Acronis Products (DDS, TrueImage)

[uschach]

I had no luck with Acronis Products so far. Had True Image and DDS
Version 9.0 and Version 10.0 installed tried to get them uninstalled
which was a nightmare.

The support people could not help me, nor did they seem to understand
the problem.

Ultimately I had to repair my MBR (Master Boot Record) with some DOS
utility I found on the internet.
No matter what I did and I did everything the suppoert people told me
to do, the system would always come up with "Acronis loader...". Had to
open my CD drives in order to start Windows.

It seems like Acronis manipulatede the MBR and does not know how to get
it back into normal state. They managed to make the system (BIOS) skip
the first sector on booting and start with the 8th sector. Not a very
clean approach.

As far as I am concerned, I will not get near any Acronis product
anymore.

Hope my solutionn helps other people with the same problem.

 

[Lucky]

I wrote Acronis support this on July 28th

I recently had a hard drive failure and needed to restore the files
prviously imaged with TI8 and restored with TI9. All of the files in
the My Documents directory restored but were corupted. I wonder if this
has anything to do with the fact that when I imaged them I used to sign
on with a password? I created the same user account with the same
password and they are still not good. The rest of the files on the
imaged drive restored OK but would hang up whenever a thumbs or system
file was about to be restored.

On August 10th they answered with a stock answer that asked questions
that were already in the original and subsequent posts. I also would
never use one of their products again.

 

[Arno Wagner]

I wrote Acronis support this on July 28th

I recently had a hard drive failure and needed to restore the files
prviously imaged with TI8 and restored with TI9. All of the files in
the My Documents directory restored but were corupted. I wonder if this
has anything to do with the fact that when I imaged them I used to sign
on with a password? I created the same user account with the same
password and they are still not good. The rest of the files on the
imaged drive restored OK but would hang up whenever a thumbs or system
file was about to be restored.

On August 10th they answered with a stock answer that asked questions
that were already in the original and subsequent posts. I also would
never use one of their products again.

This is one reason why a backup procedure absiolutely has to be tested
from time to time with a blank HDD. Otherwise you cannot be sure it
works. Commercial backup software is in a very pathetic state today.
A recent test by the very competent german computer magazine c't
found 3 of 22 products to be usable and reliable enough and
serious flaws in the 19 others.

It is also shows that commercial software cannot be trusted
more than open source software.

Arno

 

[hdtv?]

This is one reason why a backup procedure absiolutely has to be tested
from time to time with a blank HDD. Otherwise you cannot be sure it
works. Commercial backup software is in a very pathetic state today.
A recent test by the very competent german computer magazine c't
found 3 of 22 products to be usable and reliable enough and
serious flaws in the 19 others.

It is also shows that commercial software cannot be trusted
more than open source software.

Arno

Do you have a link to an english version of the article you refer to?

 

[Arno Wagner]

Do you have a link to an english version of the article you refer to?

Unfortunatrely c't translates only a very small number of its articles
to english. This one has not been translated. The article I am
referring to is also not online. It was "Backup-Programme für Windows
XP, S. 116, c't 9/2006". The only thing you can do at the moment is to
order photocopies or the full issue from them at www.heise.de.

Arno

 

[Neil Maxwell]

I wrote Acronis support this on July 28th

I recently had a hard drive failure and needed to restore the files
prviously imaged with TI8 and restored with TI9. All of the files in
the My Documents directory restored but were corupted. I wonder if this
has anything to do with the fact that when I imaged them I used to sign
on with a password? I created the same user account with the same
password and they are still not good. The rest of the files on the
imaged drive restored OK but would hang up whenever a thumbs or system
file was about to be restored.

So, if you mount the image and go to those files, are they corrupted
there as well? That is, are they corrupted in the image, or when
restored?

Does it make any difference whether you use TI8 or TI9 to either mount
the image or restore it?

 

[Neil Maxwell]

I had no luck with Acronis Products so far. Had True Image and DDS
Version 9.0 and Version 10.0 installed tried to get them uninstalled
which was a nightmare.

The support people could not help me, nor did they seem to understand
the problem.

Ultimately I had to repair my MBR (Master Boot Record) with some DOS
utility I found on the internet.
No matter what I did and I did everything the suppoert people told me
to do, the system would always come up with "Acronis loader...". Had to
open my CD drives in order to start Windows.

Can you clarify this a bit? I'm testing TI9 now, but haven't run into
this yet.

Paraphrasing what is written above - you installed TI9, and then the
system always booted to the Acronis Loader screen if the CD drive was
closed? Presumably there wasn't an Acronis boot CD in there - was the
drive empty?

If I misread this, please expand on it - I'm very curious about it.

It seems like Acronis manipulatede the MBR and does not know how to get
it back into normal state. They managed to make the system (BIOS) skip
the first sector on booting and start with the 8th sector. Not a very
clean approach.

As far as I am concerned, I will not get near any Acronis product
anymore.

Hope my solutionn helps other people with the same problem.

Exactly what did you have to do to repair it?

Thanks!

 

[Lucky]

So, if you mount the image and go to those files, are they corrupted
there as well? That is, are they corrupted in the image, or when
restored?

Does it make any difference whether you use TI8 or TI9 to either mount
the image or restore it?

It did not make any difference with TI8 orTI9. If I mounted the image I
could look at any file on the hard drive except for the files that were
in My documents. It would not give me access to those files. Restored
those files were corrupted.

 

[Neil Maxwell]

It did not make any difference with TI8 orTI9. If I mounted the image I
could look at any file on the hard drive except for the files that were
in My documents. It would not give me access to those files. Restored
those files were corrupted.

Hmm... Let me try a few checks.

OK, I'm running TI Workstation 9.1 on this machine, with a password
protected image from a password protected login. That is, there are 2
passwords involved - one for the image itself (not very strong
protection, I understand), and one for the WinXP account that it's
running under, which I'm logged in on when the image task runs.

I just mounted 2 different backups - the current one, and an older one
from a previous password period. It prompted me for the image
password, but not for the WinXP password from when that image was
made, and I can see the My Documents files and their contents on both
images fine.

In fact, I can see everything in the Documents and Settings folders
for all accounts, and nothing appears to be corrupted, but I don't
have any accounts on here that I can't see normally; that is, ones
that would normally deny me access.

When TI tries to run after an XP password change and I've forgotten to
update the TI task with the new password, it fails to make the image.
On TI8, it would show this as a failed backup in the logfile, but on
TIWS9.1, the logfile doesn't show any errors - it doesn't log
anything. The task icons show up with little red X's on them, though.

So, your image was made while logged in on the account that My
Documents belongs to? Out of curiosity, do you know which builds of
TI8 and TI9 you were running under?

It seems logical that an image made under XP while logged in to a
different account may not allow TI to image other accounts' files, but
I'd expect access denied, rather than corrupted files.

Sounds like it's worth testing further...