Acronis True Image Home 2009 and Ubuntu

[darwinklu]

Hi !
Is there a way to use ATIH 2009 under Ubuntu 8.10 for HDD Backup ?
If yes,how to do?

Thx for suggestions

[K0LO]

darwinklu:

TI is a Windows program and will not install to or run under Ubuntu. However, the TI recovery CD is bootable and will run under its own (Linux-based) operating system. So you can boot your PC from the recovery CD and use it to back up and restore your Ubuntu partitions.

However, there is a limitation. Even though TI's recovery environment is Linux-based, it will only be able to write backup files to NTFS or FAT32 partitions. Older versions of TI were able to write to ext2/ext3 partitions, but not TI 2009.

[Acronis Support]

Hello all,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis True Image

Nowadays Acronis True Image Home 2009 has one more limitation for the backups of a partition with ext3 file system. Acronis True Image Home 2009 is unable to backup the new ext3 file system, which has i-node size equal to 256 bytes. This limitation is related only to the file systems that have i-node size equal to 256 bytes.

Thank you.

--
Oleg Lee

[earther]

It's been years since I used ATI (version 8 ). It worked well with Windoze - I restored many disk images without a problem. Then I dumped Windoze for Linux and basically stopped using ATI because it couldn't write to ext3. Windoze backups were always lightening fast but it took FOREVER to create a Linux backup (from bootable CD) to an external NTFS partition. I just didn't have confidence that it would work properly when the time came and it was more trouble than it was worth. Since then I have gotten very familiar with rsync. I don't even have any NTFS partitions anymore.

Yesterday I received a 50% discount offer for TI 2009 so thought I would check if there have been improvements in a Linux environment. From the few posts I looked at, it seems the answer is no.

Please confirm that ATI cannot write a backup image to an ext3 partition. And please comment on the time needed to create an image of a Linux system or any other relevant Linux issues. Thanks.

I attempted to take care of these simple questions via presales and the knowledge base but the site structure was just too convoluted to get through.

[K0LO]

earther:

Since the date of the last response from Acronis Support, TI Home 2009 has been updated to be able to work with inode sizes of 256 bytes. However, it is still true that it cannot write to ext2 or ext 3 partitions. That's one of the reasons that I've kept TI version 10, which can write to Linux file systems.

I back up my Linux partitions from TI running in Windows, and it takes about 2-3 minutes to back up a total of 3 GB used space on root, home, and swap. When running from the recovery CD it is about the same.

There are a number of native Linux apps that can do imaging and restoration. Check out Clonezilla, for example.

[droletbe]

Originally Posted by earther

Please confirm that ATI cannot write a backup image to an ext3 partition.

Does that mean that I will not be able to use ATI 2009 to write to my NAS (Network Attached Storage) which is in fact 2 big hard disks running under some Linux software; these disks are formatted with ext3 (I suppose).

So even if I run ATI 2009 on a PC, and save through the network to the other device (the Linux based NAS), it will not work ?


Bernard

[MudCrab]

Going through a network is different. It usually works, but you should test it out to make sure. Some require files to be under a certain size (2GB, for example) so you may need to set a split value.

The limitation for writing to Linux partitions is in doing it directly. For example, saving the image to a Linux partition on the local hard drive.

[droletbe]

Originally Posted by droletbe

Does that mean that I will not be able to use ATI 2009 to write to my NAS (Network Attached Storage) which is in fact 2 big hard disks running under some Linux software; these disks are formatted with ext3 (I suppose).

So even if I run ATI 2009 on a PC, and save through the network to the other device (the Linux based NAS), it will not work ?


Bernard

I just went to Acronis KB and found the following article: http://kb.acronis.com/content/1538

It says :
Acronis True Image 11 Home, Acronis True Image Home 2009 and Acronis True Image 9.1 Workstation support the following file systems:

FAT 16
FAT 32
NTFS
Ext2
Ext3
ReiserFS
Linux Swap



Is this discussion about not supporting Ext3 for something else ?

Bernard

[MudCrab]

Those are what they will support backing up and restoring.

From the manual:

The Ext2/Ext3, ReiserFS, and Linux SWAP file systems are supported only for disk or partition backup/restore operations. You cannot use Acronis True Image Home for file-level operations with these file systems (file backup, restore, search, as well as image mounting and file restoring from image), as well as for backups to disks or partitions with these file systems.

[earther]

Originally Posted by MudCrab

Those are what they will support backing up and restoring.

From the manual:

Thanks for finding that nugget buried in the manual. Guess I won't be using ATI again any time soon.