My happines with Acronis is waning

[Galen]

In nesredep egrob had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

I have made some minor modifications to the active drive C: on my
Win2000 computer. It unfortnuately resulted in some minor changes that
could well have been accepted, but as I have Acronis and a recent
image dated 6. Jan 2006, I mistakenly thought it a good exercise to
correct that via the acronis verified backup copied from a store on a
USB hard drive.

I did realise that I would come up against trouble trying to restore
an active drive and therefore got into the win2000 disk to format the
drive which became unpartitioned. That done I expected the drive to
accept the image which was considerably less than the partition.
Despite the fact that all images stored on the USB have been verified
the result of the restore was 'Image corrupt' after it had apparently
gone through the whole procedure.

Now I realise that I am not a expert and so far I have restored bits
and pieces from image from time to time and at one time replaced my
second hard disk and set that up with images from the USB with no
trouble at all - but the Active disk is a whole other story - so
beware - I have the time and shall have several other goes at the
problem. For the time being I retract all the stories I have issued
about Acronis. After all if you cannot restore the operating system
from a verified image, then it is next to worthless.

I expect to be corrected and be made to eat my writing

For your information, my stats are:
Win 2000, Pentium 4 3 Ghz
1 Gb memory,ADSL
200+200 GB of disc space
Burners Pioneer DVD and Sony
Borge Pedersen
Perth, Australia

I do so at least once a week for myself and clients. No need to eat your
writing. You mentioned that it was an image stored to a USB drive? My guess
is that one of the following is true a) you're not using the latest software
b) it's USB 1.1 and not 2.0 c) packets dropped... Try a manual copy of the
image to a drive that's not USB and restoring it from there. My
understanding is that there were, in a few versions, issue with USB support.
If you backed up inside the OS via USB the BIOS for the PC may very well not
support USB properly - see if legacy USB support is enabled?

And no, no software's perfect so no eating words or anything just yet... I'd
start looking there and see if there's a solution in the midst of my
gibberish.

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/
http://kgiii.info/

"We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind,
which is always an advantage. We had formed no theories. We were simply
there to observe and to draw inferences from our observations." -
Sherlock Holmes

 

[nesredep egrob]

I have made some minor modifications to the active drive C: on my
Win2000 computer. It unfortnuately resulted in some minor changes that
could well have been accepted, but as I have Acronis and a recent
image dated 6. Jan 2006, I mistakenly thought it a good exercise to
correct that via the acronis verified backup copied from a store on a
USB hard drive.

I did realise that I would come up against trouble trying to restore
an active drive and therefore got into the win2000 disk to format the
drive which became unpartitioned. That done I expected the drive to
accept the image which was considerably less than the partition.
Despite the fact that all images stored on the USB have been verified
the result of the restore was 'Image corrupt' after it had apparently
gone through the whole procedure.

Now I realise that I am not a expert and so far I have restored bits
and pieces from image from time to time and at one time replaced my
second hard disk and set that up with images from the USB with no
trouble at all - but the Active disk is a whole other story - so
beware - I have the time and shall have several other goes at the
problem. For the time being I retract all the stories I have issued
about Acronis. After all if you cannot restore the operating system
from a verified image, then it is next to worthless.

I expect to be corrected and be made to eat my writing

For your information, my stats are:
Win 2000, Pentium 4 3 Ghz
1 Gb memory,ADSL
200+200 GB of disc space
Burners Pioneer DVD and Sony
Borge Pedersen
Perth, Australia

 

[nesredep egrob]

In nesredep egrob had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:


I do so at least once a week for myself and clients. No need to eat your
writing. You mentioned that it was an image stored to a USB drive? My guess
is that one of the following is true a) you're not using the latest software
b) it's USB 1.1 and not 2.0 c) packets dropped... Try a manual copy of the
image to a drive that's not USB and restoring it from there. My
understanding is that there were, in a few versions, issue with USB support.
If you backed up inside the OS via USB the BIOS for the PC may very well not
support USB properly - see if legacy USB support is enabled?

And no, no software's perfect so no eating words or anything just yet... I'd
start looking there and see if there's a solution in the midst of my
gibberish.

Well I did not get the whole storey down. I create images to drive G:
which is the last partition on the second internal drive. That gets
verified and once that is done it is sent to the USB 200 GB which is
then switched off.
I am a keen photographer and I could not put up with USB 1 so I have
been using 2 since it came out

Borge

B. Pedersen Latitude -31,48.21 Longitude 115,47.40

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I have made some minor modifications to the active drive C: on my
Win2000 computer. It unfortnuately resulted in some minor changes that
could well have been accepted, but as I have Acronis and a recent
image dated 6. Jan 2006, I mistakenly thought it a good exercise to
correct that via the acronis verified backup copied from a store on a
USB hard drive.

I did realise that I would come up against trouble trying to restore
an active drive and therefore got into the win2000 disk to format the
drive which became unpartitioned. That done I expected the drive to
accept the image which was considerably less than the partition.
Despite the fact that all images stored on the USB have been verified
the result of the restore was 'Image corrupt' after it had apparently
gone through the whole procedure.

Now I realise that I am not a expert and so far I have restored bits
and pieces from image from time to time and at one time replaced my
second hard disk and set that up with images from the USB with no
trouble at all - but the Active disk is a whole other story - so
beware - I have the time and shall have several other goes at the
problem. For the time being I retract all the stories I have issued
about Acronis. After all if you cannot restore the operating system
from a verified image, then it is next to worthless.

I expect to be corrected and be made to eat my writing

For your information, my stats are:
Win 2000, Pentium 4 3 Ghz
1 Gb memory,ADSL
200+200 GB of disc space
Burners Pioneer DVD and Sony
Borge Pedersen
Perth, Australia

Acronis is a great product 99% of the time. However, each
and every version I have seen so far also has some serious
bugs that I have discussed with the Acronis helpdesk. They
include:
- Acronis won't start with the rescue CD.
- No keyboard control under the rescue CD.
- Cannot make a rescue CD.
- The program crashes in the middle of an operation.
- The program locks up the first time but works the
second time on identical operations.
- The display looks like a caleidoscope.

Your problem is a little different. If Acronis verified your
image file the first time but rejected it the second time
(when using the same version of Acronis) then I'm inclined
to think that the file has changed.

My impression is that Acronis have some really talented
people who turn out a great product. On the other hand
they give in to pressure from the Sales Department and
often launch their product without sufficient field testing.

If you stumble across a reliable imaging program that
gives me the ability to create/restore images while
working from a rescue disk then I would love to test
drive it!

 

[Galen]

In nesredep egrob had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

Well I did not get the whole storey down. I create images to drive G:
which is the last partition on the second internal drive. That gets
verified and once that is done it is sent to the USB 200 GB which is
then switched off.
I am a keen photographer and I could not put up with USB 1 so I have
been using 2 since it came out

Borge

B. Pedersen Latitude -31,48.21 Longitude 115,47.40

You verified and THEN copied it to a new medium? Hmm... Well, copy it back
to G: and hope for the best...

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/
http://kgiii.info/

"We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind,
which is always an advantage. We had formed no theories. We were simply
there to observe and to draw inferences from our observations." -
Sherlock Holmes

 

[Galen]

In Pegasus (MVP) had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

Acronis is a great product 99% of the time. However, each
and every version I have seen so far also has some serious
bugs that I have discussed with the Acronis helpdesk. They
include:
- Acronis won't start with the rescue CD.
- No keyboard control under the rescue CD.
- Cannot make a rescue CD.
- The program crashes in the middle of an operation.
- The program locks up the first time but works the
second time on identical operations.
- The display looks like a caleidoscope.

You'll note I snipped - mostly to avoid confusion as this delves into the OT
realm almost...

1. I've not yet seen.
2. I get the exact opposite - is it a USB keyboard??? I get the opposite, no
mouse control in (estimate) 6 out of 10 boots to the CD, and need to use the
keyboard to navigate when outside the OS.
3. Now THAT would make me want a refund - I guess you can say I've not seen
that one yet.
4. There's another refund request UNLESS I'd been using it inside the OS and
been doing more than I should have been
5. Nope, see the one above.
6. Monitor type? I got the most awful display on a recently made large TFT
display. I went to a CRT for that one and it was okay.

I probably snipped too much. It turns out that the OP made the backup,
verified it, and THEN moved it to a USB drive. USB 2.0 seems to have been in
place but we're talking a large file probably and as such subject to packets
being dropped and, depending, no errors being thrown/seen. Not a good sign.
My latest was to copy back to G: and try to do the restore from there and
hope for the best. Verification should have been done on the medium recorded
to, once the data is moved there's too much chance of dirty data and backup
should not, in my lowly opinion, be moved from the medium it's been recorded
to for just such a reason.

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/
http://kgiii.info/

"We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind,
which is always an advantage. We had formed no theories. We were simply
there to observe and to draw inferences from our observations." -
Sherlock Holmes

 

[nesredep egrob]

In nesredep egrob had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:


You verified and THEN copied it to a new medium? Hmm... Well, copy it back
to G: and hope for the best...

That is what I have done as Acronis boot disk does not show USB drives
Borge

B. Pedersen Latitude -31,48.21 Longitude 115,47.40

 

[nesredep egrob]

In Pegasus (MVP) had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:


You'll note I snipped - mostly to avoid confusion as this delves into the OT
realm almost...

1. I've not yet seen.
2. I get the exact opposite - is it a USB keyboard??? I get the opposite, no
mouse control in (estimate) 6 out of 10 boots to the CD, and need to use the
keyboard to navigate when outside the OS.
3. Now THAT would make me want a refund - I guess you can say I've not seen
that one yet.
4. There's another refund request UNLESS I'd been using it inside the OS and
been doing more than I should have been
5. Nope, see the one above.
6. Monitor type? I got the most awful display on a recently made large TFT
display. I went to a CRT for that one and it was okay.

I probably snipped too much. It turns out that the OP made the backup,
verified it, and THEN moved it to a USB drive. USB 2.0 seems to have been in
place but we're talking a large file probably and as such subject to packets
being dropped and, depending, no errors being thrown/seen. Not a good sign.
My latest was to copy back to G: and try to do the restore from there and
hope for the best. Verification should have been done on the medium recorded
to, once the data is moved there's too much chance of dirty data and backup
should not, in my lowly opinion, be moved from the medium it's been recorded
to for just such a reason.

good to see a snip.

While waiting, I could not resist setting up windows temprorarily. Had
vision of all the work of getting programs working again, maybe with a
little help from the image.
Forgot that the installation would come up with win2000 sitting on
Drive I: , that I cannot put up with so it look as if I disconnect the
second disk and re-partition the first disk with its format and hope
that Acronis will come up with Drive D: and E: which were on the first
drive - what do you think, Please.

PS. maybe I should store the information from D and E to the drive to
be disconnected - just for safety


Borge
B. Pedersen Latitude -31,48.21 Longitude 115,47.40

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

See below.

In Pegasus (MVP) had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:


You'll note I snipped - mostly to avoid confusion as this delves into the OT
realm almost...

1. I've not yet seen.

*** I had one yesterday, using a current HP desktop PC.

2. I get the exact opposite - is it a USB keyboard??? I get the opposite, no
mouse control in (estimate) 6 out of 10 boots to the CD, and need to use the
keyboard to navigate when outside the OS.

*** It is a standard keyboard.

3. Now THAT would make me want a refund - I guess you can say I've not

seen that one yet.
*** I dropped back to the previous version, which worked.

4. There's another refund request UNLESS I'd been using it inside the OS and
been doing more than I should have been

*** It works most of the time, so I'm not after a refund.

5. Nope, see the one above.
6. Monitor type? I got the most awful display on a recently made large TFT
display. I went to a CRT for that one and it was okay.

*** It was an LCD display. When I dragged a CRT display in,
*** it worked.

*** As I said: I think that Acronis make excellent products
*** at an attractive price. It's just that there are a few rough
*** edges in each and every release.

 

[Galen]

In nesredep egrob had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

That is what I have done as Acronis boot disk does not show USB drives
Borge

B. Pedersen Latitude -31,48.21 Longitude 115,47.40

Hmm... What are the chances of an incremental backup from the time before
being at least better than trying to re-do the entire thing? My guess is
that when you copied it to the USB drive that it became corrupted. There's
some hope that you can once again try to copy it back off the USB and see if
it works and that maybe just that time the transfer from USB to HDD was the
problem. I do not envy your position one bit.

--
Galen - MS MVP - Windows (Shell/User & IE)
http://dts-l.org/
http://kgiii.info/

"We approached the case, you remember, with an absolutely blank mind,
which is always an advantage. We had formed no theories. We were simply
there to observe and to draw inferences from our observations." -
Sherlock Holmes

 

[nesredep egrob]

In nesredep egrob had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:


Hmm... What are the chances of an incremental backup from the time before
being at least better than trying to re-do the entire thing? My guess is
that when you copied it to the USB drive that it became corrupted. There's
some hope that you can once again try to copy it back off the USB and see if
it works and that maybe just that time the transfer from USB to HDD was the
problem. I do not envy your position one bit.

I shall let you know in the morning what is going on. I shal let it
work over night.

Borge

B. Pedersen Latitude -31,48.21 Longitude 115,47.40

 

[nesredep egrob]

good to see a snip.

While waiting, I could not resist setting up windows temprorarily. Had
vision of all the work of getting programs working again, maybe with a
little help from the image.
Forgot that the installation would come up with win2000 sitting on
Drive I: , that I cannot put up with so it look as if I disconnect the
second disk and re-partition the first disk with its format and hope
that Acronis will come up with Drive D: and E: which were on the first
drive - what do you think, Please.

PS. maybe I should store the information from D and E to the drive to
be disconnected - just for safety


Borge
B. Pedersen Latitude -31,48.21 Longitude 115,47.40

Well I have not given up. This morning I set the computer to copy
files from USB to a folder on internal drive.

The time reported and the time taken do not quite compare. To start it
was reported that the copying would take 6 minutes for 3 +GB. I
thought a little optimistic but the progrees bar went along nicely at
a good speed. At the end of its journey the display changed to report
2309122 minutes left - quite a shock.
I deduced that it would be best to leave the latest images of the
first disk on the second disk and obviously visa versa.

That was wrong - I started again with Acronis Boot and it informed me
that it would delete the partition for C: and copy to that again. I
waited a few minutes or maybe 15 - I am patient, and at that rate soon
will be one.
The display has suddenly changed to say that it has 2 days to run and
that is just a 3.7GB image.

I am getting emotional - don't know wether to laugh or cry

Borge

PS I shall leave the computer on for 2 day to see what happens.

And eventually after about 1 hour, Acronis gave up and declared an
invalid or corrupted image.

I have therefore gone the hard way and am re-installing Win2000 but
have come up against the trouble of win2000 installing on drive H
which is not what I want. I have seen the warning and cure for that
many times and the answer is on the computer which is in trouble - so
can someone please help with that. I definately want the C: drive as
the active system drive, PLEASE.

Borge
B. Pedersen Latitude -31,48.21 Longitude 115,47.40

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Well I have not given up. This morning I set the computer to copy
files from USB to a folder on internal drive.

The time reported and the time taken do not quite compare. To start it
was reported that the copying would take 6 minutes for 3 +GB. I
thought a little optimistic but the progrees bar went along nicely at
a good speed. At the end of its journey the display changed to report
2309122 minutes left - quite a shock.
I deduced that it would be best to leave the latest images of the
first disk on the second disk and obviously visa versa.

That was wrong - I started again with Acronis Boot and it informed me
that it would delete the partition for C: and copy to that again. I
waited a few minutes or maybe 15 - I am patient, and at that rate soon
will be one.
The display has suddenly changed to say that it has 2 days to run and
that is just a 3.7GB image.

I am getting emotional - don't know wether to laugh or cry

Borge

PS I shall leave the computer on for 2 day to see what happens.

And eventually after about 1 hour, Acronis gave up and declared an
invalid or corrupted image.

I have therefore gone the hard way and am re-installing Win2000 but
have come up against the trouble of win2000 installing on drive H
which is not what I want. I have seen the warning and cure for that
many times and the answer is on the computer which is in trouble - so
can someone please help with that. I definately want the C: drive as
the active system drive, PLEASE.

Borge
B. Pedersen Latitude -31,48.21 Longitude 115,47.40

The good news is that you have appeared to have located
your geographical coordinates, after losing them for a while
and posting your item in the "Two W2000 Boots" thread . . .

The bad news is that once your system is installed on drive
G: it must remain on drive G:. You can employ tricks to
make the first partition of the primary master disk appear
as drive G: but in your case it would not be worth the trouble,
seeing that it is a new installation.

When re-installing, disconnect all disks other than your
system disk. Win2000 will then install on drive C:.

 

[nesredep egrob]

The good news is that you have appeared to have located

your geographical coordinates, after losing them for a while
and posting your item in the "Two W2000 Boots" thread . . .

The bad news is that once your system is installed on drive
G: it must remain on drive G:. You can employ tricks to
make the first partition of the primary master disk appear
as drive G: but in your case it would not be worth the trouble,
seeing that it is a new installation.

When re-installing, disconnect all disks other than your
system disk. Win2000 will then install on drive C:.

Yes I realized just after I had sent it.
As for re-installing, I do have 3 partitions on the first 200 GB disk.
If I wipe the lot, I suppose it will then install on the 10GB
partition.
Instead of C: D: and E: I have at the moment H:, C: and unallocated
H: shows up as healthy boot and C: as healthy system

I can regain the other partitions from my storage. It will take time
but then that is the bother or maybe challenge of the computers.

sorry to be such a pest.

Borge
B. Pedersen Latitude -31,48.21 Longitude 115,47.40

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Yes I realized just after I had sent it.
As for re-installing, I do have 3 partitions on the first 200 GB disk.
If I wipe the lot, I suppose it will then install on the 10GB
partition.
Instead of C: D: and E: I have at the moment H:, C: and unallocated
H: shows up as healthy boot and C: as healthy system

I can regain the other partitions from my storage. It will take time
but then that is the bother or maybe challenge of the computers.

sorry to be such a pest.

Borge
B. Pedersen Latitude -31,48.21 Longitude 115,47.40

You should not have to wipe the other partitions.
If you want to be dead-sure that Win2000 goes
onto the first partition, make the other ones invisible.

 

[coal_brona]

Greetings,

I suppose you can try Active@ Undelete or Uneraser tools to restore
data. This worked for me in a simmilar situation so you can really give
it a try.

http://www.active-undelete.com/

 

[nesredep egrob]

You should not have to wipe the other partitions.
If you want to be dead-sure that Win2000 goes
onto the first partition, make the other ones invisible.

Thanks to all for the help and encouragement. Unfortunately I gave
information to my son in UK about the virtures and he is now depending
on Acronis. With the sort of programming he is doing, it would be the
end of him to be in the same boat as I.

I have therefore suggested that he sends images straight to his USB
disk and verifies from USB back to computer - maybe that is what I
should have done. Using FC after the the copying might have averted
the trouble.
Borge

B. Pedersen Latitude -31,48.21 Longitude 115,47.40

 

[nesredep egrob]

Well I did not get the whole storey down. I create images to drive G:
which is the last partition on the second internal drive. That gets
verified and once that is done it is sent to the USB 200 GB which is
then switched off.
I am a keen photographer and I could not put up with USB 1 so I have
been using 2 since it came out

Borge

B. Pedersen Latitude -31,48.21 Longitude 115,47.40

I seems that Acronis after all is very much better than expected previously.
Fortunately my USB disk broke down and I have replaced it with a $49 aus and
this is really a USB2 and a test was showing an image coming down from USB to
IDE at the rate of app 10GB in 6 minutes. I know that is an incredible speed. I
have now resinstalled everything including the System Drive and it is now back
to the state of Jan 8 2006. Therefore not a lot is lost and I can again vouch
for Acronis.
So I have some trouble with the second disk which now contains the safety zones
and disk Management is showing the size of the disk at about 300 GB instead of
the actual size of 200GB.

Still that is small beer compared to the trouble I have had and it was all
caused by the USB box simply called DISK. The present one it marked Laser and it
is a simple Plug and play as far as Win2000 goes and as I said it work at a
remarkable speed.

B.Pedersen Latitude -31,48.21 Longitude115,47.40 Time=GMT+8.00
If you are curious look here http://www.mapquest.com/maps/latlong.adp

 

[nesredep egrob]

I seems that Acronis after all is very much better than expected previously.
Fortunately my USB disk broke down and I have replaced it with a $49 aus and
this is really a USB2 and a test was showing an image coming down from USB to
IDE at the rate of app 10GB in 6 minutes. I know that is an incredible speed. I
have now resinstalled everything including the System Drive and it is now back
to the state of Jan 8 2006. Therefore not a lot is lost and I can again vouch
for Acronis.
So I have some trouble with the second disk which now contains the safety zones
and disk Management is showing the size of the disk at about 300 GB instead of
the actual size of 200GB.

Still that is small beer compared to the trouble I have had and it was all
caused by the USB box simply called DISK. The present one it marked Laser and it
is a simple Plug and play as far as Win2000 goes and as I said it work at a
remarkable speed.

B.Pedersen Latitude -31,48.21 Longitude115,47.40 Time=GMT+8.00
If you are curious look here http://www.mapquest.com/maps/latlong.adp

REading my mail again I see I referred to my disk breaking down - that is not
true, I was tired. It was the case the disk is held in. Never was very
spectacular but as you see the replacement is really something.

Borge