Acronis True Image Wishlist
Dear Community,
This thread is dedicated to the question regarding what you would like to see added or changed in Acronis True Image.
All the comments get forwarded to the Development team directly, so rest assured your opinion will be taken under consideration.
Thank you!
Number 8 always has been an issue! I get the impression reading the forum that with 2014 nothing has changed. Bugs reported in beta don't get fixed and apparently lots of problems with the new software.
Such a shame...
The issue of being able to set the proxy address is also still not being fixed. I have the feeling that Acronis does not understand that large Organisations will not change or jeopardise their system security just because Acronis cannot aces the Internet through a proxy.
Big shame for a otherwise great software
Advise people, give a chart, do something so that even with really fast upload speed (5+ mbps), the initial full backup to the cloud is going to take DAYS! and lots, and lots and lots and lots and lots, of them.
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/43137#comment-135798
Even at my job with a 100 Mb down, 100 Mb up (we have a very expensive fiber connection), that same backup in the above example would take almost 12 hours.
Hi! I have Acronis True Image configurated to do automatically backups to external HDD, but when the hard disk is disconnected, the program doesn't ask to user if he wants to connect it to do the backup when the program is running in background.
It could be better if it implements a message box instead cancelling the backup.
Thank you.
Compatibility and a working product in Windows 8.1
There must be a better way to do a restoration. The current way has too many steps.
Need support for Bluetooth keyboard/mouse in both Startup Recovery and Bootable media Recovery.
Implement the USER option to add a recovery record to each TIB file and add a functional tool that properly attempts to repair corrupt TIB files using said recovery record. WinRAR has this feature, and I've actually had it work (on RAR files, not ZIPs FYI) and was able to rebuild the archive.
Of course if the recovery record and tool doesn't work properly or has flaws, this implementation would be pointless.
I am not sure if Acronis can do this or not already, but I did some searching on here and didn't find anything on it so I am asking for it to be included if possible.
XBOX drive cloning and/or convert the required drive type to an xbox plug and go drive.
Better NAS support. Literally takes days to backup to my Synology drives, and they are never visible on the bootable recovery disk, so I assume if I ever restore that I would connect the unit directly to my target computer via USB, but unknown right now....
+1 for better NAS support. Particularly Synology. It seems that the SW is targeted/tuned for backup to an internal/local drive. I would be willing to bet that the most probable use case is backup to a network connected drive of some sort.
Complete support of the functionality that is described in the user manual. I am frankly tired of attempting to use functionality as described only to find out it doesn't work, and Acronis knows it doesn't work. There are MANY examples.
+1 for better NAS support. Particularly Synology.
Check the many forum posts on this. Following the recommended addressing procedure works much better than just winging it.
I would be willing to bet that the most probable use case is backup to a network connected drive of some sort.
I doubt that.
I have read them and am following the recommended addressing procedures, I do not "wing it". Not sure what in my post would make you think otherwise but do apologize if I left that impression.
OK, instead of most probable lets make it common....net is the SW should be much more NAS friendly than it is, IMO.
[This might be impractical but this is, after all, a wish list.]
The settings for backing up to the cloud allow you to specify the number of backups to retain; but you can only specify the backups in terms of the number of backups to keep. It would be useful if you could specify something like "keep every 6th version." It would be even handier if you could specify something like "keep that last five versions, and every 7th version before that."
This would let you protect against file corruption or sudden death, while at the same time letting you travel back in time, without needing a huge amount of space.
When I look at my backup, via restore, I see the version chain that it has built. The graphic, depicting the full and differential backups, are the same, regardless of full or differential. I learned that I can hover over each graphic to learn more information about that backup. Visual clues are helpful too.
My wish: Change the graphics, such that one graphic is shown for a Full backup and a different graphic is shown for a Differential backup.
Add to the preceding suggestion, use a different symbol for incremental type backups.
My biggest concern with all the later releases of ATI is the administration of *.tib files. With old ATI versions I never had problems with that (mainly because there was very little administration). Now, with 2013, I get into trouble very quickly as soon as I want to rename folders where *.tib files reside, or split the *.tib files into separate folders. Or just manually delete a chain of *.tib files.
I know someone from Acronis will say "you should not do that" but it is just real life that I find out that AFTER having made a large series of back ups I want to change/correct something so that all back up files are named or stored in a more convenient way. Until now ATI will leave me with a series of *.tib files that no longer work and does not provide a tool to make it work again.
So here's what I am looking for:
- Say I have the following archive files: mail_full_b5_s1_v1.tib, mail_inc_b5_s2_v1.tib, inc_b5_s3_v1.tib, all located in a map called "Exchange". These files make part of a larger set of files, from b1 to b7 for instance. But I only want to use the b5 set.
- I now want to manually move these files from "Exchange" to a new folder called "Mail"
- Finally I want ATI 2014 to be able to scan the "Mail" folder, add the procedure to create these files as a new task and allow me to rename the task and file names to "Outlook_..._.tib"
Further: it should be allowed to use full custom file names too, such as Mail.tib, Mail1.tib etc, just like it used to be before 2013...
1. Recovering files window: Ability to switch to the view, where only modified files are listed between currently selected backup and:
a. previous backup
b. freely selected backup version.
Here's another pet peeve of mine:
The current .tib file naming convention puts all of the full backups at the top, with the incrementals down below. If I need to make space on my backup media, it would be easier to see which backups are bigger if the .tib files for each backup set were grouped together.
Jerry,
Change the folder sort order to date/time.
The column header "Date Create" can be clicked and it will toggle sort in oldest or newest order.
I think Secure Zone shouldn't show in Windows Explorer. I use another hard disk imaging software and their Backup Capsule is hidden in which I feel is more secure.
Grover,
That's actually the date modified, not the date created. I'm not sure under what circumstances TI would change the modification date. I just tested it, and a file restore doesn't change it (proving that ATIH has more brains than many programs); so perhaps the modification date will do.
Thanks.
Jerry,
Windows offers many column headers. I use both "date created" and "date modified.--both displayed inside my folder.
These dates headers do NOT involve changing dates but clicking on each header will change the sort sedquence so the sort is sorted "high to low" or "low to high". You can also toggle the name header and the files will resort "z-a" or toggle again and the sort will be "a-z".
What I am suggesting is that you sort your file folder on date/time rather than name.
Sorting on date/time will cause the display of backups to be in the same sequence as created.
The best way to do this is to name the file yourself by using the macro's
If you use: @task@_@date@_@time@
as the file name everything will work as expected you can of course add anything you like between @task@ and @date@ to additional help identification over and above the task name.
You do this when yo set up the task. You have full control over the name then and therefore the way it appears in explorer. Sort on file name will then work and you can ignore the other columns for the sorting process.
e.g.
14/08/2013 17:20 21,771,004,928 Data_2013-08-14_1815_full_b5_s1_v1.tib
30/08/2013 17:47 21,696,814,592 Data_2013-08-30_1843_full_b6_s1_v1.tib
02/09/2013 16:57 2,573,027,328 Data_2013-09-02_1756_inc_b6_s2_v1.tib
30/09/2013 19:26 185,637,888 Data_2013-09-30_2024_inc_b6_s3_v1.tib
02/10/2013 16:18 113,600,000 Data_2013-10-02_1716_inc_b6_s4_v1.tib
04/10/2013 18:08 81,168,384 Data_2013-10-04_1907_inc_b6_s5_v1.tib
06/10/2013 17:18 97,088,000 Data_2013-10-06_1817_inc_b6_s6_v1.tib
09/10/2013 18:07 23,541,788,672 Data_2013-10-09_1902_full_b7_s1_v1.tib
10/10/2013 21:56 193,612,800 Data_2013-10-10_2254_inc_b7_s2_v1.tib
11/10/2013 17:10 25,143,296 Data_2013-10-11_1809_inc_b7_s3_v1.tib
11/10/2013 20:52 19,001,856 Data_2013-10-11_2150_inc_b7_s4_v1.tib
20/10/2013 15:55 1,967,783,936 Data_2013-10-20_1653_inc_b7_s5_v1.tib
21/10/2013 17:39 124,994,048 Data_2013-10-21_1838_inc_b7_s6_v1.tib
24/10/2013 17:12 25,399,765,504 Data_2013-10-24_1807_full_b8_s1_v1.tib
27/10/2013 17:13 6,478,127,616 Data_2013-10-27_1711_inc_b8_s2_v1.tib
28/10/2013 17:48 56,493,056 Data_2013-10-28_1747_inc_b8_s3_v1.tib
28/10/2013 18:23 7,231,488 Data_2013-10-28_1823_inc_b8_s4_v1.tib
30/10/2013 11:20 331,705,344 Data_2013-10-30_1119_inc_b8_s5_v1.tib
30/10/2013 18:14 59,670,528 Data_2013-10-30_1810_inc_b8_s6_v1.tib
Grover,
Sorry for the confusion. I was commenting on the picture you included in your post, which doesn't show the creation date.
I'm using Windows 8.1, and it has a lot of features to simplify your life. One of them is that many operations are designed to work with a touch screen, and the Help facility describes those most prominently. I keep forgetting that "Press and hold" does NOT refer to using the mouse. It took me awhile to figure out how to get the creation date column to show. Once it shows up, sorting on it works fine.
As I mentioned, I wasn't sure which operations (consolidation, for example) might change the dates.
A standalone version that does not force cloud and sync functionality on users who don't want them. The syncagent is particularly annoying since even oif you have nothing set up to sync, TrueImage will keep loading the sync agent executable. Manually disabling the service is only partially successful as any update will re-enable it as automatic. The whole sync thing is annoying since it is not backup in any sense of the word and has actually caused some poor saps to lose work thinking it was a one-way sync that allowed them to keep a running image of a live directory only to discover that that changes made on either are mirrored to the other. Their error is understandable when the application they are using is a backup suite.
Everybody on the planet seems to think they need to impose their own version of sync on unwary people from MS and SkyDrive and Google and Apple... and buckets of others -- I don't need my backup solution trying to do it too. If Acronis wants to drive business for its cloud service do it in a more direct way than compulsory sync processes.
Hi Anna,
What I would like to see in the option in file backups is to be able to do a mirror type backup or simple copy. I should maybe qualify that I use the other types of backup options as well for my different pc's, just in case someone tells me to get free file copy software. The reason I suggest this is that I like to have complete mirror copies of my various hard drives moved to my media server (which also acts as a backup) so that Plex media server can read them and download the various information with regard to them and have it all available to the TV via my diy media center. It would just be very convenient to have it in one software. What do you think?
Best Regards
Restore usability of user comments to at least what it was on older TI versions.
TRUE IMAGE 10:
Allowed you to add multi-line comments as you were setting a full or incremental backup going.
Let you see your multi-line comments.
When building fresh system installs, this was a useful record of where you were.
TRUE IMAGE 2014:
After completing incremental or differential backup, if you remember, "explore all backups" find backup you've just done, select "edit" to add comments.
Backup and recovery screen shows comment for the first backup only.
To see later backup comments: "explore all backups" clicking backup shows just the first comment line. Select "edit" tries to show multi-line comments in a single line edit box.
Restore doesn't let you see comments when choosing version to be restored.
The result is that now a separate document has to be kept of comments for backups done.
REQUEST:
Easy multi-line comment addition when starting manual backups.
For each backup set show a Scroll-able list of versions with date, time, file size and comments in full.
This list should be shown in Explore backups, Restore and when starting incremental backups as you are entering new comments.
For consolidating backups, it would be excellent if all comments from versions removed were consolidated, in order, in the next version kept.
In 2012, if you had a backup for two partitions and started one, you could try and start the other and it would run after the first one finished. With 2014, it gives an error that a backup is already in progress. The 2012 behavior was much better. Either allow 2012 behavior again, or better yet, add the option to select multiple backups and have them run in succession.
There must be a better way to do a restoration. The current way has too many steps.
I second this request. It would be nice if the restoration was a single page screen with plenty of options rather than "next, next, proceeOH wait, options!! Oops!"
Restoration should have an option to restore a disk image to a disk image with the ability to resize automatically to the target drive that might be larger or smaller. Even with the freeware Clonezilla offers it as a checkbox. The Acronis method of completing this is brutal.
I would like to see an improvement in online documentation for errors. Unfortunately, I get errors all the time, and I don't know if they're major or minor or even what the problem is. For example. If you get "Operation has completed with errors" in the log, and you go to investigate, you see a code number that doesn't explain what the problem is. Google it, and don't find it. Other times, you may get an error such as "Failed to open data stream. To remove the backup from the list, add it again, 'Browse for backup' and recreate the backup settings." Huh? What is the problem here. It is accompanied by a link that says "More information about this error and solutions may be available online in the Acronis Knowledge Base." You can follow the link or search on the code, and I don't think I've ever seen it find something. It almost always says "We are sorry There is no information about this error available now. You can use the links below to search for any additional information that might be available."
Log file errors:
I have intentionally stopped and disabled the Acronis Non-stop Backup service plus stopped and disabled the Acronis Syn-Agent service. This action by me generates log errors as indicated per attachement.
The ability to not use these functions should be a user option checklist so unwanted log errors are not generated.
I regularly disconnect from internet connection when compute not in use. Likewise, if emal notification is not selected, the inability of the program to send an unrequested email should not generate an error message as there is no error. User did not enable email notification.
Hi Acronis,
Please make the True Image android app available in Ireland. I have paid full prize for this product to find out that I can't use any of my mobile devices. Disappointing for a product that is excellent in so many ways.
Thanks!
I could do with the ability to select the backup drive by volume name. I alternate between two external USB drives. Depending on which I plug in they get different drive letters. It would help greatly if I could specify the target location as something like [SysBackups]\DiskImages, where "[SysBackups]" is the volume name of the drive. True Image would then resolve the drive letter by searching for the first matching volume.
It should certainly handle reboot requests better..
I had not noticed my machine had gone into backup - so when I told it to reboot - my machine was locked for well over an hour (just my luck it was a full backup and not an incremental) while I was presented with an "operation in progress" screen with no opportunity to cancel the reboot request or cancel the backup... see my comments in thread http://forum.acronis.com/forum/46392
On my machine.. normally if windows finds an item stopping it rebooting it prompts.. giving option to cancel reboot request. or force cancel the offending task.. you should
1. tap into that process and force the prompt so I can cancel the reboot request...
2. or.. if I say I really need reboot.. you need backout quickly and let me reboot.
If you cant do both.. even 1 would be a big improve (but make sure 2 is in TIB 2015)
Let me know if not clear and you have questions.
Best regards
I know this probably is not as exciting as some nifty new feature in ATI, but what I would really like to see is the delivery of or access to product updates/purchases/downloads being offered via a secure method of delivery.
Everyone needs to start paying more attention to their URL box whenever they visit a site to make sure it is HTTPS, for example. I have a really beautiful splash screen that my Acronis 2013 downloaded and displayed on my desktop asking me if I want to install the new version - and with that kind of eye-candy it is very tempting to simply throw out caution and click Go!
But really, neither I nor anyone else who gets this update delivered in such a manner has ANY idea where it really came from or if it is safe to install on your computer where your files are so valuable to you that you take the time and effort to back your stuff up - and all for naught if it ends up being a malware-in-the-middle attack that decimates everything you were trying to safeguard in the first place.
Well - that's my rant . . . I hope you're listening, Acronis!
I wish for acronis to become 100% windows 8 compatible, including support for:
- Creation of Acronis Secure Zone on GPT dynamic disks,
- Clone disk for windows 8 (which will in 90% of cases be GPT dynamic disks)
Although old .tib files can be mounted, and examined, and have their content extracted, and of course one can RESTORE to an old .tib as well, it would be cool I think if we could BOOT to an old .tib. Often times they contain files that are only compatible with the old PROGRAMS that are on those backups, and it would be great if it were easy to boot to those tibs and gain the benefit of the older OS and/or program thereon.
Yeah I know you could restore to a spare hard drive and pop it into the computer, but wouldn't booting to an old tib be cool?
tomf, what you want is do-able using virtual machines, either VMWare free player or VirtualBox. And it is certainly not something that would be a positive addition to the already distended backup software Acronis is becoming.
Here's a simplistic description of how to do it:
Create a new machine in VMWare Player
Install the operating system you want to use (the "old" one) - there are lots of tutorials on how to do this, but it's basically to set the install CD as the VM machine CD, such that when you "play" the new VM it boots from that cd and the install is exactly like it would be on metal.
Copy a version of TrueImage from your host operating system to your VM operating system -- this is a simple drag and drop if you are using VMWare and have the latest VMTools installed.
Install TI on the VM.
Take the old tib file that contains a backup of the system, you want to be able to boot into and copy it to the VM, again, drag and drop.
Run TI on the VM and restore the tib file making sure you are doing a disk restore and not a file restore.
Voila, now any time you want to boot into your old system, you just play the VMWare virtual machine.
Import Note: Both Acronis and Microsoft may have issues if the copies of the software you are installing do not have their *own* licenses. For Windows, if you bought a new machine and Windows 8 came pre-installed, then you still have ownership of XP or Vista or whatever that resides on your old machine. If you are disposing of the old machine, you can legally use your original XP license - as long as it is only on a single machine, which includes Virtual machines apparently. If you have a multi-machine license for TI, then one of the machines can be a VM. Or if you have an old TI, like 2009 which you actually used to create the old tib file, and which was not the basis for a discounted upgrade, you can use that old copy of TI legitimately. The point being that the software companies seem these days to expect you to have separate licenses even when you are running the stuff on the same physical machine.
In any case, it would be a bad idea to pile on a lot more code, bug vectors and maintenance load when Acronis has challenges just keeping up with glitches, inconsistencies and much more basic feature requests with the current software.
Here's a simplistic description of how to do it:
In any case, it would be a bad idea to pile on a lot more code, bug vectors and maintenance load when Acronis has challenges just keeping up with glitches, inconsistencies and much more basic feature requests with the current software.
Thanks CanLib1. If by "simplistic description" you mean it's even harder to do than you describe, well then that's a little more complicated than I had in mind.
;)
So it seems to me it'd be a lot easier just to crack the box and put-in a spare drive Restored from an old .tib. And I am happy to let Acronis decide if the idea sucks or not.
My biggest issue with recent versions of Acronis is the lack of support for hardware on the bootable Acronis Rescue Media.
While I have been a big fan of Acronis in the past (I have purchased about a dozen Acronis products/upgrades over the last 10 years), TIH 2013 will probably be my last Acronis purchase until I can be guaranteed that Acronis properly supports my current - and future - motherboard hardware.
Case in point: The Acronis TIH Rescue Media never supported my Logitech Performance MX cordless mouse (a 3+ year old product) or Logitech Cordless Keyboard properly - The Logitech wireless mouse/keyboard work on the initial Rescue Media menu selection screen, but once TIH is selected and boots up, the Logitech wireless mouse/keyboard no longer work. It's totally ridiculous that Acronis hasn't fixed this problem in over 3 years, especially since they have the knowledge to fix it - the mouse/keyboard drivers are known, since Acronis put them in the menu selection portion of the Rescue Media - but, not in the TIH portion of the Rescue Media.
In addition, my current motherboard is based on the Intel Z77 chipset. My motherboard uses the Intel 82579V network adapter. TIH is basically a worthless product (for me) if I can't recover a backup from my network storage device where all my backups are located.
I spent weeks (and LOTS of debugging hours) interfacing with various forums and reading WinPE technical articles on how to incorporate my motherboard's network drivers into the Acronis Rescue Media.
THIS IS MY MAIN REQUEST: If Acronis isn't going to natively support newer hardware in their Rescue Media, they need to come up with a way to *EASILY* integrate newer/missing drivers into the Rescue Media. Going through the extreme hassle of installing the WinPE tools, and then manually extracting/incorporating/rebuilding a customized Rescue Disk is an error-prone and frustrating process. When I was building my customized Rescue Media, there wasn't a single spot on the web that contained all the steps required to incorporate my drivers - I had to go to 3 different websites to find all the real information to get the job done (The Acronis Support Forums was one of those sites).
I certainly don't want to ever have to go through all those steps again. I won't be buying TIH anymore, since a new TIH purchase would mean recreating all my steps again, and blowing weeks of my time to create a new customized Rescue Media disk.
A few additional screens during the Rescue Media creation process to select folders containing custom drivers would be useful. Even better would be to automatically scan the current PC's installed drivers, and install the same drivers into the Rescue Media without requiring user intervention.
Alan
The planning should have the same Triggers as the task planning in Windows
whb
I am dismayed to learn that my upgrade to ATIH2014 Premium does not allow me to create Bootable Media with certain options pre-selected. For example I always have to change "Incremental" backup to "Full", and I always have to find & check "Verification" every time.
It appears that the sole benefit to making Bootable Media with the installed software (benefit over the downloadable .iso that is) is to permit the extra pre-commands.
I also need to make a custom .iso to be able to use a boot disc with a PC that needs a special driver and agree with Alan above that the WinPE process is appallingly intimidating just to add a driver!
User ability to COMPLETELY DISABLE auto search at startup, if:
-Acronis can't find a way to allow users to specify folders and/or HDDs/partitions (folders, preferably).
I use a 2TB external HDD to store ALL my images from 3x PCs. I don't want images from my desktop being automatically loaded into my HTPC's TI home screen. Only to have to then manually remove them.
How long has Acronis been operating? You can't expect users to have to manually edit registry or *.xml files after every restore.
PUT IT INTO YOUR NEXT 2014 UPDATE. I won't be purchasing another version of ATIH until this function has been added! Or the so-called auto-search feature removed. I survived perfectly well using 2011 version (had to upgrade for W764bit usibility) without this.
Add the ability to make nonstop backups on "external" drives. The fact that a drive is connected to my laptop some other way besides the internal SATA connection should not limit my ability to back it up using the best possible scheme. In my case it's nonstop backup.
Better NAS support. Literally takes days to backup to my Synology drives, and they are never visible on the bootable recovery disk, so I assume if I ever restore that I would connect the unit directly to my target computer via USB, but unknown right now....
I Agree!!!!
Restore usability of user comments to at least what it was on older TI versions.
TRUE IMAGE 10:
Allowed you to add multi-line comments as you were setting a full or incremental backup going.
Let you see your multi-line comments.When building fresh system installs, this was a useful record of where you were.
TRUE IMAGE 2014:
After completing incremental or differential backup, if you remember, "explore all backups" find backup you've just done, select "edit" to add comments.
Backup and recovery screen shows comment for the first backup only.
To see later backup comments: "explore all backups" clicking backup shows just the first comment line. Select "edit" tries to show multi-line comments in a single line edit box.Restore doesn't let you see comments when choosing version to be restored.
The result is that now a separate document has to be kept of comments for backups done.
REQUEST:
Easy multi-line comment addition when starting manual backups.For each backup set show a Scroll-able list of versions with date, time, file size and comments in full.
This list should be shown in Explore backups, Restore and when starting incremental backups as you are entering new comments.For consolidating backups, it would be excellent if all comments from versions removed were consolidated, in order, in the next version kept.
Yes, I agree, I like to see a custom comment for each backup whether incremental, differential or full.
Clearly displayed in in the recover module when you go into the browse for back ups window.
And those comments would need to be able to be added when creating the backup in the first place.
Thanks,
Ken.
[quote=Alan Diamant]
My biggest issue with recent versions of Acronis is the lack of support for hardware on the bootable Acronis Rescue Media.
While I have been a big fan of Acronis in the past (I have purchased about a dozen Acronis products/upgrades over the last 10 years), TIH 2013 will probably be my last Acronis purchase until I can be guaranteed that Acronis properly supports my current - and future - motherboard hardware.
Case in point: The Acronis TIH Rescue Media never supported my Logitech Performance MX cordless mouse (a 3+ year old product) or Logitech Cordless Keyboard properly - The Logitech wireless mouse/keyboard work on the initial Rescue Media menu selection screen, but once TIH is selected and boots up, the Logitech wireless mouse/keyboard no longer work. It's totally ridiculous that Acronis hasn't fixed this problem in over 3 years, especially since they have the knowledge to fix it - the mouse/keyboard drivers are known, since Acronis put them in the menu selection portion of the Rescue Media - but, not in the TIH portion of the Rescue Media.
I Have the same mouse and keyboard so I also would like the same.