Operating System Drive Image

I'm in the process of creating an image of my Operating System Drive so I can easily restore it in the event of a crash.

I've got to here.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v237/geek121272/acronis.jpg

Can anyone advise on what I need to image? Do I need to include the other two parts of Drive 1 in my image or will I be ok just imaging the OS C:?

THe system is RAID so do i need to do anything else?

 

Although you don't need to include the other partitions, I would advise doing so. They are very small, won't take up much room in the image, and will come in handy if you ever need to replace your disk and want it exactly like the existing disk.

So put a checkmark next to Disk 1 and proceed. Also, it doesn't matter at this point that you are running a RAID array - TI sees it properly as one disk. You can restore the same array without doing anything special.

 

Thanks for your reply. I will go ahead following what you advise.

Can you tell me at what point it does matter about RAID please?

 

It matters when you are changing RAID controllers. The image that you restore must contain the proper Windows RAID driver or else it will produce a stop error when booting. Or, it would matter if you created an image of a single disk and tried restoring it to a RAID array. To do this successfully you would need to get Windows to install the RAID driver before creating the image. Only then will it be successful when trying to boot from the array after restoration.

You should be OK if you restore to the same array, or even if you switch RAID modes in the BIOS and then restore to the new array. As long as the image has the correct RAID driver pre-installed in Windows this should work.

 

Thankyou. Much appreciated.

I've done the imaging bit, I just need to test its worked properly now. It verified ok and said it was successful but Is there another way I can 'ensure' it really has worked.

Maybe boot using the startup CD and check?

 

Yes, definitely try validating your image from the boot CD. This is the second-best method of gaining confidence in your image. Of course the best is to do an actual restore - until you've done that you really don't know. Most of us here recommend an actual restore to a spare hard disk as soon as you can arrange to do so.

 

Thanks

Restoring to a spare sounds fraught with danger


I think we have a spare inside the server so I guess I should remove the primary active OS drive and try restoring to the spare?

 

If you don't want to or can't restore to aspare drive, then instead do this. Boot formthe CD and go through all the steps of doing a restore right up to but not including the final proceed. If you can get that far then you're 99% there as most probs restoring are probs with the restore softrware not recognizing either a source or target drive or both. A mere Validation won't confirm this but only that the software can recognize the drive the backup file is on -- so goiong throught he restore steps is better.

 

Thanks for all your help on this thread k0lo and shieber.

Very much appreciated.

 

I did this today and it got as far as the Proceed click. At this stage I clicked cancel. There were no problems up to that stage so going on what you recommended I ahould be 99% ok I think.

I think I'm going to restore to the Spare drive so I can be 100% sure.

 

When you speak of validation not being sufficient do you mean the validation tool within the software? Operations -> Validate

 

If I update my RAID Drivers do I need to create a new image?

 

If you updated the driver from within Windows and it updated correctly, then you can probably restore an image containing the old driver successfully. Of course you would have to redo the RAID driver update since the restored image would be using the old driver.

It's probably a good idea to create a new image after you update the driver. Restoration of the new image would then be using the new RAID driver.

 

Thanks

I've reconfigured all my RAID on my DATA drive (RAID 5 to RAID1) to release spare disks so am now ready to move onto my next problem....ensuring the system drive image works fully by restoring to a spare,making sure it is bootable, then storing it safely.

Does Acronis image consider the tombstone life of active directory as I beleive if thei mage is older than the tombstone life the restore will wipe out my AD?

 

I'm unable to answer that but perhaps someone else with knowledge of Active Directory can chime in.