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 Post Posted: Sat Oct 19, 2019 7:08 pm 
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Sigh, I'm just tired of the system load that True Image demands. It is a resource hog. I also don't like it on my laptop as the laptop is a dual boot between Windows 7 and 10. The problem is that, with True Image, I can't backup the entire drive as it does not allow me to image both the Windows 10 and 7 partitions but only the OS partition currently in use.

Right now I'm testing out the free version of Macrium Reflect on my laptop and it has no issue with doing both OS partitions at the same time along with my shared data partition. Since I'm imaging to an external 3 TB drive partitioned to three 1 TB partitions I can do a laptop image of both OSs and the data in a single image as the laptop drive is 1 TB.

Right now my main desktop system is using Seagate's Disk Wizard but that is still True Image, just a free version if you have a Seagate drive installed. If it works out on my laptop I'll switch to the free Macrium on my main. Same will apply with my second desktop system.

I used to swear by True Image but it has become just too intrusive. Even if you disable image protection and the scheduler it will still run processes for those functions so disabling really means nothing as to lowering system load.

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 Post Posted: Sun Oct 20, 2019 1:18 am 
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I use a lite version of Acronis that Intel supplies with its drives. I don't have it installed but have a USB drive that I boot with and do the cloning offline. I don't like all the scheduling stuff either, that's why I liked Drive Image so much in the past, just run the program to do images then nothing running in the background all the time.


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 Post Posted: Sun Oct 20, 2019 12:34 pm 
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With True Image it wasn't just the load from the scheduler. It was also the image protection scheme. I have Defender and MBAM for protection. I don't need my imaging software to try and act as a security program.

I am having a problem with Macrium on my main system though. On that system I do both images and clone. I can't seem to get the clone function to work. Keeps throwing up an error. LOL! Mayhaps I should read the instructions but where is the fun in that??? ;) :rofl2:

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 Post Posted: Sun Oct 20, 2019 3:21 pm 
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I have the 2018 version of Acronis and that is what does a weekly scheduled backup to an external hard drive that is mains connected with USB as well. I've had that set up for years on my office desktop.

On my HP laptop which is the one I use the most I have Acronis 2018 installed but also the free version of Macrium and it's Macrium I use backing up to a 1TB portable hard drive and I really like it. I'm able to back up both drives, my SSD and Hard Drive, and it is very easy to do.

Up to now I've done the upgrade to Acronis as that was what I used because I only had the desktop computer and it was already installed, I think I started with a free version in about 2008, although it was probably a lot earlier than that, I think I was using WinME when I first got Acronis. It's only been about 2/3 years I've owned a laptop, I've actually got 2 this HP and my first one the Asus.

I've had the email to upgrade my Acronis but I'm not going to anymore, there never is really anything new added, OK it might have things new but nothing that I actually want.

Macrium to me is faster, easier and friendlier when it comes to backup, I've been thinking about getting the paid-for version but for the time being while the free version does what I need it to do I'll carry on as I am.

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 Post Posted: Sun Oct 20, 2019 5:44 pm 
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Joan, with Macrium free I have no issue doing an image. I just can't get the danged thing to clone as it keeps coming up with a sector mismatch error that it causes. I have not yet made a recovery disk with Macruim and will give that a shot but, through Windows, all trying to clone with Macrium free does is that it inserts a 129 MB unallocated partition at the beginning of the target drive then fails. This unallocated space is not present on the source drive.

I will have to play some more but may go with Davids method of having boot media whether USB or CD/DVD to do my images and clones. My second desktop is the only one of my three systems still doing images on a schedule and that is just due to my not getting to it yet. Think about it... ALL my data and media are on totally different drives than my system drives. I used to do nightly image backups of my main and second systems but why? If I haven't installed anything or made system changes why would I want to put all that wear and tear on my drives? Pretty much it just means that making a new image that is the same as the last.

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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2019 11:51 am 
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I've never tried doing a clone so can't give you any ideas to try. I don't do an image on a regular basis with Macrium on this laptop but always after major updates. I did make the rescue DVD when I first installed Macrium.

On the desktop with Acronis that is on a weekly backup but doing a full one after so many Differential and only keeping so many Full ones before deleting them.

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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2019 12:16 pm 
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Macrium clone fails in the same way from a bootable rescue disk so is out of the picture for my main system. I'll keep on my laptop as it allows me to do a complete image including both both operating systems in the dual boot. Acronis and Disk Wizard will not do this.

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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2019 3:28 pm 
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Sorry to hear about the cloning, but at least it's useful on your laptop.

I've taken Acronis off my laptop but left it installed on the desktop but I won't do any upgrading to it, it does its job on there and as they say, if it's not broke don't try to fix it.

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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2019 4:25 pm 
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No big deal Joan. Since I want Acronis gone due to the resource overhead it is removed. However I still have the rescue disks for Acronis and Disk Wizard to do my clones. It is no big deal having to reboot to do a clone through the rescue media as, even if started in Windows, both restart the system to do the actual clone. BTW, Disk Wizard is Seagate's lite version of Acronis. The thing with Disk Wizard is I can get the current lite version of Acronis for free. It may not have all the features of the full blown Acronis but does all I need. You DO have to have a Seagate drive mounted though. If I ever don't have a Seagate drive there is always ToDo by EaseUS.

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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2019 7:56 pm 
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Seems all drive manufacturers offer a lite version of Acronis, that way you can buy a new drive and clone your old one to it with little effort.


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 Post Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2019 10:30 pm 
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dvair wrote:
Seems all drive manufacturers offer a lite version of Acronis, that way you can buy a new drive and clone your old one to it with little effort.

Yep, we have established the Intel, and Seagate offer lite versions of Acronis. Just did a quick search and Western Digital also offers a lite Acronis. I imagine this is good advertising for Acronis. ;) Funny thing is that Acronis is not even really needed for this as you can accomplish the same thing with the built in Windows imaging software; create an image, swap drives and restore the image.

Western Digital also covers Hitachi and HGST while Seagate also covers SanDisk and Maxtor*. There are other drive manufacturer's but I think that covers the major players. I don't know that Intel owns any other brand names but would imagine that, if they do, they would also be covered.

* I doubt that many even recognize the Maxtor name but they were awesome drives. Seagate just absorbed them without keeping the line intact. This differs from Western Digital buying Hitachi/HGST as Western Digital maintained the line.

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 Post Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2019 3:39 pm 
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This HP laptop has a SanDisk SSD and a Hitachi Hard Drive and my desktop has a Western Digital Hard Drive. All my external hard drives are Seagate.

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 Post Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2019 5:35 pm 
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Lordy, I have so many drives I don't even remember what brands they all are. Let's see...

Internals main system:
1-6 TB spin drive
1-4 TB spin drive
1-2 TB spin drive
2-500 GB M.2 SS drives
1-240 GB SATA SS drive

Internals second system:
1-6 TB spin drive
1-4 TB spin drive
1-2 TB spin drive
1-1 TB spin drive

Internals laptop system:
1-1 TB spin drive

Externals:
1-4 TB spin drive
1-3 TB spin drive
1-640 GB spin drive
1-40 GB spin drive; Windows 8.1 installed for some reason, should probably just pitch the thing as I have 8.1 on a virtual machine.


All are a mix of Samsung, Seagate, Western Digital, Hitachi/HGST and SanDisk. The most numerous is probably Hitachi/HGST. A total of over 35 TB of storage. I will say that the 6 TB and 4 TB drives in my second system are duplicates that I sync from my main system for media along with half the 2 TB drive in the second system serving as a sync destination for my main system data. Both 4 TB internal drives are empty waiting for the 6 TB drives to fill. 644 GB still empty on the 6 TB drives. I have a LOT of media; 883 movies and a combination of 36 music videos, stage shows and documentaries. BTW, if you ever get a chance to see, Leonard Nimoy's stage presentation of Vincent is awesome! It is from the perspective of Vincent Van Gogh's brother Theo after Vincent's death.

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 Post Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2019 8:04 am 
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Wow! that is some collection of drives, mind you it's understandable.

We're not much into watching films etc. I have a VHS collection but nothing to play them on anymore so they are gradually being replaced by DVDs. I also have several DVDs but usually once we've watched a film it doesn't get watched again, well very rarely, there are enough channels and programs we enjoy on the TV so don't really have time.

Most of the time the TV is on as background noise, I'm on my laptop a lot so listening and occasionally looking up to see the action.

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 Post Posted: Wed Oct 23, 2019 4:44 pm 
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Ya, it's a lot of drives Joan but the ones in the second system have to match or exceed my main system so that everything will fit when I sync them. Even though I do watch a movie in my bedroom, where the second system resides, now and then it is mostly for backups of media and data. Heck, I have 304 GB used just on my data partition. 125 GB of that is the virtual hard drives for my 6 virtual machines.

The main thing is the media backups. It would take forever and then some to re-rip over 900 videos. That equates to 4.82 TB used on each of my 6 TB drives. Actually I could use a lot less space if I converted the videos to MP4 or MKV but I prefer to keep them in the original DVD format. Actually a lot of the videos were bought on-line as digital downloads that are usually in MP4 format but, even those, I convert to DVD format. No real reason to do so but I just prefer them all being consistent. Since space isn't an issue why not? With the total of 10 TB devoted to media on each system I estimate that I could store 1700-1800 videos in DVD format... going by average video size it works out to 1744 videos.

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 Post Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2019 7:56 am 
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I also have several external drives for backup purposes, and I use 2017 Acronis. My biggest (and probably only) complaint is the space it requires on my hard drives. Basically, it requires twice the image size, since it won't release the older image backup until it completes the current image. But other than that, I have no problem with Acronis.

That being said, I have never had to do a recover using Acronis. Actually, I have never had to do a recover using any utility. Old Peter use to say I should 'practice' doing a recover, but I could never bring myself to do that.

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 Post Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2019 11:15 am 
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Just be sure to have an Acronis Rescue Disk or USB device. While I have restored Acronis images without trouble booting to the rescue media I have never had success when starting the restore within Windows.

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 Post Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2019 4:10 pm 
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jaylach wrote:
Just be sure to have an Acronis Rescue Disk or USB device. While I have restored Acronis images without trouble booting to the rescue media I have never had success when starting the restore within Windows.

As an add-on I THINK that the reason that an Acronis restore fails when started within Windows is the re-start involved. Both my system and clone drives are NVMe M.2 solid state drives. Even though the actual image backup is on a regular SATA spin drive the restore has to write to an NVMe solid state. I don't think that the re-start involved carries along the NVMe drivers. Even a "normal" recovery disk won't work. I have to use a WinPE recovery disk that has the NVMe drivers. I'm sure that you probably have a recovery disk but I'd suggest that you make sure that you also have a WinPE recovery disk as I believe, if memory serves, that you have an NVMe SSD as your system drive. To do this go to Tools within Acronis and select Recovery Media Builder then go to Advanced and select the WinPE option. There is also a Linux based option but I've never tried it.

As to the need for NVMe drivers, again if memory serves, I believe that you had some issues when you first got your system due to NVMe drivers not being installed which Velocity solved by supplying you with the drivers.

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 Post Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2019 4:28 pm 
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My Intel one, I use the Linux version, the rescue drive has always been Linux based up until the latest version of their Data Migration software. I can make rescue media based on Windows PE or Linux but when either starts up it just runs the imaging program which is basically the same in each version. I like the Linux one as it shows me my drives as they truly are, NVMe show as NVMe and the SATA ones so as that. The Windows version displays the drive differently.


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 Post Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2019 4:50 pm 
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Thanks for the input David. :) I'll have to look at the Linux based recovery disk.

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 Post Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2019 5:07 pm 
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jaylach wrote:
jaylach wrote:
Just be sure to have an Acronis Rescue Disk or USB device. While I have restored Acronis images without trouble booting to the rescue media I have never had success when starting the restore within Windows.

As an add-on I THINK that the reason that an Acronis restore fails when started within Windows is the re-start involved. Both my system and clone drives are NVMe M.2 solid state drives. Even though the actual image backup is on a regular SATA spin drive the restore has to write to an NVMe solid state. I don't think that the re-start involved carries along the NVMe drivers. Even a "normal" recovery disk won't work. I have to use a WinPE recovery disk that has the NVMe drivers. I'm sure that you probably have a recovery disk but I'd suggest that you make sure that you also have a WinPE recovery disk as I believe, if memory serves, that you have an NVMe SSD as your system drive. To do this go to Tools within Acronis and select Recovery Media Builder then go to Advanced and select the WinPE option. There is also a Linux based option but I've never tried it.

As to the need for NVMe drivers, again if memory serves, I believe that you had some issues when you first got your system due to NVMe drivers not being installed which Velocity solved by supplying you with the drivers.

Jay, you are correct. I have a 475GB Samsung NVMe SSD. And although I've never used it, I do have a bootable WinPE-based Rescue Media....I have one for both Acronis and Macrium Reflect. Additionally, I have a bootable USB flash drive.

And yes, when I first got my computer, Velocity had to supply me with the proper driver for my SSD.

You have a good memory, my friend. So did I in years past, lol.

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 Post Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2019 5:30 pm 
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LOL! I can remember conversations from years ago but, half the time, can't remember what I had for dinner the day before... :ugeek: :mrgreen:

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 Post Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 8:11 pm 
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Hey, Jay, discovered this old thread. Whatever did you do with Acronis?
Bill

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 Post Posted: Wed May 13, 2020 8:46 pm 
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Acadia wrote:
Hey, Jay, discovered this old thread. Whatever did you do with Acronis?
Bill

I still use Acronis 2018 but it isn't installed. I boot to a rescue disk and run from there doing, both, a manual clone and images to both internal and external drives..

I do the manual clones between 2 500GB M.2 SSD drives. I considered just setting up a Mirror R.A.I.D. Array instead of manually cloning but decided against going R.A.I.D. as, if I got infected, both drives would be infected. While an infection could affect my destination clone drive a R.A.I.D. Mirror would make it definite.

I also have a Disk Wizard rescue disk which is actually Acronis but you need to have a Seagate hard/SSD drive installed to use. Neither Acronis nor Disk Wizard are actually installed on my systems. I do all my backups manually. I would not actually recommend my method of doing manual backups to most people as they just won't get around to doing them.

As to my data and media drives I backup in two ways.
1) I use GoodSync (as does Steve) to sync in a one way direction from my main system to my second system. I do this for both my data and media drives. In essence I am making a clone of my main system's data and media drives on my second system.
Here is GoodSync: https://www.goodsync.com/features

2) I drag and drop my data from my main system to an external drive. I only do this for my data drive as my 4.88 TB (used space) first media drive would probably take a week to copy to an external.

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