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1.0 out of 5 starsUNRELIABLE Restore - WARNING WARNING WARNING
ByTech Guyon September 21, 2012
Backup-Restore software needs to be reliable. Period. Acronis 2013 is just as buggy as 2012. I had no problem making backup images of my drive and verifying them. I even went to the trouble when I first purchased 2012 to test the restoration software. So when a drive failed last month, I was astounded to discover that the 2012 and 2013 software couldn't successfully restore the image, despite that all of my latest images verified ok. Acronis restoration routines are extremely touchy about what it will and won't restore. And THAT makes this software useless.
Yes, I tried another hard disk and other images, but with no success. That's when I tried to work with Acronis's pathetic excuse of a customer support department via email. They instructed me to try Acronis 2013, but that led to the same bad result. Each email communication with the customer support department took about 24 hours to turn around, which is UNACCEPTABLE when you've got a computer down. I sent them the error logs and system reports, but the support tech seemed incapable of interpreting them. His suggestion basically boiled down to "try it again". After 8 attempts with various images, I realized I was just wasting huge amounts of time. I reinstalled Windows from scratch, then copied my data from Dropbox. After that, I installed Norton Ghost 15 (which doesn't have nearly as many features as Acronis). But guess what? I found that Norton Ghost works quite reliably.
I confirmed the "touchy restoration problem" of Acronis True Image by trying to restore images I'd been making of a second computer. I discovered the same problem on that laptop too. Most of my images were unrecoverable (the restoration step fails), despite that the images were verified as "ok."
Anyone who buys this software and expects to rely upon it in an emergency crash of their system needs to have their head examined. You'll probably go through the same nightmarish surprises Acronis put me thru.
So here's a message for Acronis's CEO:
DEAR ACRONIS CEO:
Backup-Restoration software must be RELIABLE. We don't want a bunch of buggy new features, when last year's features still don't work right. FIRST, we want the product's primary objective--backup and restore--to work with 100% reliability. Unreliable restoration software is totally useless as True Image 2013 (and 2012, 2011, 2010) proves. Please stop adding new features and changing user interfaces so your marketing department can put "NEW" all over your advertising propaganda. Instead, put some resources into making the product work.
You've lost me as a customer forever. Norton Ghost doesn't have all the "NEW" features, but guess what--the features that it does have ACTUALLY WORK. If you made a product that worked reliably, think of all the customer service resources you could save. Think of the reputation you'd build.
But instead, Acronis appears to be a marketing driven company that doesn't care a whit about bugs and reliability. For years, computer forums have been full of complaints about the bugginess of True Image. 2013 is just as bad. Get a clue and make the software work.
Tom