Terabyte s/w: Warning & Solution

[smallhagrid]

A little bit of background...

I've been wanting to make a VM image of my in-use XP system that has always served me well now that it is quite old & I'm actively switching to full time Linux usage.

'TeraByte Drive Image Backup and Restore Suite' (previously just IFW) is supposed to have great P2V abilities so I decided to give it a try to see if it is better than what I've been using.

(Macrium, DriveImage, Easeus)
Immediately after I did the installation of it, a very serious USB drive problem started - this has never happened before to any system of mine. (I also could not find any idea of how to reverse it via searching at their site, or generally.)

 

Details:
Right after the installation was completed, when I tried to use a USB drive as on any other day, I plugged it in & no notification popped up, nor did it get assigned a drive letter as it always had right until this time.
Looking in device manager it is listed under disk drives, and under disk manager it is also showing - but XP doesn't assign a letter for it.
A complete removal of the app also did not fix this problem.
I found that I could manually letter the drive & access it - but it refuses to appear in the 'safely remove hardware' list as it always has before.
Also, once I'd given it a letter, I could stop it with a 3rd party utility - but since I couldn't detach the drive letter via disk management that letter remained as a sort of phantom, empty used letter after the drive is out of the PC.

This was a very serious problem for me because I have 3 or so drives that I must use every day over & over again.

 

Finally I quit trying to find an open solution & emailed them...and they sent me a link, here:

https://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=410

Which had NOT come up when I searched their site for some unknown reason (unlisted ??).

 

Since my system HAD used Acronis in the past, I looked & found that it did leave snapman behind when it was removed.
Eliminating that trace corrected the problem immediately.

There was no warning of this that came up during installation, which has me thinking rather poorly of a company that prefers to ignore likely problems until they waste the user's time & energy.

So I say - watch out for this s/w as it may not be nearly as good as it is claimed to be.

 

Second to that - I got reg. info for it from another thread here, but (as posted in another thread) the version I tried had no way to enter that info.

 

Maybe an older version might be better behaved, IF it also has the good P2V abilities...but I'm skeptical now.

(Of course YMMV.)

[smallhagrid]

A little to add here:

After renaming snapman.sys & correcting its associated reg. entries all SEEMED well again...until the next restart.

The PC bootlooped & could not start.

 

Tried a reg. restore - didn't help.

Restored the original naming of snapman though - and all was back to normal INCLUDING all the regular USB functions.

 

Conclusion:

Definitely not worth messing with Terabyte (tera-bal ?!?) s/w; lesson learned.

[alexxf]

snapman.sys is related to Trueimage. This is the acronis fault and its bad uninstaller.

[smallhagrid]

I agree that there is a problem with the Acronis app removal.

Many program installers are very bad at what they're supposed to do - which is why I always do monitored installs for anything that cannot be used as a portable or 'green' app.

(I've also known for years that there are peculiarities associated with the presence of snapman.sys - but it just sat there, trouble free all this time...)

 

BUT:

Given that it was possible for the OS to function flawlessly for years & years with it left behind speakes clearly to me of there being ZERO problem until IFW messed with things both on its way in, and on its way out.

 

Now that IFW is 100% gone all is well again & functioning within normal parameters.

[alexxf]

This is a particular case. In most  systems IFW works flawlessly, and by the way it is much less intrusive and bloated than Acronis.

Anyway i don't like drivers and additional services on the system, so i always use bootable media to make and recover backups, either with acronis or ifw

[smallhagrid]

I too prefer to use bootable media for such things - mostly.

The single exception for me is Easeus Todo Backup - which works flawlessly and does have the ability to convert its images into VM files.

 

I don't disparage Acronis in general because their s/w used via bootable media can be really good & useful.

That single install of Acronis a bunch of years ago was enough to show me that it was not needed, but I still have boot media for several of their things near to hand for when I need them.

 

My goal in trying IFW was to gain better P2V & that did not happen.

Also, it would not reg., so all in all - for me - it was just a time & effort waster.