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Be warned - Acronis Backup and Recovery

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Carol Haynes:
Acronis in recent months replaced their corporate products of TrueImage with "Acronis Backup and Recovery 10". I am not personally convinced that it is a step forward and I have had a lot of teething problems with it (not least the 680Mb download of the Advanced Workstation!!!). There is a lighter Workstation Edition which deosn't include server technology for remote installation and centralised licensing.

They recently released a new update (build 11105) which a client of mine downloaded and tried to install yesterday and there is a major problem on some systems (her's included) - when installed in certain configurations the system BSODs on restart/startup.

The problem seems to be related to driver conflicts between certain USB card readers (even if they are factory fitted in laptops) and the SnapAPI driver set installed by Acronis.

For anyone playing with this there is a much under-publicised fix for the issue (it does not appear in the Acronis KB it is hidden away in the forum). The fix basically means installing an updated SnapAPI set after the software (though why they can't simply create a new build and incorporate the new drivers is beyond me).

See http://forum.acronis.com/forum/3698 for details if you are affected.

Apparently in XP you get a BSOD, in Vista it starts the Windows repair interface (which was very confusing for my client as once the repair had finished the Acronis Software had apparently disappeared - not that life was that simple).

If like me you get in a big strop and want to remove the program manually they have not yet released a removal tool but there are manual instructions at http://kb.acronis.com/content/2975

Note these manual instructions are not correct in some places - for example in the Vista 32 instructions steps 8 and 9 cannot be completed in Home Premium because those Management Console snapins are only available in the Pro, Enterprise and Ultimate versions of Vista.

This all reminds me of the days when shoddy incomplete software was released to home user for unwitting beta testing and was one of the main reasons I shifted to the corporate software editions. If you have True Image Echo Workstation with a support plan that offers free upgrades I would wait six months while they get the software working properly.

One final comment I can't see any way in the new software to recover individual files from TIB archives (which are still used and old TrueImage archives are supposed to be compatible). The archive needs to be mounted and individual files or folders copied and pasted to recover them. I may be wrong but I can't see any other method. The problem lies in that in Windows 7 you can't mount archives in the Acronis Secure Zone so I would recommend you don't use Secure Zone at all. I haven't tried file archives yet but if you can only retrieve files by mounting images I am not sure you can do that with file archives so I am not sure how you are supposed to retrieve stuff ???

Its all a bit shoddy and isn't going to do their corporate image much good.

Innuendo:
Its all a bit shoddy and isn't going to do their corporate image much good.-Carol Haynes (September 30, 2009, 04:31 PM)
--- End quote ---

Acronis makes some of the most clever software in its market segment, but when they come out with a new version it's always one step forward & two steps back for a while. I'm really looking forward to a version of their software that has all their newest nifty tricks working in Windows 7, but I'm not holding my breath while I wait.

Carol Haynes:
Backup & Recovery is supposed to be Windows 7 ready but there is a restriction with the secure zone in that images can't be mounted.

I can't really see the point of the secure zone - it doesn't really add anything apart from using up an entry in the partition table. Given that Windows 7 uses 2 primary partitions just to install (unless you are installing it as a multi-boot option on top of Vista or XP) it doesn't leave you many primary partitions to play with on a system!

The other thing I would like Acronis to do is to produce a pure recovery ISO image that is freely distributable so that you can distribute an archive of a new system with an easy to use recovery option.

I think this sort of early release shoddiness is going to come back and bite them in the arse one day - especially with products that are supposed to be enterprise recovery tools!

Innuendo:
Given that Windows 7 uses 2 primary partitions just to install (unless you are installing it as a multi-boot option on top of Vista or XP) it doesn't leave you many primary partitions to play with on a system!-Carol Haynes (October 01, 2009, 04:46 PM)
--- End quote ---

There is a workaround when installing Windows 7 & you can fool it into installing onto just one partition instead of having that silly reserved 100 MB partition with no ill effects.

Lashiec:
Offtopic: What is the purpose of that 100 MB partition?

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