Acronis Warning

[AlanHo]

I have just had a fright when using Acronis to retore my C: drive after a self inflicted corruption of my system. I have done it a few times before and have got accustomed to Acronis getting me back on the straight and narrow.

But not this time

A few months ago I upgraded to Acronis Version 9 and continued to take weekly back-ups of my C: and D: drives as before. When taking a back-up you are asked to give the file a name - and I named each file with the date.

For example "Back Up 17.11.06"

I back up onto an external hard drive and each week delete the oldest file to make room for the new one. There are usually 8 weeks worth on file.

Today I popped the recovery disc into the DVD drive. switched on the computer and the Acronis programme launched. I told it I wanted to recover my C: drive and it opened the usual drive tree. I selected the appropriate external drive - but to my horror no back up files were shown - but I knew they were there having seen them previously when using Windows Explorer.

Fortunately, I was able to boot back into Windows and open explorer - at which point I realised the files were listed as type 06 and not Acronis. Since changing to Acronis 9 it had not added the .tib suffix to my chosen file name. I manually added .tib to each file, rebooted with Acronis and bingo - the restore action worked perfectly and all the files could be seen.

To the best of my knowledge I have not always been required to manually add the .tib extension when taking a back up - though I am more than willing to be corrected on this. Unfortunately I made two changes at the same time - I installed Acronis 9 on top of my previous version and also changed the way I named back up files to differentiate them from the previous version in case it had any significance. This was when I started giving files a name ending with the date. It seems that the system sees the last full stop as the delineator for the file type and I had used 06.

My recommendation to anyone using Acronis is to check that your back-ups are working if you make changes. Be sure your back up files have the .tib extension.

[andsome]

My back up files in Acronis 8 are ALWAYS to tib. It has never offered anything different. I have no intention of upgrading. I have heard of other people having problems with version 9. Glad you sorted it out OK.

[D4\/!d]

Thanks for the warning Alan

My method is very similar to yours. I date my backup files too. Although my backups are on an ext hard drive, so for the new file, I select a previous filename and edit the date.

My naming convention is:

20061117 SeaDrive.tib

That way I use no full stops and the dates are sorted in order (yyyymmdd) :)

[AlanHo]

Thanks for the warning Alan

My method is very similar to yours. I date my backup files too. Although my backups are on an ext hard drive, so for the new file, I select a previous filename and edit the date.

My naming convention is:

20061117 SeaDrive.tib

That way I use no full stops and the dates are sorted in order (yyyymmdd) :)

Good idea - I like that and will adopt similar convention.

What version of Acronis are you using - I would be interested to check whether version 9 normally automatically appends the tib extension - or whether I fooled it with the numeric date at the end of the file name.

[AlanHo]

I just noticed another anomaly.

I restored my computer back to a date before the clocks were put back at the end of October. My computer clock is now reading an hour slow.

For some reason - it has knocked an extra hour off the correct time.

I have of course now corrected it.

Lesson - If you restore your computer over either of the clock change periods - remember to check your computer clock setting

[andsome]

I just noticed another anomaly.

I restored my computer back to a date before the clocks were put back at the end of October. My computer clock is now reading an hour slow.

For some reason - it has knocked an extra hour off the correct time.

I have of course now corrected it.

Lesson - If you restore your computer over either of the clock change periods - remember to check your computer clock setting

Useful tip. :)