I am updating this post partly in fairness to Acronis.

They did not respond quickly to my problem with Acronis 2018. I had decided to un-install it and try for a refund. They called me on my cell phone about ten minutes after I’d done the un-install and installed a competitive product. I asked for a refund and got it on my credit card a few days later.

What follows is my original post, unaltered, until you get to the bottom where I will mention Paragon. Original post continues right here.

I claim to ‘look after’ five different computers in this house.

I acquired Acronis 2018 to use as backup for the newest computer,  a Zenbook for my wife. She can watch useful videos in her art/sewing/ studio instead of lugging subsets of equipment to the desktop downstairs.

Acronis 2018 made exactly one backup on a 3 terabyte Mybook Live, USB 3. It refused to make a second backup on the same drive connected the same way. It gave an error to the effect that the backup location could not be found.

Acronis 2018 could not make a recovery bootable USB because the screen was too big (mostly blank white space) with no scroll bar.

I overcame this by un-locking the taskbar (to get one extra screen line) and created a bootable USB. This machine has a different bios from what I’m used to, but it’s rather easy to choose a USB boot if one is available.

The boot leads to a blue screen from which a recovery canNot be launched.

I am considering my options with regard to this purchase. I think that if I solemnly swear that the product does not work my credit card company will reverse the charge.

Acronis 2017 was an oops moment. I wanted to increase my 2016 3-license agreement, but despite promises via eMail of a deal, the site would not make it cheaper than purchasing one new license. Not being prescient, I did not realize I’d need more than one more seat, so I got a 1-license Acronis 2017.

2017 has one bug. From time to time a window pops up saying ‘operation failed.’ There is no clue as to what operation. I think this happens when there is no Internet and it tries to find updates. This message seems to come up shortly after a cold start. 2017 is installed on an Acer Switch Alpha 12.

Acronis 2016 is a 3-license deal and is on two desktops and the older Zenbook. It works fine. I built recovery USBs on each machine separately and tested, getting to the point where it was asking: ‘do a full recovery’ or ‘what files?’ So I assume this would work if I needed it to.

There was a problem with 2016, however. On my wife’s desktop (after it had been used several times) it said I had installed it on more than three machines and I had 30 days to fix this. After some discussion Acronis allowed that it was legally installed after all.

I have no idea why Acronis would think it was on another machine. I have no idea why Acronis picked this particular computer out of three to complain about. It makes no sense.

So, today I downloaded (and paid for) a competitor’s backup product. This on the newer Zenbook. Sadly the install seems to need two executables so I guess I’ll actually have to read the manual. Sigh. There seems to be no rest for the wicked, or for sysadmin’s.

So, Acronis has my backup on four machines, and my back up on 2018 which I can solemnly swear is, on my installation, c..p.

I should mention that Acronis did give me a refund and did offer a fix. However I needed to back up my wife’s laptop ASAP and so got Paragon, an alternative. I downloaded the free version to discover that it does not support rescue media creation. So I deleted that and got the paid version.

I can Not create rescue media with this package either. It needed a Massive download from Microsoft, which had an error message; then rescue media creation fails every time. I have submitted a ticket to Paragon. I am hoping my wife won’t do something Very Dumb and we won’t need rescue media. But I want to build it anyway.

backup. sigh.