Acronis TrueImage - watch out for strange behavior!

[ErikJan]

I'm an active Acronis TrueImage user and generally happy. Recently I learned two things that I believe are important to share.
I did discuss both cases with their technical support: #1 is certain, #2 is 99% certain

1.
If you have an image (TIB or TIBX file) from a HD that was formatted as MBR and you use a system that uses GPT to write that image to a new external HD, Acronis will change the image on the new disk to GPT without asking. The result is that if you later place that disk back into the system where the TIB was made, it will not boot anymore. I always believed an image was a bit-for-bit exact copy... that is not always true for Acronis!

2.
(a) You have an image file (TIB or TIBX) you created from systemA
(b) You load that Image file onto systemB
(b) You connect an HD via a USB dock to systemB
(c) You have Acronis TrueImage installed on systemB
(d) On systemB you now want to write ("restore") the TIB to the connected HD

Step (d) is not possible in any way! One would think that one could restore ('unpack') any TIB to any HD anywhere but that appears to be untrue.

[ErikJan]

Where I posted the information above after several hours and many emails with the Acronis helpdesk, today I finally got hold of a real SME @ Acronis and he was able to provide solutions for both my cases.

(1) The restore will convert as indicated. If one initializes the target disk first and formats as MBR and then restore in Acronis TrueImage I was told the restore will be in MBR.

(2) Add the TIB-file via "Add Backup" / "Add existing backup" then it works!

[rgrosz78]

Regarding item #2, I have done this routinely with Acronis TrueImage 2017.

Unfortunately, this does not appear to work as expected with Acronis TrueImage 2020. I have spent several days trying to help a friend recover an image from an external HDD. After posting a message on the Acronis forums, the response indicates that manual deletion of any Acronis image file renders ALL the backup images useless.

I hope there is a way to get around this problem.

[ErikJan]

Trying to understand my point (2) in my original post but I don't understand myself anymore ;-)

Did I mean this?
(a) You have an image file (TIB or TIBX) you created from systemA
(b) You want to load that Image file onto systemB
(c) You connect an HD via a USB dock to systemB
(d) You have Acronis TrueImage installed on systemB
(e) On systemB you now want to write ("restore") the TIB from the connected HD

And I learned to add the TIB-file via "Add Backup" / "Add existing backup" and then it worked for me at the time

[StuartR]

I have Acronis TrueImage on multiple computers and I never have any problems mounting a backup and extracting one or more files. I have only ever restored system images to the system on which they were created, and maybe that is where your problem lies.

[rgrosz78]

Stuart, I am trying to restore a full backup to the same computer. This works fine for computers running Acronis TrueImage 2017.

But there are some HUGE gotchas about manually deleting any image files under Acronis TrueImage 2020. I have been totally blind-sided by this new behavior

[StuartR]

Ah, I guess that could happen, I always use automatic cleanup rather than manual deletion of backups