Review by brainout

UPDATE, 7/19/2012: see the comments to this review from Acronis. They claim the latest update to their installer was July 12, the day after my review below. Well, they just sent me that latest installer, and it failed just as described below. So a company which doesn’t test its own installer, is not a company which pays close enough attention to the all-important issue of backups. I won’t do business with them. Three times, same failure: with the initial CD bought here at Amazon, with the installer at Acronis on July 11 2012, and the one they just sent me today, allegedly dated from July 12, 2012. Someone isn’t paying attention to quality control. Not good.

Important: when you have a program like Norton GoBack, you can scroll back your drive to an earlier time. You also get to see all the computer activity. So this program never registered with Windows, and never installed icons on the hard drive before rebooting. So it is not an OS or permissions problem – I am the sole user of my machines and of course have full privileges – but instead the programmer didn’t write the program correctly. And no one tested the installer prior to putting it on the internet for download. Shouldn’t have to require a customer like me complaining, for the correction to be made. It should have been TESTED prior to release. Again, not good.

UPDATE, 8/2/12 – Acronis kept trying to blame Norton GoBack for the installation problem, again wanting to remotely connect to my computer. This, despite the fact that I told them REPEATEDLY that I’d UNINSTALLED Acronis, a process which took 90 minutes, since only via Norton GoBack, could I uninstall it. Now, here’s the rub: GoBack records all computer activity. So prior to rolling back the computer to uninstall Acronis, I VIEWED the activity of the installation. Every file copied to temp files, then to the final directory, etc. It never went through the function of REGISTERING with Windows. It just rebooted the computer PRIOR TO registration, and of course didn’t install any icons for Start Menu or desktop, nor offer the user the option to install icons. All that activity and lack of activity, was IN the GoBack log. So I KNOW what’s wrong, and told Acronis. Repeatedly. They still kept writing me, until I finally refused to talk to them anymore about it. So this kind of response, tells you much: avoid Acronis. Their Customer Service including two supervisors, don’t even know computer basics.

So if your experience with Acronis has been good, fine. Hope it stays that way. My experience above and below, demonstrates a company which doesn’t know its own programming.

So what is a good backup and OS/disc recovery program? Macrium Reflect 5. Works like a charm. Just learned of it on cnet, and installed it, July 10, 2012.

Below, between the === ’s, is the original review of Acronis.

================= original review of July 11, 2012 ==============nnI made the mistake of buying this product some months back without using it, so of course now I can’t get my money back. WARNING: if you do as I did, you’ll get a message on install telling you there is a later version, and recommending you select it. DON’T DO THAT. The later version depends on the program already being installed on your machine. So it will seemingly install – meaning copy files – but will NOT register with Windows, and will NOT log itself into your Start Menu (on XP Pro, here), and will NOT create launch icons.

Adding insult to injury, this software has the longest product key I’ve ever typed, 71 characters. Truly a pain to install.

So, if you’re lucky to have GoBack as I am, you spend the next hour after the first half-hour’s installation, uninstalling the program that way. Since it didn’t register itself in Windows, you can’t uninstall it from Windows. If you go to its Program files section and you click on its uninstall.exe, that program tells you Acronis is not on the system – though it’s IN the Acronis file under Program Files!nnOkay, so if you instead install from the CD after rolling back your machine to before the ‘later version’ suggested as installation instead – thus installing the earlier CD version – what happens? THE SAME THING. So again you need a restoration program like Norton GoBack, to roll back your machine to pre-installation, else you can’t uninstall a program which itself, doesn’t know it is installed. So you waste another 90 minutes.

Now, given the nature of this program, which claims to protect your files and computer, to copy sectors and partitions – such a defective installation does not bode well for the competence of the program itself. It claims to be able to do great things, yet can’t even do a simple installation, or detect its own presence in a file folder?nnLook: mistakes happen. Programmer typos have big results and are hard to detect. No problem. But a massive oversight like this implies a systemic problem with the software. Given owner complaints in the Acronis forum (at least they have one), it seems as though the systemic problem isn’t getting the attention it needs. These are life-or-death programs. They need more professional service. And, they should charge more. Here, you waste $20 and three or four hours’ time (so it ends up costing you $420, because anyone’s time these days is worth $100 per hour).

My guess is that the url for registration is not included in the installer, or is defective, so it just aborted the install without telling you that’s what happened. So you think it finished installation, since it says it successfully installed, even when you ABORT the installation, lol. So I’m sending this review link to Acronis, hoping they will respond and this can be fixed.

=============================nnSo don’t make my mistake, and buy this program. Closest thing to Norton GoBack (no longer sold, not good for Win7), is MagiCure – which can only be installed on Windows-alone systems, has an 8GB NTFS limit for storage, which translates into a one-day rollback. For a good DISK CLONING and backup program, get Macrium Reflect 5 Pro.

PS: Disk cloning of your root drive, is the only way to get back into operation 15 minutes after Windows crashes or your registry dies. Basically, you CLONE your root drive to an external drive of the same size, and Macrium literally replaces the entire destination drive byte-for-byte, so it’s an exact duplicate of your root drive. If your target drive is SMALLER than your root drive, but the USED space is smaller than your target drive, the clone still works. Macrium’s disc cloning is swift, easy to use, and works well; but it is not automated. I do it 1x per week, while watching TV; with automated disc-image backups on the other days. Cloning 35-70GB takes an hour.