Acronis upgrade from ver.9 to ver.11 ?

[bd1886]

Was just reading reviews on Acronis v11 Home. You guy's have always warned about putting to much stock in reviews (from any one source) and was wondering if this is a case in point. The reviews on Newegg are definitely mixed on this version. Quite a few of the reviews seem to be from questionable sources. (But a few of the negative points tend to be somewhat consistent throughout.)
Here's the thing...I'm running ver.9 now and have found it to be good. Picked up a copy of ver.11 Home to put on another box but ended up using a supplied software package that came with an external HD instead. My question: Is ver.11 an improvement substantial enough to considering upgrading to.
Have noticed that some of you have had a lot of experience with Acronis's different versions. What are your opinions on this?

[glc]

Same as my opinion with everything - if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I'm still using Apricorn EZ-Gig II, which is based on ATI 8.

[bd1886]

Well glc...I kinda knew that that answer would be coming my direction. Definitely advise that could be applied with tons of situations around here! (I'll probably do just that...keep it.) Still curious about the newer versions though. Uzanybody use 'em? I'll end up installing it on something soon.

[glc]

Historically, Acronis has been a bit rough with the initial release of new versions. However, they are pretty good about fixing the problems with updates, you should probably wait a while before jumping into a new version.

[kilgoretrout]

The main reason to update is to have the rescue cd be able to recognize your new hardware. I know the rescue cd generated by the older versions can have problems recognizing sata drives on newer motherboards and recognizing external usb hard drives on newer motherboards. That rescue cd runs a linux kernel and if you have an old version, that old kernel will not have support for the most recent hardware as it didn't exist when the kernel was compiled.
However, if your current version of True Image generates a rescue cd that properly detects your hardware, there's really not any reason to update.

[glc]

I don't even use a rescue CD - I boot with the program CD. If you buy the downloaded version instead of the boxed version, then you don't have a choice.

[kilgoretrout]

I assume you are talking about the Apricorn EZ-GigII cd. I have that but never tried booting with it till I read your post. Thanks for the tip but my results are mixed.

The good news - USB support is much better with the Apricorn cd compared to my experience with the rescue boot cd. On the three different rigs I tried with the Apricorn cd, all properly detected the presence of my external usb hard drive and I was able to read and write to the drive in image and restore operations.

The bad news - as with the rescue boot cd, the Apricorn cd was unable to detect any of my sata drives on an intel 965 motherboard. Also, neither the rescue cd nor the Apricorn cd would boot from the sata optical drive on the intel 965 board.

Both boot cds are clearly using a linux kernel for hardware detection, but the Apricorn one appears to have been modified to make sure external usb hard drives work properly. The kernel used in both is old and incapable of detecting sata devices on an intel 965 board and I would suspect similar problems on other newer motherboards.

[glc]

Same here - I have a P35 board with all SATA drives (hard and optical) running in AHCI. My housing is eSATA, using a slot plate adapter off one of the internal ports. My CD (EZ-Gig 8.19) will boot into the program, but it can't find any drives. Being that this is based off ATI 8, I'm not really too surprised. It *WILL* create images all day from the Windows interface.

EDIT: E-mail sent to Apricorn, will report back what they say.

[glc]

I received a reply today. They have a new version just about ready to go. The tech gave me a link to download the beta, I tested it and it works on a ICH9R. I'm not at liberty to provide the link here, but any of you that need it should be able to get it pretty soon.

[kilgoretrout]

Glad to hear that as this has been a reported issue since ATI 9 which came out about the same time as the first intel core2duo motherboards. I saw similar reported problems with ATI 11 on their forum where the recommended workaround was to use BartPE with an ATI 11 plugin which could be purchased for an additional $5 from some third party. That was also the recommended workaround for ATI 10 IIRC.
I assume you are referring to an update to ATI 11. If that's the case, it's probably worth the purchase if the rescue cd has a modern linux kernel with support for newer hardware. But I would definitely wait for that update to come out before purchasing.

[glc]

No, I'm referring to an update to Apricorn EZ-Gig. If you send an e-mail to Apricorn support they will probably fix you up.