First restore

[OldRook]

ATI Version 10

I’m getting ready to test my first restore of O/S partition, C, and looking for some input on what I’ve done, to make sure I’m on track. I have an internal 250GB drive, external USB 120GB drive. These are the steps I’ve taken, gleaned from this forum.

Created TI rescue disk and BartPE (wonderful tool), they both see each drive.

Created an Image of C on USB drive, verified OK, approx 15GB in image

Copied, just to be sure, entire C drive to USB, to double protect data.

Validated C Image from both TI rescue disk and BartPE, checked out OK

Created empty logical, inactive partition on internal drive, to restore image there first, as a dry run.

If everything works I plan to move my data files from C to a different partition, as many forum members suggest.

If anyone has any suggestions, I would be grateful to know.

Thanks,
Paul

[foghorne]

-{ Quote: "ATI Version 10

I’m getting ready to test my first restore of O/S partition, C, and looking for some input on what I’ve done, to make sure I’m on track. I have an internal 250GB drive, external USB 120GB drive. These are the steps I’ve taken, gleaned from this forum.

Created TI rescue disk and BartPE (wonderful tool), they both see each drive.

Created an Image of C on USB drive, verified OK, approx 15GB in image

Copied, just to be sure, entire C drive to USB, to double protect data.

Validated C Image from both TI rescue disk and BartPE, checked out OK

Created empty logical, inactive partition on internal drive, to restore image there first, as a dry run.

If everything works I plan to move my data files from C to a different partition, as many forum members suggest.

If anyone has any suggestions, I would be grateful to know.

Thanks,
Paul" }-

Sound OK to me. The only thing I am unsure about, is if you have multiple partitions (before you created you trial one) it seems accepted wisdom to make a 'disk' image of the whole drive before you start. You can then make regular backups of your partitions. If things go tits-up the fallback is to restore the partition structure first and then restore the latest partition image(s).

However, I don't understand why this is necessary if

(a) you only have one partition on your whole drive or
(b) your system partition is the first one on the drive.

Could anyone who understands why the initial 'disk level backup' is necessary, please clarify things. I have been blissfully working at the partition level for many years and have never hit a problem.

F.

[CatFan432]

-{ Quote: "Sound OK to me. The only thing I am unsure about, is if you have multiple partitions (before you created you trial one) it seems accepted wisdom to make a 'disk' image of the whole drive before you start. You can then make regular backups of your partitions. If things go tits-up the fallback is to restore the partition structure first and then restore the latest partition image(s).

However, I don't understand why this is necessary if

(a) you only have one partition on your whole drive or
(b) your system partition is the first one on the drive.

Could anyone who understands why the initial 'disk level backup' is necessary, please clarify things. I have been blissfully working at the partition level for many years and have never hit a problem.

F." }-

foghorne,

(a) and (b) was the status of my system when I started, no other data to protect. The copying of C is a security blanket until I establish some confidence in the process.

I'll give this a try later today.

Thanks
Paul

[OldRook]

oops, borrowing a friend's (CatFan432) computer to learn from this formum, logged in wrong.

Paul

[MudCrab]

-{ Quote: "Sound OK to me. The only thing I am unsure about, is if you have multiple partitions (before you created you trial one) it seems accepted wisdom to make a 'disk' image of the whole drive before you start. You can then make regular backups of your partitions. If things go tits-up the fallback is to restore the partition structure first and then restore the latest partition image(s).

However, I don't understand why this is necessary if

(a) you only have one partition on your whole drive or
(b) your system partition is the first one on the drive.

Could anyone who understands why the initial 'disk level backup' is necessary, please clarify things. I have been blissfully working at the partition level for many years and have never hit a problem.

F." }-

It's basically just a time saver and makes a lot more sense if there are a lot of partitions. For example, on one of my computers I have XP dual booting along with linux. The setup I have is 6 partitions of various sizes and types (ntfs, ext3, linux-swap, fat32, etc.). Having a "base" image of the partition struction or a base image of the computer drive after everything is installed makes it quick to restore the entire drive in case of failure. There is nothing wrong with doing the restore(s) using individual partition images as long as you remember what order they were in and put them all back in the same place.

[foghorne]

-{ Quote: "There is nothing wrong with doing the restore(s) using individual partition images as long as you remember what order they were in and put them all back in the same place." }-

Thanks - that ties in exactly with my experiences.

F.