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Utter unreliable for backup software. Going to get a refund

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Upgraded from the free Acronis backup that came with an SSD to the full 2021 version.

Can't manage to reliably get it to do a backup with any degree of reliability at all. I have ZERO confindence in anything I try and backup will eventually be able to be recovered.

I have nothing but RED Xs and errors since I bought it two days ago.

Can't even manage to backup a 150GB music folder reliably onto a completely empty 10TB SATA drive. What a joke.

One time the 150GB music did work - it was green... I moved it do another drive while formatting the 10TB to check if that fixed the big archive problem and moved it back again - and now it was corrupt too. Deleted and tried to recreate it - always red then.

I have created and had to delete more backups in last two days than I ever did in my life.

First thing I tried was a 6TB backup which took 20 hours and in the end the validation failed. After that I just tried smaller and smaller folders. Tried reformatting destination with different NTFS block sizes from default 4K up to 64K - made no difference. Tried saving to another existing drive in machine - got more errors.

I would be better off and have more confidence by just using WinRAR to archive my folders onto spare 10TB drives.

A selection of the software's utterly USELESS error messages I have received so far.

THE BACKUP IS CORRUPTED.

ERROR OCCURED WHILE SEARCHING IN THE FILE.

BACKUP VALIDATION FAILED

NO CURRENT PARTITION

The help pages these link to are useless too.

0 Users found this helpful

Dear user, we are sorry to hear about your experience.

The issues, that you have faced, each has a solution. If you let us help you, we could fix them: please submit a support ticket as per https://kb.acronis.com/content/56079.

Thank you

Sorry I haven't time to go messing around trying to explain to some support person about my system and why your software does not work with it. If your software cannot simply copy files from one internal 10TB SATA drive to another on same computer then there is nothing I can do about it.

I have gone back to using a simple and reliable old piece of backup software called Cobian Backup. If software does not work first time or after hours of my time wasting then it is GONE.

Annual subscription cancelled and refund from cleverbridge requested.

I completely understand how you feel, trust me. But I'm here to tell you that Cobian Backup is not much better. Here, see for yourself... I'm doing a fresh install on a new desktop custom PC that I built myself and I don't even have True Image installed on it yet (just a fresh and nice Windows 10 version 20H2 on it).

Error found: 1. Please consult the installation log!

This is not a whole lot more descriptive or helpful than what True Image spits out.

Here is the relevant section from the log:

Starting the Volume Shadow Copy requester
ERR Couldn't start the Volume Shadow Copy requester: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion
    Starting the program as an application...
ERR Errors found: 1. Please consult the installation log!
 

For the record, I was installing it as an application with autostart enabled for current user rather than installing it as a service. All of this is available as options within the installation wizard. It's not the default setting, but why would I not be able to select whichever settings are offered to me? It might work if I leave it on default settings, that I do not know. But this is my experience with it.

It's the first time I hear about this Cobian Backup. Interesting project! Still supported on Windows 10 in fact and it's being reworked from scratch apparently under the name Cobian Reflector. So anyway... my curiosity drove me to download and install it and you can see how good it is.

Have you tried uninstalling the free (rebranded) version of True Image and then doing a clean install of the paid version? That's the first thing I would have done. In fact, I never install and use those versions (WD Edition for example).

Second attempt, installing as a service...

Installing the Volume Shadow Copy requester. Wait...
    The Volume Shadow Copy requester has been successfully installed.
    Starting the Volume Shadow Copy requester
ERR Couldn't start the Volume Shadow Copy requester: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion
    Installing the main service...
    The main service was successfully installed
    Starting the main service...
    The main service has been successfully started
    Starting the user interface...
ERR Errors found: 1. Please consult the installation log!

Now I have some kind of interface at least...

But unfortunately, it fails to make a backup of its own installer () because the installer failed to properly install Volume Shadow Copy requester (even though it said it was installed) so it can't start it now.

ERR 2021-02-17 11:17 Couldn't contact the Volume Shadow Copy requester. Please check that the service is installed and running

Let's see if I can get it to backup without using shadow copy (there is an option in the backup task settings to disable it).

Yup! It works!

But do I have confidence now in this application? I think not.

The thing is, all applications have their own set of problems. Especially on Windows I will add! But it's also the OS where we find the most sophisticated and feature rich applications, and largest number of quality applications. But it's not easy to create and maintain a high quality, large and feature rich application, even when you pay good money for it. I'm not here to tell anyone to use this or that application (use whatever works for you), just be mindful that alternatives can and usually do come with their own set of problems (True Image included). We may not like it, but problems are meant to be dealt with, one way or another. I think it's best if we can solve these problems together. Unfortunately it can require a lot of our time, on both ends (support/company and user/customer).

 

I have no idea what you were trying to backup there with "Installer" but yes the Windows drive is always messier with all the stuff going on with OS on it!

Yes Cobian was stopped by original dev in 2014 and rights sold on apparently. There are newer, but I haven't looked at them. It is nothing fancy - but perfect for data drives I think.

My backups are simply massive data drives (three 10TB each) onto another internal (same motherboard SATA bus) 10TB drive which is hot-swappable in internal drive bay.

I have successfully run Cobian and copied about 6TB onto this backup drive since last day. What I like and prefer about it is it just copies the files straight with original file structure - not dumping thousands of files into one single, possibly flaky, gigantic file, which can fail completely if one part of it fails for any reason - way too much risk of single point of failure. And can't see what's in it either, can't copy the file either (I tried) without corrupting it. Just way too risky. I had no trust in it.

Cobian just copies the entire folder and all files on new drive as is, and then does incremental by adding/deleting files as needed depending on changes.Simple. Cobian actually even mentions not using compression as it adds to risk of loss of data.

I basically like the transparency and robustness. I trust NTFS to look after my files on disc same as the original files - I don't want another abstract, flaky, single massive file with 50,000 separate files in it, which can at any time give me a red X and say, "corrupt, sorry, tuff luck" and refuse to restore ANY of them. At least if they are separate, if one fails because of any filesystem error, then I still get back the other 49,999...

 

    2021-02-16 06:23 ** Backing up the task "EOS1D" **
    2021-02-16 06:23 Counting the files for the task "EOS1D"...
    2021-02-16 06:23 Changing the backup type to full. Reason: task's first backup
    2021-02-16 06:23 Creating the destination directory "X:\EOS1D"
    2021-02-16 06:23 The destination directory "X:\EOS1D"  has been successfully created
    2021-02-16 06:23 Backing up the directory "F:\EOS1D"
    2021-02-16 08:09 Changing the history item to Parked. Reason: first backup
    2021-02-16 08:09 Changing the history item to Parked. Reason: not creating separated backups
    2021-02-16 08:09 Total backup time for "EOS1D": 1 hours, 45 minutes, 12 seconds
    2021-02-16 08:09 ** Backup done for the task "EOS1D". Errors: 0. Processed files: 190679. Backed up files: 190679. Total size: 486.31 GB **

    2021-02-16 14:51 ** Backing up the task "SonyHD" **
    2021-02-16 14:51 Counting the files for the task "SonyHD"...
    2021-02-16 14:51 Changing the backup type to full. Reason: task's first backup
    2021-02-16 14:51 Creating the destination directory "X:\SonyHD"
    2021-02-16 14:51 The destination directory "X:\SonyHD"  has been successfully created
    2021-02-16 14:51 Backing up the directory "F:\SonyHD"
    2021-02-16 15:54 Changing the history item to Parked. Reason: first backup
    2021-02-16 15:54 Changing the history item to Parked. Reason: not creating separated backups
    2021-02-16 15:54 Total backup time for "SonyHD": 1 hours, 3 minutes, 3 seconds
    2021-02-16 15:54 ** Backup done for the task "SonyHD". Errors: 0. Processed files: 17927. Backed up files: 17927. Total size: 694.11 GB **

 

My backups are simply massive data drives (three 10TB each) onto another internal (same motherboard SATA bus) 10TB drive which is hot-swappable in internal drive bay.

What I like and prefer about it is it just copies the files straight with original file structure - not dumping thousands of files into one single, possibly flaky, gigantic file, which can fail completely if one part of it fails for any reason - way too much risk of single point of failure.

Given the above statements then I agree that ATI is not the correct application that you should be using.  In reality, you could achieve the same end results by using the integrated Robocopy tool in Windows 10 if you don't mind just creating a batch file with the appropriate commands.  Otherwise, using a file / folder synchronisation tool would also work just fine!

I use the free SyncFolders tool to do similar mirror backups of my VMware virtual machines where ATI simply wasn't appropriate to use and all the original folder structures etc are maintained on the backup drive.

Yes, I think this True Image might be just better suited for whole disc block for block imaging or something like that... to just create a copy of an entire file structure onto another disc even Windows Explorer will do the job! The only extra thing a backup software does is the incremental type updates after the initial full copy by keeping track of file changes in some way.

I downloaded that SyncFolders tool - have no use for it right now but could be useful in the future. Cheers.