Acronis True Image Home (Wish list)

Hello all,

I've changed this thread to Sticky, feel free to use it for posing your suggestions and ideas.

Thanks,

A much needed feature in the TI Rescue program is the ability to view and compare the archive to the hard drive, file by file. I had a Win XP problem that I was quite certain was due to the corruption of just 1 or 2 files, but not sure which ones. But I was unable to login to Windows to figure out what the problem was. It would have been great to be able to do some sleuthing via the Rescue program, comparing \Windows\ directory to my backup. If I could have found and fixed the corrupted files, it would have saved a lot of time. Instead, I had to do a full restore, which took 24 hours.

I'd like to be able to update the "details" section or field after I've made an image.  What I want is to be able to edit the .tib file (I guess) and edit the details to describe, for instance, what SATA controller was in the machine when a specific image was made, or maybe update a list of installed apps for a certain image.  Right now, I have a simple .TXT file with the same name as the image, and that .TXT file has all the details about that image that I didn't include when I made the image (such as:  "Highpoint 3510 controller, Win XP-SP3, no AV installed",   or   "Promise FastTrak 4510 controller, CentOS 5.2, configured for dual-head video")

Is there a better way?

I would like the cloning utility to actually create an EXACT duplicate drive, to include exact location of ALL files.  Presently and heretofore, it crams everything together including the metadata files and MFT zone.  That is not where they belong.  In order to get the drive 100%  equal to the other, it is necessary to do a boot time/off line defrag with another product.  This is especially the case when the two drives are identical in size.  The cloned drive should ideally be an exact replica to include exact placement of all files.   

Just one more thought . . . the last version that would run my Wacom USB mouse and digitizing pad was Ver. 9.  From 10 on, the Graphire mouse does not work once TI loads, and I have to plug in a temporary USB mouse.  Can we go back and use the mouse drivers that were in versions 6, 7, 8, and 9?

steve powell wrote:

Right now, I have a simple .TXT file with the same name as the image, and that .TXT file has all the details about that image that I didn't include when I made the image (such as:  "Highpoint 3510 controller, Win XP-SP3, no AV installed",   or   "Promise FastTrak 4510 controller, CentOS 5.2, configured for dual-head video")

LOL thats what I've been doing for the past few months! xD

+1 from me for that idea!

#2: Just bought ATI2009 in last few weeks....so I would definitely like an updated version of ATI2009 that works with windows 7 32 & 64-bit

in true image home 2009 I get a red dot in the calender for a backup job, the corresponding text, however, says that the job was successful! Same is true for validation. What is wrong? How do I know whether the data are saved correctly?

Thanks

Reto

 Why oh why does the Operation progress window not include the name of the process that is running? There should be a simple way of knowing which process is running when you click on status from the Acronis True Image Home 2009 task bar icon in Windows 7.

Here are my New Feature Suggestions for the next version of True Image Home.

My environment.
a.  Desktop PC has smallish C: drive (for OP system & installed applications) and a large D: drive for all of my data (images, videos, databases, files, etc.)
b.  I also have one or more USB hard drives for external storage and a couple of network storage (NAS) units as well.
c.  Laptop PC is on wireless network.
d.  I use True Image Home to make full backup images of my C: drive.  On occasion, I've backed up the data on the D: drive with TI.

My NFS/Wish List:
1.  I would like to declare directories/files on my D: drive that would be backed up (copied) to a network storage drive and/or USB external storage and AutoMagically kept synchronized.  I don't want the data to be kept in .tib files because I would like to use the Laptop to directly view images from the Network storage drive even while the desktop is powered off.  The data on the Desktop might be declared as the Master.  The copies kept on the NAS might be declared as Archive1.  Copies on USB drives might be Archive2, etc.  The data on the Laptop might be declared as a Secondary Master.  The idea would be to keep all of the Archives synchronized with all of the Masters.

2.  It would be nice to right-click and be able to view/reclaim previous versions of the same file.  Don't forget that both the Desktop & Laptop get involved.  The version on the archival NAS would need to record the source PC that the copy came from (Desktop or Laptop).  The latest version, from any Master, would be the visible copy on the Archive, which might be from the Laptop.  But, the ability to view multiple versions and their source might show a previous version from a few minutes earlier came from the Desktop.

3.  The benefit of multiple Archive copies is that I could carry one of the USB drives on vacation with the Laptop, then re-synch the files when I attach it back into my main network.  Also, I could use USB drives to rotate offsite storage. 

4.  With your newer versions of TI, the same thing could be accomplished from a single, large C: drive.  One would just exclude data directories from the TI full backup image.  Restoring the hard drive would restore system and applications, but not data.  Once the system and application files were restored, then the data directories would be recovered from the archive on the NAS.

5.  It should be possible to declare that the Master copy of selected files/directories are on the NAS, and no longer kept on either the Desktop or Laptop.  Backup copies of those would be kept synch'ed on one or more of the USB drives. 

I hope this is enough information for you to get an idea of what I have in mind.

Best regards,

Jim Allbright

During the install I tells me there are acronis services (from the prior version) running and need to be closed. Why can't the installer turn off the specific services (either giving me a yes or no option or just doing it)? That would speed things up as well.  I also get a message about the add-ons something to the effect that I have to manually delete them. Is it necessary to delete them? Don't know. Be nice to know though )).

It would be helpful to have a release date added to the True Image documentation PDF files for all products and versions.

Bruce

My 1st time upgrading from a 6ogb HD to a 250 HD ide in my laptop

Have made an image to new HD in an external caddy successfully it tells me.

Can I just go ahead and change out the HD's now ?

I am confident I can do that, its just that after the image was made the software told me to check the jumpers are right before installing my new HD.

I know nothing about Jumpers ??!!

Its a 2.5" ide HD brand new, thought they would come ready to go :O(

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Alan

Something on my wish list is the ability to wake the system from sleep to execute unattended scheduled backups.  Running them on startup just isn't the same thing.

My wish, that an upgrade would work without requiring removal of previous installation or tweeking to figure out why it did not properly install.

Here is an idea that would make me upgrade yet again:

I call this "consolidate_leave_x".
With "consolidate_leave_x" instead of merging ALL the incrementals to produce a new "full"
this feature would perform a consolidate as if the last "x" files of the series were not yet created.
This means the last x files are still just as valid after consolidate_leave_x
as they were before consolidate_leave_x was run.

Now I know that performing a consolidate is disk i/o intensive and can take some time.
Once we have "x" incremental files a user may NOT wish incurr the disk i/o overhead of a consolidate of a incr file
each and every time a new incremental backup is made.

To accommodate this fact the feature should really be called
consolidate_leave_x#_when_y#_incr_files_are_present.

For example assume we create daily incr job with x=7 and y=14
We then allow this job to run every day.

When the 14th incr is created the job then performs a consolidate leaving the last 7 incr files of the series.
We then let Daily backups occur efficiently and un burdened by a consolidate.
Several days transpire until once again we have that 14th incr file and the process repeats. 

There are several points/purposes to this feature two of which are:
1) a user will always have at least "X" points in time to choose from in a restore situation.
2) To implement a rolling "x" day backup withOUT this feature you need to consume several times the amount of disk storage as what this feature would require.  You can prove this statement to your self if you try to write down on paper what you must do to achive this result.

I have to backup 4 partitions defined on my PC .

- I start the first task and hide the upcoming popup

- I start task 2, 3 & 4 ( status pending )

My wish :

Shutdown the PC automatically after finishing all backup tasks .

If from technical point of view it's not possible to run imaging process on non-admin accounts please permit the user with restricted privileges at least browsing the image files.
In situations here the normal users know access password for images, so this is not an issue.

Less license keys to enter . Its a killer doing this when you have to enter twice for upgrade versions . Also maybe have forum rooms for each versions

Add Acronis Support to read and recover 64-bits Windows Image Backup files created using Windows 7.

It currently only supports 32-bits Windows Image Backup (created by windows 7) files but not 64-bits.

(see related post http://forum.acronis.com/forum/4202).

Thanks

Fix the erroneous error that there is no backup when the external hard drive with the backup is not connected.  Have True Image prompt for the drive if it is not connected.

When Acronis will be support for Novell OES1, OES2, NSS volume,  and Oracle. I'm still waiting

Acronis TI SHOULD be able to wake computer from standby to carry out scheduled task. This has been requested in the past. It is not treally satisfactory to have to edit the Windows scheduler job with the appropriate script pointer. A programme such as SyncBack manages to do this. I would very much like to see TI doing it soon.

Please make it possible to copy individual partitions on multiple-partition drives from one drive to another. This should allow copying of the C drive on a multiple-partition drive so that it is bootable on the destination drive.

Thank you.

It would be helpful if an Update / Upgrade Check (of new build or new version) could be included.

I would also appreciate having my system (vista 32 home ultimate) ake from sleep, backup and go back to sleep.

Regards,
Alain

I'd like access to some fundamental 'variables' for the pre/post commands - something like:

$TASKNAME - the name of the tax running
$DEST_FILENAME - name of the generated destination filename
$ELAPSED_TIME - total time it took the backup to run
$SUCCESSFUL - true or false on the job outcome
etc.

This would be useful to have these items 'queryable' from the pre/post command, maybe passed-in as parameters?

Thanks
rob

Two wishes:

(1) Please add the ability to copy a individual partitions (including their Master Boot Records) from a multiple-partition hard drive to another hard drive. So if you have your hard drive divided into a C and a D drive, we can essentially clone just the C drive (or D drive) to another hard drive.

(2) Get rid of those lousy spinning "processing" graphics and use a real progress bar that depicts how far along the process is taking. The rotating processing graphic is frustrating and absolutely useless. A progress bar is much more helpful and gives the user reassurance that something is actually happening.

I wish you not to OVERCHARGE your customers by asking for 2 times a upgrade fee, when the new program cost less!

Well you did this this year: you published an update in May 2009 and another one in September 2009 and 'offering' the second one for the same fee of the first one, making buying a new (latest) program cheaper. Is this the way you treat your customers?

Make the Acronis Product CD bootable as you have consistently stated it is. The quote below is from the Help file for TIHome 2010. The most recent CD is NOT bootable.

"If you purchased the boxed product, you already have a bootable CD, because the installation CD itself is bootable in addition to serving as the program installation disk."

I wish shorter serial numbers, is just mad.

thanks

Try&Decide
- Option to always have a T&D icon in the notification tray, with quick access to activate T&D
- Option to (always) Shred T&D's Cache (Overwrite with DoD, Gutmann, etc)
-- An easy, instant alternative could be transparent encryption of the cache. (OTFE, similar to TrueCrypt/TCTemp or BestCrypt/CryptoSwap Guerilla). With a key randomly generated for one T&D session and dropped upon conclusion, the cache turns to trash instantly. No overwrites required.
--- If not, an option to let the user specify a post action to shred the cache. Prefer an intergrated solution, though.
- Option to browse changes
- Option to selectively keep changes
- A "T&D Mode." Keep running instances of T&D back to back after commits/discards.
-- Possibly a simple post-boot selection timer presented after concluding a T&D session, defaulting to a user's preference to run another session or not.

Recovery
- Option to Shred a disk/partition (Overwrite with DoD, Gutmann, etc) before recovery

Recovery Manager
- Option to hide the F11 boot-message
- Support for Virtual HID Devices in Recovery Manager. (Wacom now works in the Windows/True Image selection screen, but not in the Manager itself.)

Allow additional files to be added to ISOs built with the Media Builder.

It doesn't have to be something complicated like additional drivers - just include the option to include some other specific folder in the created ISO. This can be done in Paragon Software's various offerings, as well as BartPE.

Feature Request: Restore Point
I would like to be able to create a restore point from the command line.
This would be a lot less clumsy than using T&D and require much fewer resources; it could also integrate smoothly with Nonstop backup (which, of course, does provide restore points, but at times of its own choosing).

PLEASE make the main Acronis app page minimizable while backups are running. If you can't figure out how to do this, just email me. It is a one minute change in window type. Tired of dancing around it for 20 minutes while backup is running.

InstallAware features
- for TI to identify (and possibly track changes to) all the files, folders and REGISTRY settings generated by an application when it is installed, so that it can >completely<:
-- image a specific application
-- exclude a specific application from a system-wide image
-- restore a specific application from a system-wide image
--- maybe extract a specific application to a stand-alone image
--- remove (uninstall) a specific application

Daniel Lauber wrote:

Please make it possible to copy individual partitions on multiple-partition drives from one drive to another. This should allow copying of the C drive on a multiple-partition drive so that it is bootable on the destination drive.

Thank you.

THIS IS A VERY GOOD IDEA!

Make the user interface of TI 2010 faster!

For me it is unusable slow, up to 15 seconds till the task list is displayed. 1-2 seconds for the context menu- on a quadcode 2.8 Ghz. Unbelievable. No other software is so slow.
Make it more usable, especially by keyboard as TI 9 was.

It seems only the nice colors and new buttons and the new vista style is important to the develloppers. And the new vista style is just copied, without thinking whether that might be a good or a bad idea. Some things are good, but some are really bad (when you know some things about ergonomics), e.g. the back button in the dialogs.
And it seems, more and more companies forget that there is a keyboard as well. A mouse is good for drawing and for new users and some other things, but e.g. if you type in a file name with the keyboard and the press Return is much much faster, that moving the hand to the mouse and move the mouse to the OK button and the click that button. But when pressing Return does not work to click OK, the user is forced to use the mouse. That is not user friendly.
The same is true for opening a menu.

In TI 9 all this was fine and it is one of the best products I know.
TI 2010 looks fine but is really poor to use.

I hope Acronis will fix several issues I have mentioned here and posted in the forum, as the current TI is unusable for me. I will continue TI 9, as in my opinion this is much better.

It would be very useful for Non-Stop Backup to support Network Drives.
Thanks, Jim

P.S. Oops - sorry about the following 3 versions of this note! Could a moderator please delete them, as it seems I can't? Thanks.

Acronis UNINSTALLER ****. It seems as if ACRONIS doesn't want people to uninstall their products. When you install it and it's in your computer, you can't uninstall it. I installed True Image Home 2010 fine but i can't uninstall it because it's not working. What a crappy software ! Please do it for the love of God.

The problem is not TI home 2010, some other program on your computer is causing the problem through an interaction with 2010. Spybot, maybe.

Please include the ability to wake the system from hibernate/sleep to execute unattended Acronis scheduled backups on Windows 7 in the next update.

Murgatroyd wrote:

The problem is not TI home 2010, some other program on your computer is causing the problem through an interaction with 2010. Spybot, maybe.

Not really. The only application which is running in the background is eset antivirus. Yes, i disabled it when i tried to uninstall TI home 2010. Nothing works!

The problem is not with another program as you claim because it's completely bogus.

When Acronis puts out 'acronis clean up' utility to remove their TI years after years, something is wrong.

The fact of the matter is if their product uninstaller works, would you think that they need to create such 'utility' to remove their crappy product? No?

Like to be able to turn off Non Stop Backup and have it restart on its on after a time period. So I can turn it off while I play games or encode videos. After a hour or so it would resume on its own.

Just coincidentally, I had successfully uninstalled 2010.5055 about an hour before I replied to your post; XP Pro, SP 3. I had a similar problem with 2009 until I deleted Spybot. I have had no problems with 2010 in installing, deleting copying, backing up, etc. Even Try and Decide works perfectly, which it didn't for me in 2009. Try posting your issue in the problem area of the Forum.

Task creation/edition wizard - the window title bar should present name of the task
under edition. So the user can orientate where he/she is. Thank you in advance.

They've made a mess of the date format for tib file names in TI 2010, using DMY instead of YMD. That strikes me as a fundamental programming error, especially since it can't be changed by the user.

The result is that archives are filed in a very unhelpful sequence within the archive folder, if date is part of the file name.

This needs fixing this urgently, reverting to YMD as in TI 11, or letting the user choose date format (not that I can see any reason why anyone would want anything other than YMD)..

When selecting an archive to restore, I'd like to see the archive comments presented in a box, just as they were when I typed them.

I wish the Tools & Utilities / System Clean-up would include a Temporary Internet Files component.
Also, I wish this tool would have a "build your own" component, so the user can point to specific files or directories to clean up.
Thank you for a great product.

Would be nice to have a log of what has been backed up, or atleast a summary of number of files etc. Something that could be used to compare to the disc drive a backup came from, that can be used to validate that teh backup is reliable etc.

David.

Hi,

I would just wish that Acronis 2010 build 6029 would actually work !, I have been trying since 3rd Nov 2009 to get ATI 2010 to work correctly. I have tried logging the issues with ATI support, however it would appear that this department does not exist.

It would appear that Acronis 2010 is a poor quality "beta" version, that we the purchasers are field testing for Acronis !!!.

Is anyone at Acronis listening to or reading the end users comments ?

Yours in frustration,

Jim Cosgrove.