Acronis True Image 2017 Update 1 is Available Now!

Version 2017 build 5554 for Windows, as we call it internally, is now available for download at our website. It’s also automatically available to all Acronis True Image 2017 users, who will soon receive a notification with a kind request to update their software.

The new version comes with improved support for the most recent Windows 10 updates. I would like to call out three of the changes we like the most on our team.

Our initial implementation of the UPnP standard was not suitable for some devices used by our customers. After reviewing their feedback, we implemented workarounds, and now we support all popular models from the major Network Attached Storage (NAS) brands, and now device discovery does not interfere with other devices on the same network.

Many customers have asked us which brands of NAS devices are the most popular among Acronis True Image users. Below you can see the results of a survey we conducted among thousands of customers who use NAS devices.

The most popular NAS brands among Acronis True Image users. (Source: Acronis Survey).

The Acronis Secure Zone is a special secure partition created on your computer for storing backups. It’s often used by customers for storing full image backups of their operating system, with all applications and settings, and use them in the future to roll back the system to a previous state if it fails or degrades in performance. Recently, many customers started to set passwords on their Acronis Secure Zone partition as a security measure against ransomware. The recent Windows updates, however, caused some issues, but these have now been resolved.

In the Update 1 we have significantly improved the reliability and performance of backup and restore operations around the Acronis Secure Zone on computers running the most recent Windows 10 with updates.

On a side note, now we see many more computer support professionals setting up an Acronis Secure Zone partition on their customers’ computers. It allows them to provide their customers with an easy to follow guidance on how to recover their systems over the phone. They also recommend having an additional backup copy on an external drive in case of a permanent internal drive failure.

Every new version of Acronis True Image comes with performance improvements. In the Update 1, we improved the connection with the Acronis Cloud storage and optimized the speed of scanning files for changes. As the result, we now also have a more precise estimate of how long the local or Cloud backup is going to run for. Although, if there are sudden changes in the network connection speed, the estimate can still be affected.

Many new customers are asking us about the backup process and why there are two types of statutes appearing above the progress bar — “Scanning” and “Backing up.” These are actually two separate processes: one is scanning for incremental changes since the last backup and the other — copying data to the backup storage, or uploading it to the Acronis Cloud. When we scan for changes, we use hash functions to compare small blocks of data to see if a particular block was modified since the last backup. This allows us to copy or upload only the changes, instead of the entire files, which can be many GBs in size. That is why if you click the “Backup Now” button right after a successfully completed backup, Acronis True Image may take some time to scan for changes, before reporting to you that everything is already backed up. This is especially visible when backing up to the Cloud, as we need to download and upload hashes for the data blocks.

A full list of updates and fixes included in Update 1 of our best-in-class backup software for PC, Mac and mobile is available in the release notes.