Acronis let me down, I've moved to Macrium for backups

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 15 Mar 2013 3:11 am

I had a motherboard failure (on a second home PC) and when it failed it also corrupted the hard drive. No problem, I thought, as I have a couple versions of full hard drive backups on a USB connected hard drive. After I replaced the motherboard (had to use a different board as the exact replacement was no longer available) I booted with my Acronis 2012 (and a 2013 version) Linux rescue disc. The 2012 would only boot to garbage on the screen, the 2013 would boot but I had no mouse or keyboard support. I have 2013 Plus Pack on my operation system so I created a WinPE (V3) Acronis rescue disc and used that to boot the new system. It booted up (both in regular and UEFI modes) and I attempted to restore the hard drive from the backup. Every time I tried Acronis would abort with a message (don't remember exact words) about unable to continue as the backup is bad. I tried the three different backups and Acronis reported the same thing on each. I took the USB drive to my operational PC and plugged the hard drive (that I wanted to restore) into my USB connected hard drive interface (drives plug directly into the interface) and tried restoring from the USB drive to the hard drive, but it was no go there too. I copied one of the backups (the latest) to an internal hard drive and tried to restore from that. I was successful, but only after three tries.

I downloaded a trial version of Macrium and did a backup - with the system that had the motherboard replaced - to the same USB drive I had been using for backups. I created a WinPE/Macrium rescue disc and tried a restore from that. No problem and Macrium even completed the backup faster and the restore faster than Acronis. I purchased a "home pack" (4 licenses) and have installed Macrium on my dual boot Win7/Win8 system, the second home system with the new motherboard and a Laptop. I created separate WinPE/Macrium backups for the Win7/Win8 system and each of the other systems as I noticed Macrium profiles the hardware when its creating the rescue disc. Also it used WinPE V3 for the Win 7 system and WinPE V4 for the Win 8 system. One WinPE/Macrium rescue disc may work for everything, I haven't tried that yet but will.

Creating the WinPE rescue discs was even easier with Macrium. It was all handled by the Macrium utility, unlike Acronis Plus Pack (you have to have the Plus Pack to be able to create the WinPE/Acronis rescue disc) that required several "manual" steps (including having to go to Microsoft and download the WinPe separately).

Michael Barone · Post by **Michael Barone** » 16 Mar 2013 8:03 am

the 2013 would boot but I had no mouse or keyboard support

I experienced this a few times with Acronis 2013.

I copied one of the backups (the latest) to an internal hard drive and tried to restore from that. I was successful, but only after three tries.

This never worked for me with Acronis.

The Acronis GUI, even 2013, looks like and feels like something from the 1990's. Macrium looks real good in comparison, and has more practical features. Your right Jack, it's time to move on.

Thanks for the tip.

Mike

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 16 Mar 2013 10:17 am

That was the second time Acronis failed trying to restore a drive and it won't get a "3rd strike". The other one wasn't a major disaster. I had made a full drive backup (with Acronis 2013 as it is the only version that is Win 8 compatible) as I had an SSD drive that I wanted to upgrade the firmware and the upgrade would delete all data on the SSD drive. When I tried to restore it wouldn't and after several tries I gave up. It was on a Win 8 system and I had recently installed Win 8 and didn't have much on that system so I just reinstalled from the Win 8 disc.

I have a forum friend on a recording forum that has a PC company that custom builds PC's for audio and video recording studios. He said he moved from Acronis about 4 years ago because of recurring problems.

Jim Smith · Post by **Jim Smith** » 24 Mar 2013 5:21 pm

I'm sorry about your problems, but glad to hear that other people have trouble with Acronis too. I've been with them for a few years and kept hoping that the newest version would fix my problems.

There seems to always be some kind of a problem and it is always a struggle in futility just to wade through their interface to find what you're looking for.

Norton Ghost worked well for years, but I'll be checking out Macrium and some other solutions, and moving on too.

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 25 Mar 2013 2:34 am

Jim, the DAW builder I mentioned in an earlier post he told me he too had dumped Acronis a couple of years ago and went to Paragon. So along with Macrium, Paragon is another package to look at.