ATI Home Deployment Questions

It's been 3 years since I've visited, and I had not used my ATI (I uninstalled it from lack of confidence - there seemed a lot of problems back then). A few months ago I rec'd a promo to upgrade from v.8 to v.10 and get a free upgrade to v.11. I decided to do so knowing I was going to have a custom box built for media editing - which I just took delivery on. Even after a few hours re-acclimating myself to the forum and skimming the User Guide, I have some rather basic questions that I am unclear about. Your help and patience will be much appreciated:

1. Can ATI 11 be used with Vista 64x? User's Guide & features link specifies XP64 and only vaguely says Vista "all versions" which isn't implicit about 64bit as is the listing for XP;

2. My primary objective for using ATI is to be able to do a complete restore of OS and programs for pain free disaster recovery & perhaps periodic restore if system slows down or I want to have a clean system. Best practice/option questions: Setup: I have 4 internal hdds. (A) 150GB in 2-partitions for OS and software/programs, respectively; (B) 2 drives in RAID 0 (300GB total) intended primarily as a scratch drive for editing, don't plan to keep data on it; (C) a 750GB data storage drive. Questions: (1) I could put a secure zone on the data drive and image my OS/Program drive to it. But would it be better to do the OS/program image to an external HDD? (I may eventually add an eSata HD.) Or should I do a secure zone on the internal data drive and a non-secure zone backup on the eSata drive? (I will probably archive important data files on the eSata w/o using ATI.) I read a comment from Xpilot where he talked about having rotating backups, but not sure I understood the process. (3) I am unclear about the importance/extra benefit of developing a VistaPE CD, would that be in addition to the ATI recovery CD?

Thanks for reading and for helping with my basic questions.

 

Re: ATI Home Deploymenet Questions

I've been doing what you plan to do since ATI Ver 8. I upgraded to Ver 9 and Ver. 10.

Last week the hard drive on my Dell Latitude laptop crashed. "No problem", I thought. Dell sent me a new, blank hard drive. One small screw holds it in. The old drive was out and the new drive was in before the delivery guy made it out of my subdivision.

I pulled out the 7 DVDs with my hard drive image on them and the ATI V10 rescue CD. Booted up laptop, restored the drive from the DVDs. "So easy", I thought.

Ha, ha, ha... joke was on me.

"NTLDR is missing."

Laptop will not boot into WinXP Pro.

After all of this careful imaging of the hard drives, it turns out that the most basic, fundamental purpose of my 3 years of creating back up images does not work.

Sucks.

 

Re: ATI Home Deploymenet Questions

Are my questions too hard, or just too easy for everyone?

 

Re: ATI Home Deploymenet Questions

You have asked about my rotating backup method. I will try to keep it brief.
I store whole drive backup images on a second internal drive. They could be in a visible partition but I like the extra security of a secure zone and the fact that the FIFO automatic management is simple and totally reliable (with Version10). Once I set up the backup schedule I never have to even open the TI GUI again. As day follows night the images just happen automatically.

I have three main hard drives in removable drawers. Only one is in use at a time. After a new image has been created all I have to do is to replace the current main drive with the eldest of the other two and run a restore. This can be done from Windows though I usually use the rescue CD to make sure that it is available and works in times of dire need.

So at any time I have a series of backup images should I need to go back in time. Outside the computer I have two hard drives, one right up to date and the other slightly older.

Image validations are redundant. Even a failed restore is not a problem because the original hard drive is not overwritten.
In over two years working I have had about half a dozen failed restores. I eventually got round to looking for the cause. It was not a software problem but a simple poor connection of the 5.5V supply to the main drive.

Xpilot

 

Thanks Xpilot. I think I follow what you're doing.

Can anybody confirm whether or not TI11 is good for Vista 64x?

 

Re: ATI Home Deploymenet Questions

That does suck. I've also seen that happen with dual-boot systems.
I don't suppose this was a dual boot system where WinXP Pro was not the primary boot partition? If it was, then the two boot related files "ntldr" and "NTDETECT.COM" will not be on that partition - they'll be on the main boot partition. If you boot the WinXP CD you can normally perform a repair to restore those files back to the WinXP partition.

 

Re: ATI Home Deploymenet Questions

No this was not a dual boot system. Received laptop from Dell formatted in FAT32 and with WinXP Pro installed. Never changed anything.

I tried the "repair" option. Did not fix it. I went into the proper directory of the install CD and manually copied NTDETECT.COM onto the C: drive (replacing the file that came off of the ATI 10 Image). Did not fix it. I used WinXP repair feature FIXBOOT. Did not fix it. Tried FIXMBR. That trashed everything. I created a new BOOT.INI, but no improvement.

I am really pissed that no one from Acronis has attempted to contact me by e-mail in over a week to help me fix this. They are hiding, I guess, because they know they can't help me get my image back and working.

I guess I will be reinstalling from scratch. Can anyone recommend an imaging backup software that actually works when you need it?

 

Re: ATI Home Deploymenet Questions

Sorry about the trouble you're going through. I bought Acronis True Image 11 and I'm sure it works in many situations but for me - not so good.

In the past I've used Ghost and what was Powerquest (before Norton bought them). At least the early versions used DOS based rescue media...sometimes it would work and other times not.

I'm actually using StorageCraft's ShadowProtect at the moment. I would strongly recommend it. Rather than be caught in a situation where I can't restore I've actually been testing out a whole range of restore scenarios (including restoring to completely different hardware). So far it works pretty well. Take a look at it and see if you like it.

 

Re: ATI Home Deploymenet Questions

Hello KCDoug,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for delayed response.

Acronis True Image 11 Home does support Window Vista x64 as well.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

Re: ATI Home Deploymenet Questions

Hello tjcanno,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for delayed response.

Could you please let us know your Acronis request number (e.g. [Acronis #123456]) which was sent to you in autoreply to your letter? We will find out how the investigation of your issue is going. If you have not received an autoreply then please send us a Private Message containing your e-mail address.

Meanwhile, could you please describe your actions in Restore Wizard in details (if you didn't do so in your request)? Please also describe your partition layout.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

Re: ATI Home Deploymenet Questions

Auto reply said ACRONIS #1414415. Nick contacted me yesterday. I reinstalled WinXP Pro from scratch and am limping along for a few weeks on it, without my image being restored. I can't mess with it any more at this time. I will try again next month.

 

Hello,

For everyone interested, further discussion of the issue tjcanno encountered in in this thread.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov