Acronis True Image Home 2011: PC Backup and Recovery Plus (PC)

I have been experiencing problems with Acronis software since the day it arrived two months ago. Because I was having difficulty with the 2010 version I contacted Acronis customer services and they sent me an email suggesting what I could do to get it to work. We exchanged emails almost weekly, each time they were either asking me to note exactly what error messages I got when the software failed or they were suggesting things I could `try' to get it working correctly, none of these solutions worked satisfactorily. I then got an email from Acronis which read: 'In order to investigate further we would request you to uninstall Acronis True Image Home 2010 from your computer and as we have recently launched a new version of Acronis True Image Home 2011 so kindly install the Trial version of Acronis True Image Home 2011. NonStop Backup has been significantly improved in the new version and should work fine without any issues.'
I installed the 2011 version but this was no better than the previous version which I then reported back to Acronis and this time they replied: `It is confirmed that it is an ongoing issue with the nonstop backup of Acronis True Image Home. This issue has been reported to our development team. The current plan is to fix all these issues in the next update for Acronis True Image Home which is planned to be released in about 1-2 months (no clear time frame yet) so until then we suggest you to avoid using this software and use other backup instead.'
So there you have it straight from the manufacturer's mouth, there is a known fault and it does not work. I asked for a refund and they said because I had bought it from Amazon I must ask them for a refund. Amazon will not give me a refund because the software has been opened (exactly, how else would I know it does not work!) I have since been back to Acronis to explain that Amazon will not issue a refund and they have replied that neither will they! My advice to anyone thinking of buying this software - don't, it does not work and you will be wasting your money and you will not get a refund.

Backup software. What's the point?

Well, if you're like me and have a lot of software purchased as a download or important documents stored on your PC, it makes a lot of sense. Even if you don't, download purchasing is a growing trend so it will apply to you one day.

The case for getting backup software is a good one. Keeping your documents safe is a given, but also retail software downloads are getting more common as broadband speeds increase. With fibre optic cabling being introduced into the UK, you'll find that software purveyors large and small will offer you discounts for purchasing your software online rather than through boxed copies. This makes sense for them - the price of packaging and shipping software, not to mention the cut retailers take at the point-of-sale, is easily more expensive than providing a stable and fast download route to their customers direct. But downloaded software often cannot be redownloaded after the initial purchase, so if a customer loses their copy of the product, they have to go out and purchase it all over again.

The solution? Keep a backup. Acronis would have you believe that the answer is PC Backup & Recovery.

This software keeps a copy of files, folders, even whole disks and partitions. It compresses the data down into one smaller file that can be explored, with individual files within able to be restored to whatever location you wish. There are many backup options - you can overwrite each new backup in its entirety, or have incremental backups that only record out the data that has changed since the last backup. You can even select the compression strength, and the amount of CPU processing power taken up by the operation.

It's simple, does the job, and gives you many options. What's not to like?

There's plenty not to like. The engine is as good as the 2010 version, but everything else feels shoddy and undercooked. The user interface feels like it was knocked-up by an A-level Computer Studies student in their lunch hour. Its so bad, its frightening it passed any kind of quality control. How is this even possible? Check out the Acronis forums for some of the nightmare stories people are having wih this product. For something that effectively promises to keep critical data safe, I'm amazed that Acronis have played so fast and loose with the GUI. They don't seem to be doing much to address the problem, either - there has been no updates to the software since I've owned it. It looks like they've just dumped it out there and expect the brand name to generate sales.

Why is it so bad? Let me count the ways. Let's say you have two external hard drives, and only one esata port. You have to hot-swap the drives, with different backups on each drive. The user interface will not distinguish between these drives - as far as its concerned, they are both the same. So when it comes to backing data up, it will look at the drive, not find the files it expects, and marks them all as missing. Trying to get it to see them again when the correct drive is installed is hit and miss.

Next. There are some backups you want to carry out often, and some you may only need to do once. You would think it would be possible to hide away the rare backups in its own folder and keep only the most commmon backups on display. Not in Acronis-land, it isn't! You must trawl through all of the backups ever made, ever in history, to find the one you want to instigate. Mmmm!

Want a quick recap on the type of backup you have? Forget it. To find out how your backup is arranged you must go into an in-depth screen that takes ages to refresh. And I mean up to two or three minutes at times (sounds fast? Count down three minutes on your watch. Its a long time to stare at a refreshing screen.)

The interface is painfully, teeth-extractingly excruciatingly, slow. Its takes about thirty seconds on my computer to update when you open a folder. It also has a nasty habit of ticking files to backup at random if you click on something during the wait.

When the backup takes place, the GUI hands control over to the engine itself, which runs separately from the interface. This leads to some shocking disconnect between what the software is doing, and what the GUI thinks it is doing. It gets particularly confused when consolidating files - two files consolidating at the same time leads to some very nasty errors.

Generally, the number of actual bugs encountered is humungous. Every other time I use the software it crashes on me. Just fails to the desktop. The backup engine itself is solid and will keep the backup going in the background, but the user interface seems to fail with uncommon regularity.

As for the Plus Pack? If you ever need it, I'll be surprised. I haven't ever had to use it, and more importantly, the software is so bugged I don't think I'd trust it.

Trust is everything when it comes to backup software, and after this shocking effort by Acronis, I have to say I have no faith in that company to handle my data with any degree of competence.

I believe the expression I'm looking for is 'epic fail.'

I am a Professional computer repair tech. I have installed this software on many of my clients' computers including business clients. I set up scheduled backups but do not use the continuous backup option as that seems like overkill to me.

I have had to restore a backup created with this software onto a machine where the OS had been terminally corrupted by viruses. It worked without issue.

I also use this software to clone broken hard drives to new ones and to wipe hard drives to binary zeros before reselling them.

Overall this is an extremely useful piece of software for a very reasonable price but you do need to know how to use it and there are one or two features that could be better. For instance a clone will fail unless you override its default position to fail if it finds unreadable sectors and it will not alert you if a backup fails which it often does if you do not enter your Windows logon password when prompted. So it's not perfect but more than adequate especially considering the good price.