Friday. Version 11.7 performed this for me without fail. However, and as I am typing this email at 11:35 am (CDT), a FULL backup is running and defeating my hourly incremental strategy. Who knows where I would be if I had a sysytem failure! In addition, yesterday (Wednesday), Acronis, on it's own decided to run yet another FULL backup at 3:04 pm and then run incrementals thereafter from 2:04 until 6:34 pm, for a total of 48 incremental backups which is totally defeating my backup strategy!
Like someone mentioned above, I have disabled the consolidation when backups are to be deleted, however, it continues to consolidate which ties up the processes I am depending upon.
Come on Acronis, guys like us have made representations to the powers above us that we have the bases covered, however, I am doubting that Acronis is on the same team, especially with v12. This isn't funny for those of us whose jobs and reputations are on the line everyday. God help us if one of use encounter a disaster and we cannot restore critical information based on our good word to our superiors. Please fix this horrible version FAST!!!
I am finished.
Okay, it is almost 5:00 pm (CDT) and I have not ONE incremental backup today (see attached file). Instead I have all these .TMP files being created that I hav eno idea what they are. And by the way, I could have used my 3:00 incremental because someone had overwritten a file and I was unable to restore ANYTHING because Acronis is doing "something" and defeating my backup strategy. Enough, I am contacting my software vendor and looking for another solution. THis is intolerable.
Sincerely your....A Frustrated IT Person
Wish I had read these comments before upgrading! As many of the comments state above the interface is totally unintuitive and klunky. After 6 days I have more errors and warnings than backups, only 3 succeeded. With too many errors, horrible interface and as per Monte's comments above (attached to drive) I will be downgrading to 11.7 today.
Hi,
i abolutely agree with all complaints above.
Creating backups has grown to be a difficult task, recovering them even more, what exactly was the intention of doing this?
There was a wonderfull feature in the old versions; recovering exchange mailbox items to a .PST file, why was that removed?
Right now i feel like looking for a different backup solution, backing up my stuff but not being able to recover it seems to be a senseless software.
What a shame for Acronis! Yet i was a very big fan of vmProtect9!
kind regards,
Chris