Yeah it's on my to-do list haha

Just got my free upgrade to Acronis 2018  (under my subscription plan)
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What's new

• New! Backup Statistics and Activity graphically represents content of a backup, provides statistics for backed-up file categories, such as documents, photos, videos, music, and others. Backup activity streams allow you to track history of backup operations starting from a backup creation, the operation statuses, and to analyze the statistics for successfully backed-up data.

 

• Improved Media Builder to create WinPE media by using Windows Recovery Environment without downloading the additional component—Windows ADK or Windows AIK (up to 6 GB). You can customize your media in Advanced mode, or use the predetermined settings of Simple mode.

 

• New! Active Protection Dashboard monitors how many potentially risky processes have been flagged, and the number of files duplicated in cache to protect them from the risky processes. The dashboard provides statistics for blocked, trusted processes and allows you to manage a permission list so your trusted applications could run as normal.

 

• Improved Active Protection compatibility with Windows Defender and other third-party antivirus software.

 

• Improved Clone disk utility—You can clone disk on an active Windows system without having to use bootable media. By using the volume shadow copy service (VSS), Acronis True Image allows you to create a snapshot of the active partition and boot from the new disk.

 

• New! Conversion to Virtual Machine—Convert Acronis backup files to the Microsoft Virtual Hard Drive format to ensure the system will boot starting a virtual machine with Hyper-V. You can also mount a .vhd(x) file as a virtual hard drive.

 

• New! Faster file and system recovery with the enabled WAN optimization option that increases download speed from Acronis Cloud data centers.

 

• New! Faster Incremental Backup for disk and partition backups with Acronis Changed Block Tracker (CBT). The Volume Tracker reduces the amount of time taken to perform incremental or differential images by monitoring the changes to an image in real-time mode.

 

• New! Laptop power setting allows you to pause backup while working on battery to save the battery power. The paused backups will continue automatically after connecting power adapter.

 

• Usability and other improvements:
  • Mobile devices are available in the backup source list.
  • Access to backup shortcut menu with right-click.
  • Progress bar was updated with application window blurring.
  • Fixed issue with the search dialog that did not provide functionality of recovering several files from different backup versions.
  • Fixed issue with possibility to move a backup from a password-protected network to a local drive or to another share.

Known issues

• [TI-109637] Windows Defender is paused after installing Acronis True Image 2018, until Windows is restarted.
• [TI-92941] Running mobile backup prevents the computer from going to sleep.

abacab

mettelus
That is odd, I am using 6.3 as well and booted from the DVD, but am on Win7. I will have to revisit this, since my system was still remembering the removed SSD until the system said "System Recovery is turned off." When I checked options in there, it had two C drives listed, so I removed the old and set it to the new one.
 
I did just check Reflect, and the images of the old drives are now valid, so I suspect the system remembering that drive may have been a part of it.
 
Initially the new SSD was also not formatted, so when I get a chance will boot off the DVD and see if I can see all images now.

I will also add that I am on a UEFI BIOS and my 250GB SSD system drive is GPT partition style.
 
Macrium allows you to choose from several WinPE versions, so I went with the latest which is WinPE 10, which is the default for Windows 8 and higher.  It looks like Windows 7 may be limited to building one of the older versions.  I see that Windows PE 3.1 rescue media is based on Windows 7.
 
The HDD that I restored to is a WD 1TB 7200 rpm SATA drive.  It had two MBR partitions, which I had to delete before beginning the restore.  After the restore, I had my GPT boot partition on my WD drive, and was easily able to select it for boot directly from my BIOS.  Windows 10 booted, and even showed that is was still activated, so it didn't even blink. 
 
However running my system from a spinning drive was noticeably slower, so I couldn't wait to get back to running from my SSD! 
 
I was about to upgrade to the full version of Macrium, so I'm glad this test worked for me!

I finally remembered to boot from the Reflect DVD and all of the images are visible and able to be restored. A couple things I did NOT do when I first booted it with the new SSD was 1) verify the SSD was formatted (I think that it wasn't, but not sure), and 2) I never did anything with the BIOS, so the new SSD wasn't specifically verified as being seen by the system. IIRC Reflect could see it, but would not restore the image initially.
 
Samsung's Data Migration cloned without issues, but restore points were disabled since two "C:" drives were allocated to it. That was the only change I made. My machine will also not enable RAPID, but not really an issue for me. Ironically, the benchmark software in Samsung's Magician saw the new drive as slower, but it is better throughput due to bad blocks on the old one. I guess it does a very focused test and just happened to hit an area of the old on that was still good (I got about a 10% reduction in the old SSD over a period of 6 years, so it did a lot of grunt work without complaint).
 
 

I use Macrium free but I don't do regular backups. I copy my project files to external USB drives any time I have something new done. And, although I have now some sample libraries (from Komplete f.i.) they are recent acquisitions and I never installed most of them yet.

I used to save image files of my (whole) system drive but I stopped doing this regularly because I believed that the licenses and activations would not be saved properly this way, and this would be the main reason for imaging a system drive IMO. I mean... OK... it's a pain in the b**t having to reinstall everything but it's not the end of the world. Losing any licenses...well... this raises the problem to another level.

Having said this, coincidentally, last weekend my c: drive crashed!!!... and I kept most of my software activations there. I restored an old image I made, more than a year ago, into a new SSD drive recently installed (and still mostly empty) and what was my surprise when I saw that many of my licenses where still active!!! All my Waves activations, for instance, even for plugins that I bought some days ago!!! (I had to run windows update to reinstall the latest control center and it took a while, but not a big deal). Also my Arturia plugs where all activated. Of course the plugins are not installed... but the activations are there somehow. I don't know how this works... maybe there is some redundancy in the registration/activation system and the related files are copied in multiple places. Anyway, I'm glad the problem is not as big as I thought at first.

I had no time yet to check all my activations (I have a lot). I reinstalled the latest Sonar release and activated it without problems. I'll take notes about what apps loose the activation and I can report it later if any one is interested.

And I DEFINITELY will start doing regular imaging on my system drive again.

sergiosimoes
 
All my Waves activations, for instance, even for plugins that I bought some days ago!!! (I had to run windows update to reinstall the latest control center and it took a while, but not a big deal). Also my Arturia plugs where all activated. Of course the plugins are not installed... but the activations are there somehow. I don't know how this works... maybe there is some redundancy in the registration/activation system and the related files are copied in multiple places.

 
I'm guessing that the most logical reason for that is if you had originally registered and activated online.  Then the activation software matches up your computer ID, and your user ID, and looks it up online.  So likely just need to install the plugs, and off you go!
 

And I DEFINITELY will start doing regular imaging on my system drive again.

That's a good plan!

How about throttled upload speeds?  Online speed tests confirm over 5 Mbps upload with my ISP.  But..I was trying to use my Godaddy web space to backup my audio folder, and I knew it would take a chunk of time, but I couldn't FTP over 1 Mbps.  On top of that the connection kept dropping and auto reconnecting.  What a freaking mess.  I canceled that whole operation and have been wondering what to do ever since.
 

dlesaux
Here's what I do! I have a 1TB USB drive where I installed my OneDrive directory. I use a free program call FreeFileSync that allows me to mirror my project files to my USB drive which in turn mirrors to OneDrive. Initial backup takes a while since it's mirroring the whole drive but afterwards, it only updates files that have changed. I backup every day and it takes about minute.
 
I've always followed the rule, if your data doesn't exist in three places, it doesn't exist. This method meets that intent.
 
As usual, YMMV..

I like this approach.  How does the mirroring work?  I guess I'm always worried it's going to miss Cakewalk .wa~ audio files and etc.  In a nightmare scenario, could it mirror the other direction and remove files from my PC or replace them with older files from the USB drive?
 
My DAW is offline, permanently.  So I am thinking of using your approach to backup to the USB drive, and then maybe once a week or so move the drive to my network PC and backup to OneDrive or something similar while I sleep.  
 
 
 
 

I have a two phrase strategy. 
 
I manually copy all folders to an external 1 or 2 gig drive. I don't want to have to trust some kind of proprietary softrware program to restore folders.
 
Then I use the free Macrium product (recommended by a person on this forum) to do an image file of my C drive and create a recovery flash drive in case of a system-wide failure. 
 
I'll never the use cloud for anything other than temporary backup. A few days ago my cable was done for a few days and I was Internet-less. Had I needed to get something from the Cloud, I would have been SOL. I also don't trust the security of Cloud-based storage. If hackers can get into CIA and DOD databases, it can't be that difficult for them to get into cloud based servers. 

raisindot
I have a two phrase strategy. 
 
I manually copy all folders to an external 1 or 2 gig drive. I don't want to have to trust some kind of proprietary softrware program to restore folders.
 
Then I use the free Macrium product (recommended by a person on this forum) to do an image file of my C drive and create a recovery flash drive in case of a system-wide failure. 
 
I'll never the use cloud for anything other than temporary backup. A few days ago my cable was done for a few days and I was Internet-less. Had I needed to get something from the Cloud, I would have been SOL. I also don't trust the security of Cloud-based storage. If hackers can get into CIA and DOD databases, it can't be that difficult for them to get into cloud based servers. 

I guess I don't understand the problem with cloud backup.  It's just another layer.  If it's inaccessible for some period of time, it's no issue at all because backups are only needed in the event of a catastrophe. If something terrible happened and my local backup solution was destroyed by fire, earthquake, theft, or virus, I'm not sure that I'm bothered too much if the cloud is temporarily unavailable to me for a couple of days via an outage.   
 
Now, security, I get that.  So, maybe if that's an issue you just backup your studio stuff?  I mean, maybe hackers will like my music and make me famous?  

Buy a Synology server with RAID 5 disks. Backup to that. Buy another Synology server for your mother or girlfriend and that's your off site backup sorted. Not only that but you will get your own personal VPN (no subscriptions, it's all built in). It is an investment but the costs is reasonable.

polarbear
After my recent format and reinstall I set up Acronis and bought a 5TB USB3.0 drive. It creates drive images with incremental updates (keeps the last 5) of all 3 of my internal drives (C: OS, D: Samples, E: Projects) as 3 separate scheduled drive backups... I haven't looked at it since it started... I'd like to assume it's working haha. Eventually I'll get some solution for backing up my backups. (I love computers).

abacab
It never hurts to at least make sure that you can test boot into the standalone recovery environment, and access the stored images.  If you can't, it's easier to fix now before your computer breaks and you really need those images.
 
It is also a good idea to actually perform a test restore onto a spare drive, just to make sure that it works as planned, and you know the process before you really need it in a crunch.
 
I don't bother with incrementals, because it complicates the restore process.  I stick with full images only, which is simple if you have enough external drive space.  That way you only need one image file to complete a restore with.

You should (I hesitate to say "must" as it will come across harsh and forceful) have a backup and restore strategy. That means testing, otherwise it is Russian roulette.