Acronis True Image Gripes

Background on Disk Images

The vendors of disk image software seem to compete based on running the product under Windows and making incremental backups. To me, this is a mistake, you should only backup Windows while it's shut down.

What I want is the ability to configure the backup in Windows, then have the program shut down Windows, make the backup to an external media and then reboot the OS. Acronis can not do this. Neither can Image For Windows from Terabyte. 

Even backups run from a bootable CD have problems. I suspect its a marketing issue, the vendors compete to have their backups run faster than the other guys and be small. Thus, they try to be smart about what gets backed up, skipping things like the page/swap file and the hibernation file. 

The problem is that this depends on a healthy file system. If there are NTFS/FAT32 problems, you can't make an image backup. Oops. And the product has to be programmed for each file system available on PCs, including the Linux ones. 

But what if you can't boot Windows due to file system corruption? Sure would be nice to make an image backup to be sure you can recover all the files. The Acronis product (I hesitate to refer to it by name because the name is a sham) can't help here. And what if you delete some files by mistake? There is software to un-delete it, but again, it would be great to have an image backup before attempting to un-delete files because you never know when a recovery will break things worse than they already are. Again, Acronis is no help.  

In contrast to Acronis, Paragon is very up-front and clear about it's two different imaging modes. 

Good old Drive Image (still my favorite) had an option to make a full sector-by-sector backup. So too does Image for Windows from Terabyte. In other words, these products can backup a 4 GB partition and create a 4 GB backup (assuming no compression). 
 

Still Not a True Image

December 8, 2006. The User Guides for version 10 and 9 of True Image Home are available at acronis.com. I reviewed them both and the situation I described below for version 8 still exists.  

Both User Guides claim the product can make a full total sector-by-sector backup when dealing with a file system it does not understand or a corrupted file system. However, nowhere in the product is there a configuration option for this. That is, when you run the program to make a backup, there is no option to make a sector-by-sector true image. 

If the manual is correct, then the program must switch from its look-inside-the-file-system-to-save-space mode to sector-by-sector mode on its own. 

Bottom line: It's a useless pile of bits. How ironic that you can't use it to make a "true" image. 

Another reason to avoid True Image is that the entire User Guide is written as if the product was a Windows based application. Backing up an OS while it is running is a fool's errand. My old friend Drive Image was a Windows program, but it only used Windows to configure the backup. Actually making the backup was done by shutting down Windows, running the program and then re-booting Windows. This is something the Acronis product can't do - at least judging from the User Guides. 

And, the product seems to morphing from disk images to normal file backups, competing with XCOPY. It has jumped the shark. 

Define "Image"  

September 2, 2005. Acronis True Image version 8 without any bug fixes. I think there is a bug fix for version 8, if so, it is not applied. 

Someone called me today in tears about having deleted important files on her computer. Before attempting any file recovery, I suggested making a disk image backup in case the file recovery makes things worse (wouldn't be the first time). To this end, I gave my recently purchased copy of True Image a good look-see and it let me down. The True Image home page says: 

"Acronis True Image allows you to create an exact disk image for complete system backup ... The disk backup file contains the exact copy of a hard disk ..."

This is not true when the product is run from bootable floppy disks (I have not tested this with the bootable CD or the Windows version of the program). 

By way of explanation, assume you are making an image backup of an 8GB partition with 3GB used and 5GB free. True Image, when run from bootable floppy disks, is not capable of creating an 8GB image backup. With compression off, it creates a 3GB image backup. In other words, it only copies the used data. When dealing with accidentally delete files, however, we need to copy sections of the hard disk that Windows thinks are free/unallocated. True Image can not do this. It is not making a "complete system backup" as the vendor claims. 

For comparison, I ran Drive Image version 5 from its two boot floppy disks and it can backup everything. That is, Drive Image 5 can make an 8GB backup of an 8GB partition. In its normal mode of operation, an option called "smart sector copying" is enabled and Drive Image only copies used portions (sectors) of the hard disk partition. However, it is very easy disable smart sector copying to create a full and total image backup. 

This is also critical when Windows breaks to the point of not being bootable. If you need to recover files that were not backed up, then making an image backup is, in general, an excellent approach. For one thing, it can run outside of Windows and thus not need the now-broken copy of Windows. The image backup can be read on another computer to cherry-pick off the important files. 

However, if Windows can not boot due to a corrupted file system, the True Image backup may not contain all the files on the hard disk (technically, what it does not contain is all the disk sectors in the partition). True Image depends on the file system being alive and well to tell it which sections of the hard disk partition are used and which are free/unallocated. 

It might be, that if the file system is corrupted, True Image won't even run (I haven't tried to test this). Here too, Drive Image version 5 is the better choice. Drive Image has an option to bypass validity checking on the file system. True Image has no such option. 

At times of dire need, True Image lets you down. 

Invasive 

December 2006.  Acronis is brutally invasive. Version 7 installs two programs that run at startup time and an auto-started service too. Who needs that low level stuff running all the time in the background? Windows is shaky enough. Version 10 also creates a new device type for itself in Device Manager. 

  

FYI

February 27, 2008. Someone left this comment, which I can't verify:
"Thought I should mention that Acronis True Image 11 Home does indeed have sector-by-sector functionality. You are correct that this feature is nowhere to be found in the options during backup. What you have to do is select "Ignore bad sectors" during backup, and then when you restore you will discover the option "Sector-by-sector restoration of disks or partitions." It works for me."

FYI: PC Magazine reviewed True Image 8 on December 29, 2004. The article says that when run from an emergency disc, it doesn't detect FireWire drives. The reader comments may be useful. The magazine rated TrueImage 4.5 stars out of 5 and made it an Editors Choice. To me, that says more about PC Magazine than it does about TrueImage. 

FYI: PC Magazine reviewed True Image 8 again on August 17, 2005. The rating went down - this time it got 3.5 stars out of 5. They found a bug regarding restoring single files from an image backup. If you use TrueImage version 8, be sure to get the bug fixes for it.