Does Acronis Universal Restore Actually Work Well?

[gigahertz20]

Universal Restore is the Acronis proprietary technology that helps recover and boot up Windows on dissimilar hardware or a virtual machine. The Universal Restore handles differences in devices that are critical for the operating system start-up, such as storage controllers, motherboard or chipset.

I built a Windows 7 X64 Intel Core 2 Duo Machine and was thinking of using the universal restore feature in Acronis to image it to a AMD Phenom Quad Core Machine. How many people in here have used Acronis Universal Restore in situations like this and how did it turn out?

Obviously, both computers will have windows 7 X64 as the OS, but the 2 computers have different processors/motherboards/video cards/etc. Is universal restore able to handle all the hardware differences?

What about all the software activations/serials/licenses on the Intel machine, how does it handle those when imaging it onto the AMD machine?

 

[stlcardinals]

What kind of a license for Windows 7 did you buy? Retail, Upgrade, OEM?

 

[gigahertz20]

What kind of a license for Windows 7 did you buy? Retail, Upgrade, OEM?

Retail

 

[stlcardinals]

Retail

I personally would just do a clean install then.

 

[Nothinman]

Supposedly it works, but a friend of mine was having problems with getting new sound drivers working after the restore so it's not 100%. And I wasn't there so I don't know what his exact problem ended up being so your best bet is to just try it and see.

 

[theevilsharpie]

I have not used the Universal Restore feature. However, having "worked" with the latest versions of Acronis True Image and Acronis Backup & Recovery over the past few months, I have little confidence that it, or any feature of Acronis' software beyond a simple backup, works properly.

 

[gigahertz20]

I have not used the Universal Restore feature. However, having "worked" with the latest versions of Acronis True Image and Acronis Backup & Recovery over the past few months, I have little confidence that it, or any feature of Acronis' software beyond a simple backup, works properly.

What problems have you had? What other hard drive imaging software would you recommend then? There seems like alot of people that either love or hate Acronis software. I guess it either works for some people or doesn't.

 

[theevilsharpie]

What problems have you had?

Backup jobs stop running for no apparent reason. Backup jobs showing as completed when parts of the job have actually failed. Jobs getting "stuck" at a certain percentage for no apparent reason. No assistance from Acronis support other than to "update to the latest build" or "re-install the program" which of course resolves the problem, until it occurs again right after Acronis support closes the ticket.

What other hard drive imaging software would you recommend then?

Good question. The built-in Windows backup is too slow and limited in functionality to be useful. Full-fledged consumer products that I've used (Acronis True Image, Acronis Backup & Recovery Workstation, EMC Restrospect Professional) haven't been reliable enough for me to trust my data to them. Professional products like Backup Exec are too expensive for the consumer market.

At this point, I'm just using SyncToy. It's reliable, but lacks functionality that I'd like, like versioning.

 

[Emulex]

use BESR instead. since 8.0 its been way more stable than acronis.

i run full backups (no incrementals) on 40+ machines nightly over smb network. solid.

 

[Ken90630]

I've had good results with Acronis True Image (current & previous version). While I don't know TheEvilSharpie's situation and thus can't say why he had the probs he did, I've used it on at least a half dozen different PCs over the last year or so without a hitch (my own machines & several friends/acquaintances' machine). Maybe TheEvilSharpie's PC had a malware infection, or a HD with bad sectors on it, or a software compatibility issue? Who knows ....

I can't, however, say I've used the universal restore feature you mention. From what you describe re how you want to use it, however, it would seem that you'd run into issues because the original image you create from the first PC will be specific to that PC in terms of hardware drivers and software licenses (as you suspected). First time you go to Windows Update with the AMD Phenom machine, Microsoft's servers are gonna recognize that the Windows license already belongs to another PC (the Intel one) -- unless you bought a multi-user license of Win 7 X64, of course.

Even if you did get a multi-user license for the O.S., you'd have to uninstall all the Intel system hardware drivers after 'restoring' the backup image to the AMD machine, then replace them with that system's (AMD) hardware drivers. That could get a bit messy & time consuming, and it would probably take just as long as a fresh install with the proper drivers outta the gate.

TIP: Don't use DVDs to create the backup image. It takes forever and will require several discs. Use a large capacity flash drive (I use 16GB ones) or an external hard drive. I also create two backups when I do it: one in the Acronis Secure Zone on the host system's HD (to have in case of a malware infection) and one on the aforementioned external drive (to use if the HD dies).

 

[gigahertz20]

I can't, however, say I've used the universal restore feature you mention. From what you describe re how you want to use it, however, it would seem that you'd run into issues because the original image you create from the first PC will be specific to that PC in terms of hardware drivers and software licenses (as you suspected). First time you go to Windows Update with the AMD Phenom machine, Microsoft's servers are gonna recognize that the Windows license already belongs to another PC (the Intel one) -- unless you bought a multi-user license of Win 7 X64, of course.

I have another copy of Win 7 for the other computer, that is not an issue at all. Acronis advertises the universal restore feature as being able to backup an image of one computer to another no matter the hardware differences. Supposedly it does not install the drivers that are hardware dependent, but I might try the universal restore feature to see how it turns out. If I get errors I'll just do a fresh install on the AMD machine.

 

[Ken90630]

I have another copy of Win 7 for the other computer, that is not an issue at all. Acronis advertises the universal restore feature as being able to backup an image of one computer to another no matter the hardware differences. Supposedly it does not install the drivers that are hardware dependent, but I might try the universal restore feature to see how it turns out. If I get errors I'll just do a fresh install on the AMD machine.

Okay, well I guess I'll have to read up on that feature then because I'm not familiar with it. Maybe I misunderstood what you're trying to accomplish: I interpreted your goal as trying to copy/clone one entire system (software) and then install that copy onto another PC, to end up with two PCs running the same exact software config. All, presumably, to save time. Is that correct?

I'm also a bit confused why you'd want to do what you're asking about if you already have a second copy of Win 7 for the second PC. If you're going to install it on the second PC anyway, why would you wanna clone the first PC to install it on the second one? You'd have to install your second copy of Win 7 anyway to get around Microsoft's Product Activation, so .... Forgive me, but I must be missing something.

 

[BoT]

i had good results with acronis for backup and restore of files. the image backup is good too but image restore was a bit troubling for me.

if i can i use norton ghost but if i need a free version i use macrium reflect.
http://www.macrium.com/
if you look around you will find that they have a free version for personal use.
i like those two because both have a fairly easy live media version for image restore and back up.
ghost has it on floppy, cd, bartpe and macrium has cd and bartpe

 

[Acronis Support]

Backup jobs stop running for no apparent reason. Backup jobs showing as completed when parts of the job have actually failed. Jobs getting "stuck" at a certain percentage for no apparent reason. No assistance from Acronis support other than to "update to the latest build" or "re-install the program" which of course resolves the problem, until it occurs again right after Acronis support closes the ticket.

Hello theevilsharpie,

Thank you for bringing up these issues. I would like to help you with any problems that you may have.

There can be different reasons for the backup job to stop running or getting stuck, unfortunately, each specific issue has to be addressed individually by analyzing log files and the backup environment.

We always recommend to update to the latest build of our software because each new build brings a lot of fixes and optimization. Unfortunately, the same build can have its own backup failures, that is why, as I mentioned above, we need to diagnose each specific problem.

Please let me know if there is anything I can help you with regarding your Acronis software, I will do my best to assist you.

For all the forum users, I noticed that you were discussing the process for restoring to dissimilar hardware. We have a detailed article in our Knowledge Base that explains this procedure in great detail. You can take a look at it here.

If you have additional questions or any other issues with Acronis, please let me know.

Thank you.

 

[Ken90630]

Hello theevilsharpie,

Thank you for bringing up these issues. I would like to help you with any problems that you may have.

There can be different reasons for the backup job to stop running or getting stuck, unfortunately, each specific issue has to be addressed individually by analyzing log files and the backup environment.

We always recommend to update to the latest build of our software because each new build brings a lot of fixes and optimization. Unfortunately, the same build can have its own backup failures, that is why, as I mentioned above, we need to diagnose each specific problem.

Please let me know if there is anything I can help you with regarding your Acronis software, I will do my best to assist you.

For all the forum users, I noticed that you were discussing the process for restoring to dissimilar hardware. We have a detailed article in our Knowledge Base that explains this procedure in great detail. You can take a look at it here.

If you have additional questions or any other issues with Acronis, please let me know.

Thank you.

Thanks for your post & link to the article. After reading up on Universal Restore (which I admittedly didn't know much about), I just have one question: What about the registry? Any issues there upon restoring an image to a PC with dissimilar hardware?

Let's say, hypothetically, the 'recipient' PC is in another room & is going to be connected to different peripherals (e.g., a different printer, scanner, mouse/keyboard). The registry from the 'donor' PC is gonna contain entries for its peripherals' software, which won't match the 'recipient' PC's peripherals. Since we all know removing software via Add/Remove Programs OFTEN leaves registry traces behind (more often than not), that alone wouldn't be enough to rely on after installing the image to the recipient machine.

So do you recommend running a registry cleaner app on the 'recipient' PC after using UR to image a system to it? Or can UR be set to not copy over peripheral software registry entries? (That, I would think, could get a little tricky.)

Not trying to be a killjoy or anything here -- just curious.