Operating system from external drive

[chglarus]

If I use True Image to make a .TIB file on an external hard drive, can the system be operated from this external drive, or must the .TIB file be restored onto the internal hard drive?

Stated differently, if I use the recovery disc CD to boot the machine, can I then operate directly from the external hard drive (through USB 2 port)?

Thanks.

[Ralphie]

An Image file (.TIB) cannot be used in the manner you stated until Restored/Recovered whether it is on an external or internal drive.

[chglarus]

The reason for this question is to ensure that I have a means of operating if the internal hard drive crashes. So if I restore the TIB file on the external drive, that should create the complete disc image and operating system on the external drive? Or is there a better way of doing this?

Thanks.

[Ralphie]

If you restore the image from the external to a good internal drive, yes you will be "good to go". But to do this you need to make the bootable Rescue CD from the menu on the TI installed software.

[Acronis Support]

Hello chglarus,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

You can access the external hard drive when booted with Acronis Bootable Rescue Media. Therefore, it's recommended to store backup (.tib) files on the external drive, and restore them to the internal when necessary.

If you want to be able to boot from your external drive in case of your main drive failure, please notice that you can only accomplish that in case of external USB rack. For that scenario we could recommend you using the cloning procedure. Please refer to chapter 13 “Transferring the system to a new disk” of the respective User's Guide. Please note that it is strongly not recommended to have several system hard drives connected during a boot sequence. So we would recommend you to detach one of the drives before booting the system after cloning is complete. To boot you will need to remove the drive from the USB rack and connect it internally.
Please have a look at this thread for detailed explanation why you cannot boot directly from external drive.

Thank you.
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Marat Setdikov