Are there more dissatisfied users of TI 2010?
To provide a feedback to Larry for my use of Acronis True Image Home 2010, Build 6053, German Language Version:I bought just before Christmas a new PC with the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate (German Language version). On this PC, I made several .tib images of my C partition and even restored/recovered once my C partition from one of these .tib files. I encountered no problems.
I converted without problems with ATI 2010 an Image of My C Partition that had been created by the Windows 7 Backup tool to the ATI Format (but I did not test the recovery from the converted Image).
I also made several file backups, both Full-Backups and Incremental backups. I tested the restore/recovery of file backups with a relative small number of folders/files. And I had no problems with it.
I created a bootable media on a CD and tested sucessfully that I can boot from it. Also, I activated the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager.
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It seems therefore to me, that while some users report problems, for some other users ATI Home 2010 works well with Windows 7 64-bit.I do not know under which circumstances, the probability of having a well functioning ATI Home 2010 is large and under which circumstances it is small. My particular case has following characteristics:
- My PC is new Windows-7 based PC, and had never seen a previous version of Windows
-My new PC has also never seen a previous version of ATI
- On the Disks of my PC, I have only one Operating system Copy (I do not even have on my PC the Windows XP Option)
- On my new PC, I have not (yet?) installed any non-Microsoft Anti-Virus Software or non-Microsoft Firewall Software
- I do not use any kind of RAID Disks
- The Only C Partition Recovery test, that I have done so far is from a .tib File that is stored on an internal SATA Disk (a WD Digital Caviar Green of 2 TB , that I am reserving for Backups).
I do not know yet if recovering my C Partition from an external USB Disk will be as unproblematic as from my internal disk.----
Based on what other reports in this forum (and at other places), I have no doubts that ATI 2010 has problems. But it seems to me, that some of those who report problems are sometimes exagerating (for example, I have read that ATI 2010 does not function under Windows 7 64 bit. This is probably true for the particular case of the user who complaimed; but as stated, the complain is nevertheless not correct).But on the other side, some who reported problems seem to be trustworthy.
I wish, I would understand better the situation.
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This may be true---if you work with it long enough, you can get it to work, but Acronis 2010 if far more difficult to run properly than it should be.
....to be honest I'm only interested in full image backups not the whistles and bells and full image backups are what Acronis does best.
Faust, yourself (and if I rember well, perhaps also one or two other experienced ATI users) seem to concentrate on using System Image backups and to avoid the use of what you call "whistles and bells".
Myself need not only a good solution for my "System Image" backups (I too believe that Acronis is good at that); but I also need a good backup solution for my files/folders. And also, because the huge size (around 120 GB today - more in one or two years) of the Photo folders that i want to backup, I need a good solution for "incremental" backups.
Therefore my questions:
1) do you consider the incremental backup of Files/Folders as "whistles and bells" that you would prefer to do with another Software than ATI Home 2010? With which ones?
2) would you avoid to perform ***incremental*** System-Image backups with ATI? Why? Because you made bad experiences with it or just because you do not have an important need for it?
Thanks very much in advance for your opinion (and for the opinion of other experienced ATI users) on this subject.
....to be honest I'm only interested in full image backups not the whistles and bells and full image backups are what Acronis does best.Faust, yourself (and if I rember well, perhaps also one or two other experienced ATI users) seem to concentrate on using System Image backups and to avoid the use of what you call "whistles and bells".
Myself need not only a good solution for my "System Image" backups (I too believe that Acronis is good at that); but I also need a good backup solution for my files/folders. And also, because the huge size (around 120 GB today - more in one or two years) of the Photo folders that i want to backup, I need a good solution for "incremental" backups.
Therefore my questions:
1) do you consider the incremental backup of Files/Folders as "whistles and bells" that you would prefer to do with another Software than ATI Home 2010? With which ones?2) would you avoid to perform ***incremental*** System-Image backups with ATI? Why? Because you made bad experiences with it or just because you do not have an important need for it?
Thanks very much in advance for your opinion (and for the opinion of other experienced ATI users) on this subject.
Hi Robert,
In answer to your questions -
I do not use incremental backups as I see no particular need for them. I have Acronis set up to store two full system images on each HD to two separate locations each week, so in total I have four full images two of which are taken just a few days apart. This being the case I never have a full image older than a couple of days - 100 gig takes around 30 minutes to backup, one internal slave drive and one external USB HD.
In addition I also use the backup utility that came with my Maxtor USB external drive, this just backs up data etc. at a preset time each day. In addition to that regime my daughter bought me a ClickFree Transformer for Christmas. This is very nifty as this cable device transforms any HD into a ClickFree HD and as the title suggests it is click free. As soon as you plug it in the utility scans all your drives finds all your data, music, videos, pictures etc and backs them up. The next time you plug it in it simply looks for changes and only backs up those changes, as does the Maxtor software.
Finally, I also now use the Windows 7 backup utility to make further images once every couple of weeks.
This might all sound obsessive but as most of it is automatic it's no real hardship and you cannot be to careful.
Hope that answers most of your questions.
P.S. TI 2010 did work for me but I saw little point in upgrading especially now 2009 supports image mounting.
I keep reading this forum hoping that someone from Acronis might reply or at least come on and ask for some kind of information as they have on other forums. But I guess that we on this one don't rate any consideration. I also had sent in a summary file and in three weeks have never heard a word. In my last chat session I was tod I would get an e-mail to send my problem up to a LEVEL 2 alert station. As you hav eguessed, I have never gotten that e-mail. I only hope that the major review companies wake up to this major problem.
It is sad that Acronis seems to rely on these forums to provide tech support to users. I have begun using Windows 7 backup in the past couple of months. Acronis is far too complicated and more than I need. I do not store anything critical on my computer that is not backed up to 1. CDs and 2. to my external USB drive. Then I use Windows 7 to make ghosts of my hard drive.
Therefore, I will stop following these posts. Fun while it lasted!
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I keep reading this forum hoping that someone from Acronis might reply or at least come on and ask for some kind of information as they have on other forums. But I guess that we on this one don't rate any consideration. I also had sent in a summary file and in three weeks have never heard a word. In my last chat session I was tod I would get an e-mail to send my problem up to a LEVEL 2 alert station. As you hav eguessed, I have never gotten that e-mail. I only hope that the major review companies wake up to this major problem.
Robert Eckerlin, for data backup, like photos etc., try the free Karen's Replicator or the free Microsoft Sync Toy. After the initial backup, only changes or new files are included in subsequent backups.
Hello all,
We are terribly sorry for all the inconvenience you have experienced with Acronis software and for the lack of support. We'll do our best to prevent this situation from happening in future.
If you have any questions or issues with Acronis True Image 2010 Home please feel free to send me a Private Message, I'll be glad to assist you.
I'm looking forward to hearing back from you at your earliest convenience.
Thank you.
Faust,
Thank You very much for your detailed answer.
From your answer I believe to understand, that it is not because you made bad experiences (or heard about bad experiences from others) with
- incremental backups
- and with File/Folder backups
that you do not use these features. Instead, it seems thsat it is rather because you do not need incremental backups and you have other methods to perform file/folder backups, that you do not use these ATI functions.
This information was useful for me. It seems that i shall have sufficient confidence in ATI to use these 2 functions (despite all the ATI bashing --- it surprised me to see in the Web how nearly every Backup Software has its bashers).
Hello all,
We are terribly sorry for all the inconvenience you have experienced with Acronis software and for the lack of support. We'll do our best to prevent this situation from happening in future.
If you have any questions or issues with Acronis True Image 2010 Home please feel free to send me a Private Message, I'll be glad to assist you.
I'm looking forward to hearing back from you at your earliest convenience.
Thank you.
Why didn't you read or reply to postings like this? I thougt a supports business is to help customers and not reverse. Anyway I can't help you, because I gave TI 2010 back and reverted to 2009.
Hi everyone,
just wanted to add my vote to your list of dissatified users AND they seem to be deleting my posts for help now as well!!
Hello,
and here is another dissatisfied users.
Three versions of TI 2010 which don't work correctly, no support, auto-answers ...
Because of a crashed hard drive, I have reinstalled my system and installed ATI Home and it updated to 2010. I am currently doing my first backup - ~ 500GB and I am 30 minutes in and only 10% complete. Please tell me a 5 hour backup is not going to be normal! I use Win XP Pro 64 bit, Quad core CPU with 8GB RAM and the ATI is using about 3%. Anyway I can speed this up please?
Thx Charles
Charles
I am not an expert. But I nevertheless noticed the following:
- frequently, on my PC, ATI backup completes faster then a prediction based on the "x% done" figures shown by ATI. Especially, if the backup is done with a backup verification.
- Backups written to my internal disks are much faster than backups written to my USB-2 attached disks (this is one of the reasons, why I perform my most frequent backups to a large internal 2TB disk. I will probably soon consider to buy for those backup-disks, that i store in the safe of my bank large external disks attached via eSATA). The performance characteristics of your disks can make a substantial difference.
- I never backed up 500 GB of data. My maximum is around 130 GB. By extrapolating my own figures, I have a very unscientific impression, that depending on which kind of disk is used and how it is attached, 5 hours for 500 GB is not abnormal.
Edited: I believe that
- backups of whole disks/partitions are often much faster
- than file/folder backups that backup most files/folders of the same disk/partition.
It is also possible, that compression and/or encryption influence how long a backup will take. Sometimes (depending among other on your Hardware configuration) use of ATI-provided compression can result in shorter backup times; some other times it can result in longer backup times.
Yesterday, I included in this Post the results of performance measurements immediately after performing each performance measurement.
This resulted in a totally unstructured and chaotic post.
Today I have structured and moved the information contained in this Post to the following new thread:
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/7811
Robert Eckerlin
Because of a crashed hard drive, I have reinstalled my system and installed ATI Home and it updated to 2010. I am currently doing my first backup - ~ 500GB and I am 30 minutes in and only 10% complete. Please tell me a 5 hour backup is not going to be normal! I use Win XP Pro 64 bit, Quad core CPU with 8GB RAM and the ATI is using about 3%. Anyway I can speed this up please?
Thx Charles
It depends on hardware - some systems aren't happy with the Linux drivers in ATI and USB2 only works as USB1. I had this issue with a previous version of TI - TI10. My backup took 13 hours and then took 22 hours to restore. Not a problem anymore with later versions and either Vista or W7. Are you backup up from within Windows or from the CD? If CD then don't, try from within Windows. You can make a BartPE disk which speeds everything up.
I am joining the club of dissatisfied users of ATI Home 2010.
On my XPHome machine, I upgraded from 2009 to 2010 (to get Nonstop Backup; another member of my family has a Mac with Time Machine, and I hoped NB would offer similar services for the PC).
Full backups consistently failed, to different HDDs, with the "Run list is corrupted" message (0x7001C) - even after chkdsk 'repairs' on the disks, which in any case reported that there were no errors on the disks.
Had I been able to complete backups, restore after disaster would have failed: the restore CD created by ATI2010 failed to load (with "cannot open module 'st'").
These problems persisted after a re-load of ATI2010 and after creation of a second CD.
I expect a backup program to work robustly out of the box; else I lose trust that it will be reliable when I need it.
PS: ATI Home 2010 on a second computer, XPPro, works better - but Nonstop Backup is NOT working there. I have posted about that (Forum topic 5311), and submitted a ticket.
I have requested a refund for the upgrade copy; nothing would persuade me to stay with 2010 on my XPHome machine.
I did post a ticket about the full-backup failures, but no reply yet (it's only 1 week...). But even if that were sorted, there's the CD load problem, and, above all, the loss of trust.
I'm becoming extremely fed up with ATI Home 2010. I bought it a little over a month ago and it hasn't ever worked for me. All I want is to do a full image with incremental updates. And until that is working properly, I won't even consider exploring other product features.
I submitted a ticket to support about a week ago and haven't heard back. It has been two months since the product has had an update.
I would expect that a software company that has such a horrible launch would update their product regularly with bug fixes... and more importantly, acknowledge and communicate the status of product fixes to their existing customers that are suffering through this abomination.
I'm about to give up on them and cut my losses. I doubt I can get a refund since I purchased it from somewhere else (Amazon.com) and it is over 30 days old due to my blind faith that they would fix their product.
I noticed on the "dissatisfied" threads - (is there anything else) - the Acronis mod will chime in (once) with we are here to help - and when people say Help! there is no further assistance from the mod - the help comes from the other users (which should be paid by Acronis for their services) -- I am seeing this a lot lately in business - the company brings in the customers like cattle - then can (or won't) handle the customer service portion. And what is their excuse? "We are too busy" - well so are we as customers - but does our time matter to these companies?
I say Boycott Acronis. They are not the only game in town.
Having raised a few problems I agree, Acronis replys say they will help deal with the issue but each time the way they said to do didn't work and a reply from me as such got no further reply. It was others here who sorted the problems or my own efferts!
I have had problems with TIH 2010.
I reverted back to the original version supplied on my purchase disk and it is less buggy but still has display problems with cloning a disk.Hopefully a new version,other than the November 2009 one,will be forthcoming.
Is it possible to be given a heads up when the new updated-unbroken version will be available?
Please add me to the club of (very!) dissatisfied users of Acronis True Image Home 2010. On paper the product looks great, but in reality it completely fails to live up to its promises. And bug fixes seem nowhere in sight. The latest build is about tree months old! But I guess nobody cares at Acronis... and I guess they do not even care about their reputation they're about to ruin. What a pity...
The progress indicator in Acronis True Image was broken in 2009 and remains so in their 2010 version. It was broken under XP Pro, Vista Pro 64 bit and is still broken under Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit. As far as I can tell it has been broken for well over 2 years looking thru the postings and Knowledge Base. I suspect they don't know how to fix it and that is why they continue to make the same stupid recommendation - if the job completes okay ignore it. Well they are ignoring the fact that we NEED to know if the job has started and gone beyond initialization and where in the overall time/size the job stands Otherwise who knows WHAT is going on? I suggest we get this out all over Facebook & Twitter and see if that gets their attention. Obviously all the users suffering with this major defect are being ignored.
Wow Hugh ... you are on a mission!!
Like I said in answer to another similar post of yours, in 2010 build 5055 the progress indicator works in Win 7 Home Premium 64 bit and I have no doubt it will work in Ultimate as well.
Update to my comment #67 above:
My request for a refund of my upgrade to ATI Home 2010 was successful. (As happened to another, the first response I received was an offer of help to resolve the problem, but I quoted the refund policy - 'for any reason' within 30 days - and the refund was arranged.[*])
Also my request for a downgrade of my non-upgrade copy of ATI Home has just been accepted. So now I have 2009 on two machines (and compatible backup image files).
Response times of Acronis Customer Service to the four tickets in all that I submitted seemed random - delay varied between 8 days and 27 days, mean delay 19.5 days.
I also learned that Acronis Customer Support does not seem to track tickets associated with the same client/installation, so I had a response to a ticket dated 18 Jan. about failures relating to an installation for which I had already received a refund, on a ticket dated 26 Jan.
[*] a friend mentioned to me that these deadlines for refunds may not be legally binding, provided the product is not of marketable quality. I for one was not minded to spend time and money pursuing legal redress across jurisdictions! But the slow response from Customer Service meant that to meet the 30-day deadline I had to request refund/downgrade before I had any help with the problems that made me dissatisfied. Acronis could use a system to fast-track problems within those 30 days (or freeze the refund deadline).
As I have said before, the only Acronis products I have that seem to work OK are ATIH 11 Vers 8101 & ADDS 10 Vers 2160 on my Windows 7/64 Raid PC. So far any updates / upgrades are NBG.
Months have gone by since I last posted and it seems on this forum that the 'Niagara Falls' of disatisfaction of one sort or another goes on and on. Will it ever end.
Had a 'pleasant' surprise today - Acronis offered me their latest Backup & Security 2010 with a saving of £35! I know a way of saving even more.
I just wanted to thank those of you that have taken the time to post your problems with ATI 2010 in detail. You have saved me the trouble and anguish of dealing with yet another poorly designed and bug ridden POS software package.
I own Acronis TI ver 10 but haven't used them since moving to Vista and more recently Windows 7. It's disgusting how shallow and downright false all the BS reviews are by cnet, pcworld, topreviews, etc. I need a solid, reliable backup and restore product for my 3 home PCs running Windows 7 and this product is clearly not it.
I also find it telling that I couldn't see 50% of the posts in this forum until I registered and logged in. Another deceptive tactic by Acronis to hide the true mess that is ATI 2010.
Thanks again
I recently purchased Acronis 10 Home. I'm fairly unhappy with it. It's not a catastrophic problem; but, it has many small, but irritating, problems.
It is not at all 'user friendly'.
Previously I used the ntbackup.exe utility under Win XP Pro.
I'm thinking about returning to it.
I could not recommend it at this point. Hopefully, Acronis will improve it with an update.
Same here - Unstatisfied: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/9676
Long story short, it's becoming more hassle than it is worth.
As I've said in another thread, I reckon the offering of 30 days free support is a reflection of the confidence Acronis have in their own product.
Were I an intelligent person, I might be able to suggest some link between having to pay for support after 30 days.. and the fact that similar problems and issues keep appearing in some guise or other, even through several versions.
Shame on you Acronis.
I'm pretty disgusting with Acronis as well. Many features that partially work. Support that is horrible and then demands that I respond to a ticket as "Resolved" even though it isn't.It's sad because I used to really love Acronis.
Same here, i brought this product when i brought my new pc and i am also disgusted with the way this company operates a so called support system!!, i just seems to be problem after problem, like i have said before you need to have the utmost faith in backup program, knowing that when all else fails the software will come to the rescue, and im afraid this is not the case with TI 2010, it seems that people are making backups because they want to protect all their hard work, and then find that they cant restore or they get part way through and then get errors etc
I know there are people on here that say you shouldnt use TI to back up photo's, Docs etc and only use it to backup a system image, but thats ridiculous!, i brought this product to back up everything i want to, not just for certain parts.
ACRONIS PLEASE GET YOU ACT & YOUR SOFTWARE SORTED OTHERWISE YOU WILL LOOSE SO MANY LOYAL CUSTOMERS.
Pete
Acronis runs design production on ATI on an annual schedule, or has for the last many versions. And it seems that every other year the version is rather solid and the next year rather buggy. Ver 8 was pretty darn good for its day, 9 had lots of probs. Then came 10 and it was terrific and 11, well, 11 was not. Version 12, aka ATI 2009 presented some new structure (using a database; and automated backup file management was done very differently than in 10 and 11) but was reportedly as solid as 10, but with newer drivers. ;)
One doesn't need to buy newgrades every year. Test them for free, for which Acronis provides, and see if the newer one suits your machine. Since all the backup companies have similar probs, one might have to do some homework to find what suits one's needs and and works on your machine. One good thing about Apple is that it builds the backup into is OS; with MS we are not so lucky wtih most versions of the OS; and we're looking at a tremendously larger field of hardware and software options -- so it's harder make stuff works that gets down into the guts of the machine - stuff like imaging programs, which, I think, is why they all have their own versions of the smae basic probs.
... it seems that people are making backups because they want to protect all their hard work, and then find that they cant restore or they get part way through and then get errors etcI know there are people on here that say you shouldnt use TI to back up photo's, Docs etc and only use it to backup a system image, but thats ridiculous!, i brought this product to back up everything i want to, not just for certain parts.
ACRONIS PLEASE GET YOU ACT & YOUR SOFTWARE SORTED OTHERWISE YOU WILL LOOSE SO MANY LOYAL CUSTOMERS.
Pete
If anybody can't restore their files and the first time they attempt it is when they have had a failure then they were living in dreamland. I wish Acronis and the other backup program people would put in giant letters on the box and on the screen words to the effect, "If you haven't tested the restore process on your system you haven't got a backup".
I'm one of the people who won't use TI to backup data files like photos etc. Not because it doesn't work but because I don't like the way TI stuffs all the files into a container file. I agree it should do anything it claims to do.
I started with TI9 when it came out and have been running TI on several PCs over the years. I have some friends who also run several versions of TI on multiple machines and none of us has had an issue with restoring our images because of a TI fault. I had a problem with a SATA cable which caused a bad validate. I wish that problem posts required the make model of the PC or motherboard - it might be interesting to see if there is a pattern.
Now I will be the first to say that Acronis' QA is often lacking and the release of new versions in the fall is driven more by the marketing department than the engineering department. Way too many not-ready-for-prime-time releases. OTOH, this is the PC world and there are just too many different pieces of hardware and configurations too put something out and expect it to work with everything especially when you are getting down into the guts more than typical applications. It would be comparatively quite simple to do the same for a MAC.
"If anybody can't restore their files and the first time they attempt it is when they have had a failure then they were living in dreamland. I wish Acronis and the other backup program people would put in giant letters on the box and on the screen words to the effect, "If you haven't tested the restore process on your system you haven't got a backup".
Oh ok, next time i go and buy a new car, i will make sure i crash it first to test the airbags work, after all i wouldnt want to chance them not working the very first time i need them in a real acciddent!!
Also i do not buy every upgrade that comes out, as i sure other people do. if a product works then why upgrade it!, i brought the new version as my new pc is windows 7 based, and TI 2010 is supposed to be windows 7 compatible, i say supposed to be as it seems to install for most people, but other than that, the operations its supposed to perform are very hit & miss.
"OTOH, this is the PC world and there are just too many different pieces of hardware and configurations too put something out and expect it to work with everything especially when you are getting down into the guts more than typical applications"
If you take this argument to its extreme though, what's to stop anybody writing some software for their own personal setup then enticing people to buy it with promises of what it can do for them. So yes, I agree to a point - it's certainly not easy to put something together that will work under all configurations and setups, but advertising a particular functionality, caveat-free, is to claim just that. In the real world, most of us are pretty reasonable and willing to accept that there may be issues. When a company offers only 30 days of free support however, particularly when they've acknowledged many flaws are of their own making, is not just bordering on ridiculous, it's moved in, set up home and declared itself Sheriff of Ridiculous Town.
To me, it's a two-way thing which needs to remain reasonably balanced. If a software company wishes to enjoy a little leeway, a little patience from its customers, then it needs to show clearly its doing everything possible to right its wrongs. It would appear that Acronis prefer predominantly one-way traffic in their favour - and that's a dangerous attitdue to have.
The car systems are designed to work with that car and are tested by the manufacturer who has total control over the operational environment - not every model and possible configuration in the world. I am quite sure Acronis and others could produce an always work backup program for a model ABC computer with a X HD and Y video card and Z BIOS.
Where I used to work, when the computer operations people put a new backup program or new version in place, it was thoroughly tested on the systems and when it was put into place, it ran in parallel with the old one for several weeks until they were absolutely convinced it was working properly.
I'm sorry, but I just cannot comprehend why anybody would just assume that they can do a recovery and that what they backed up is really what they got without a bit of testing when they install the software. It's not like all PC software has a reputation of running flawlessly, no matter what the product.
Obviously there are users having problems with TI but remember this is a forum where people come to post problems, not success stories so the sample is seriously skewed.
Seekforever,
Sorry, your argumentation is ridiculous. Before retiring, I was developer of System Software and was knowing what myself and my company was owing to our customers. If Acronis and its developers do not know that, they merit to disapear.
[
The car systems are designed to work with that car and are tested by the manufacturer who has total control over the operational environment - not every model and possible configuration in the world. I am quite sure Acronis and others could produce an always work backup program for a model ABC computer with a X HD and Y video card and Z BIOS.
Before I buy a car I make sure that it's been crashed by a number of folks, the Insurance testers, the feds, as wells as the manufacturer.
<
<Where I used to work, when the computer operations people put a new backup program or new version in place, it was thoroughly tested on the systems and when it was put into place, it ran in parallel with the old one for several weeks until they were absolutely convinced it was working properly.
I wish I worked there. I've never seen that sort of thing implemented really thoroughly -- even in situatyion you preasent where its a relatively closed system, limited variatin in hardware and software, with just one program that's changing.
<<I'm sorry, but I just cannot comprehend why anybody would just assume that they can do a recovery and that what they backed up is really what they got without a bit of testing when they install the software. It's not like all PC software has a reputation of running flawlessly, no matter what the product.
Amen, brother. Amen!
To me it's a matter of capatalism at work. Competition between vendors will establish the highest practical, profitable degree of reliability and value and weed out the inept and worse. Consumer tastes will determine the champion competitors and the acceptable products. One votes with one's dollars, among the choices available, select what best suits.
Right now, I see the vendors competing of features. I'd rather see them competing on quality.
"OTOH, this is the PC world and there are just too many different pieces of hardware and configurations too put something out and expect it to work with everything especially when you are getting down into the guts more than typical applications"
If you take this argument to its extreme though, what's to stop anybody writing some software for their own personal setup then enticing people to buy it with promises of what it can do for them. So yes, I agree to a point . . ."
Personally, I'm glad I didn't believe at face value all the negative comments here and on Amazon when I was trying to decide which way to go with disk imaging software. All software has problems, some more than others, and it is the user's responsibility to find out what works on their system. I chose True Image after looking at a variety of factors that are important for me. I am glad I did. It works for me, on my system. Successful disk imaging is very critically dependent on a myriad of factors, and there is no substitute for a user knowing their system inside out. If this is too much to ask, well, then, maybe disk imaging software is not for you - hire someone to do this activity for you. Or just make sure your data files are backed up and be prepared to rebuilt a system from scratch when your HD barfs.
Acronis is not the only company that limits support for 30 days. This seems to be quite common. I don't make their business decisions, but they don't hide their policy. If you don't like it, find a vendor whose policy you do like.
Before I used True Image on my home system, I used it on a crashed hard disk in a computer running a critical tool at work. I received special permission from IT to use "personal" software on a corporate computer, since there was little danger as this computer was not attached to the network. The IT person, a very talented guy and a long-time Acronis user, could not get access to this crashed disk with any tool he had. But the ISOLINUX boot disk was able to access the disk file structure, even through all the bad sectors, and even though it could not read the disk if I had wanted to do a disk backup. Although True Image is not really "recovery" software, I was able to save a good portion of about 5 years of hard-earned data that I did not want to be without. This data was supposedly "backed up" by some non-Acronis method, but this scheme had failed and there was no files written to the backup! I think this was with the Windows backup program.
That computer is gone, and the failed hard disk sits on my desk at work. I may sometime borrow the IT person's USB enclosure (he bought a special one to work with this pretty old drive) to see if I can pry anything else useful from it. Prior to True Image, I had tried some other "recovery" program, none of which would access the drive that True Image did from the ISOLINUX boot disk.
So far at home, where True Image was meant for, I have backed up and recovered my system. Twice. True Image saved me from an failed attempt at uninstalling Microsoft Internet Explorer, the program that crashes my computer more than any other. Where can I go to get help about this problem?
Here, there are folks like Seekforever, GroverH, bin, bodgy, Mark Wharton, MudCrab, etc., knowledgable people who are willing to help. Should Acronis be more responsive? Probably, but that is not my doing. Help is available. I found the Acronis documentation to be extensive and very educational, if you take the time to actually read it.
Seekforever,
Sorry, your argumentation is ridiculous. Before retiring, I was developer of System Software and was knowing what myself and my company was owing to our customers. If Acronis and its developers do not know that, they merit to disapear.
Hear Hear
I just wanted to thank those of you that have taken the time to post your problems with ATI 2010 in detail. You have saved me the trouble and anguish of dealing with yet another poorly designed and bug ridden POS software package.I own Acronis TI ver 10 but haven't used them since moving to Vista and more recently Windows 7. It's disgusting how shallow and downright false all the BS reviews are by cnet, pcworld, topreviews, etc. I need a solid, reliable backup and restore product for my 3 home PCs running Windows 7 and this product is clearly not it.
I also find it telling that I couldn't see 50% of the posts in this forum until I registered and logged in. Another deceptive tactic by Acronis to hide the true mess that is ATI 2010.
Thanks again
I've said it many times before and a number of times in this thread - Acronis TI 2009 is the answer, I use it on two W7 machines and one Vista which by the way is circa 2002. I do regular full backups and it never fails, it's as reliable as an Atomic Clock, best Acronis product ever. Oh and just for the record I'm singing off the same hymn sheet as Seekforever regarding checking that your backups will restore. On average I would say I do a full image restore on one of the machines every eight weeks. To date I still haven't had a failure and I think anyone that is just trusting to luck really is playing a dangerous game.
It may or may not be enlightening but I never had a single problem with TI11, had a few problems with TI2009, no problems at all with 2010 - which still reads my TI11 created backups.
I received ongoing, responsive, and helpful support with the TI2009 problems.
So in answer to the original question, no.
It may or may not be enlightening but I never had a single problem with TI11, had a few problems with TI2009, no problems at all with 2010 - which still reads my TI11 created backups.
I received ongoing, responsive, and helpful support with the TI2009 problems.
So in answer to the original question, no.
Nice to hear someone else singing the praises of Acronis too!
That is not to say all those having problems are not genuine, however, I have seen many posts on this forum where a lack of either product knowledge computer knowledge or a combination of the two are the root cause of some issues regarding backup problems. I know from personal experience with a work colleague who had some problems with Acronis that that was the issue with him. Once I had provided him with a little help and advice he has never looked back. I do think though that Acronis could be a bit more forthcoming about some of the bugs and flaws which are all to apparent, though has as already been said given the myriad combinations of hardware used in PCs it's a big ask to get one piece of software to work with them all.
I concur that ATI11 is worth its weight in gold. I started with ATI8 on an XP computer. Then used 9 and skipped 10. Upgraded to 11 which is what I use now on my Win7 64 bit. I have only had to restore individual files and every single time it has produced. I am, however, scared off from this new version and will probably be staying on 11.
I concur that ATI11 is worth its weight in gold. I started with ATI8 on an XP computer. Then used 9 and skipped 10. Upgraded to 11 which is what I use now on my Win7 64 bit. I have only had to restore individual files and every single time it has produced. I am, however, scared off from this new version and will probably be staying on 11.
And yet TI version 11 is universally recognised as the one version that should never have seen the light of day. When I first used it although it worked I thought it was some sort of joke as half of the things listed just didn't work properly.
Hi Steve, very glad to hear ATI11 has served you well.
I have restored my system partition many times with TI11, not because I fouled my system up or anything like that but more so that I could revert to a system I know worked very well in a certain state and with whatever versions of installed applications. So I can assure you as far as I can do that it would work.
Having said that I would highly recommend you at least try ATI2010 and give it a 'work out'. I still have XP too so I know it works and it works very well for me. I actually use the Backup & Security version but the TI components are the same. Although I have no knowledge at the moment regarding the compatability of TI11 with any future versions, 2010 reads TI11 tib files with no problems too, but at some point it isn't unreasonable for future versions not to recognise TI11 tib files.
Just make sure you have TI11 boot disks so that you can recover to your system as is if needs be. I'm confident you won't need to do that though.
So give it a go. I use other tecniques for restoring a system using ATI and not losing those everday settings and or configs that you may well have tweaked, game settings, that sort of thing, that you would also like to have that will have been lost over the period since the system backup was done. Far too much to mention right now but you can ask if needs be.
I concur that ATI11 is worth its weight in gold. I started with ATI8 on an XP computer. Then used 9 and skipped 10. Upgraded to 11 which is what I use now on my Win7 64 bit. I have only had to restore individual files and every single time it has produced. I am, however, scared off from this new version and will probably be staying on 11.
And yet TI version 11 is universally recognised as the one version that should never have seen the light of day. When I first used it although it worked I thought it was some sort of joke as half of the things listed just didn't work properly.
I was going to mention that not everyone regards TI11 as perfect!
Universally !!! Not in my universe
Nice to hear someone else singing the praises of Acronis too!
That is not to say all those having problems are not genuine, however, I have seen many posts on this forum where a lack of either product knowledge computer knowledge or a combination of the two are the root cause of some issues regarding backup problems.
Thanks Faust, can't disagree
I may try the new version at some point but not right now. I am working on a movie and use ATI11 to back everything up. However, that is not the only thing I do to backup all those files.
I don't want to take the chance that the newest version will mess it all up until I am finished. I see a lot of BSOD messages, hanging, and corruption problems so I just don't trust it. As I mentioned I have been able to restore files from it so I am pretty confident of its stability.