Need guide for Disaster Recovery!

The user guide for True Image Home is very confusing when it comes to the how to's of Disaster Recovery. A step by step FAQ would be greatly appreciated that one can have in hand while the process is taking place.

The Guide talks about partitioning hard drives during the recovery process. I would like a simplified version of what will take place during the boot-up process when one cannot get into windows and one would like to recreate your last disk image backup that is saved on an internal hard drive, an external hard drive, or a tape drive, internal or external.

A partitioning scheme may be helpful to some but when I had to recover from a disaster, I never had to re-partition or do anything to my hard drive other than restore my operating system with all my files and programs to where it was before the disaster occurred. Maybe a re-format is required?

Is there a tech support phone number for Acronis that would answer my questions about the recovery process?


Thanks,

MPS

 

If you've already installed the TI software, be sure to make the bootable Rescue CD. You will need this to Restore/Recover your Backup Image in case your hd will not boot nor cannot be fixed.
The steps for Recovering are actually fairly straightforward.
1.) Install the new hard drive
2.) Boot with the Rescue CD
3.) From the CD's menu choose "Prepare New Drive". This will partition it so that TI will recognize it.
4.) Back at the main menu choose "Recover Image"
5.) Follow the prompts to choose your Source (where you have the Backup)and Destination drives
6.) This is the odd part. TI will see that the new drive has a partition, which was created in step 3 but will ask to delete it in order to procede. You have to agree to this.
7.) Follow the rest of the prompts to perform the Recovery.

I may have left out some steps but that should get you on your way.

 

Hi Ralphie,

A disaster to me is not only losing your hard drive but not being able to boot into windows. Anyway why, if you install a new hard drive, do you have to partition it in order to recover your backup image from another source is beyond me. I would think just formatting it is enough.

I had 2 disasters over the past few years with Win 2000. I used backup My PC from Stomp. Both times after having used my backup tape, after not being able to boot to my desktop, the Disaster Recovery backup got me back to the state before my disaster but it broke Dial-up Networking. I just copied what was on the tape over what was on my hard drive as the software explained.

Now using XP Pro, in case the Restore Points and last good configuration do not work, I hope that the disk image created can be used to get me back to where the OS was functioning. The only thing is can I over write the C drive with the Image on my External USB Hard drive or do I have to re-format the drive first.

Dell has created 2 hidden partitions on my 160 GIG drive so Partition Magic was not able to Partition the hard drive as I had intended so if I have to partition it to use my disk image I am out of luck unless I delete those 2 hidden partitions if I can.

Is there a faq that explains the step by step process from the bootable CD without a partitioning scheme and will it tell me how to use my external hard drive to get back my os with all my programs and files before the disaster struck?

Thanks,

BS

 

That is what you use the recovery CD for. This boots you into Linux.

It depends if the MBR/boot.ini expects the boot partition to be in one place, and by not repartitioning you move the order of the partitions around. This will cause you to have boot up problems. This is likely to be the case for machines with hidden partitions which appear before the main system one.

Creating partitions, and addressing the boot one from the MBR/boot.ini is not specifically related to DR. You can keep what you have and backup either your whole disk (including all 3 partitions) or any one partition. If you restore to a blank disk you will need to restore the disk image first or restore just one partition and then reconcile MBR/boot.ini issues in order to get it to boot.

I think Ralphie has given this to you.

 

Further explanation on the word "partition". It doesn't mean dividing the drive into two or more parts. A drive can have a single partition i.e. undivided, and that is what it means in TI speak when you use the "Add a New Drive" feature. I know ... it is confusing at first.

 

For what its worth, I too would love a step by step guide.

I am now trying to restore my c:drive (which died yesterday) from a TI .TIB file on a Maxtor USB 2.0 drive. I am running Win XP on newer Dell 4600.

I have been through help, the wizards, etc, and I am still not exactly sure if I am doing this correctly. To be honest, the help files are pretty useless - just restatements of the wizard screens.

Right now "Disk partition recovery from Archive" is running and I have 11 hours to go. I am restoring about 50GB from a 250GB external drive to a 150GB internal (c:drive).

As it stands, I am getting the message the C: is restoring to E: and I know that in the end the harddrive needs to be C:

Anyway, I am hopeful this will all work out and I'll be seeing the TI praises in the morning. Buy for now, a simple step by step would have been great.

Paul