1st Time TI User

I have a triple boot (XP Pro,XP Pro, Vista Ultimate). Can I make a restore image of each partition separately? Also, can I add to these images when I make changes like XP SP3, Vista SP1 or do I have to make a new image each time? Do these images work like the old restore discs that would get shipped with my new computer purchases from a few years back? Any feedback, advice, instructions and tips appreciated.

Thanks
Mark

Edit: Forgot about the F6 raid driver issue when installing XP. Do I need to incorporate these drivers onto my image and if so how would I do that?

 

Hello - wecome aboard. I don't see any reason why you can't. If you intend to make these backups in the secure zone however, you must take into consideration that you can only have one secure zone. You must somehow make sure you know which backup is which because if you try to restore a backup and get the wrong one thinking it is the right one, I can only speculate what will happen. Humm interesting....

 

Hello welcome aboard This time (my spelling is really bad!) at any rate backing up the drivers is as painless as backing up the whole system. As a matter of fact you can backup the drivers right along with the system they work with if you like.

 

I don't understand what a secure zone is. I haven't even opened up the program yet. I think labels on the discs will take care which backup is which confusion. I still need to know about the 3rd party raid driver thing though.
Thanks for the reply.
Mark

 

I think you will understand what I am talking about once you take a look at the Acronis program. More to my interest, is I think I can learn something from you.
You are asking something that I don't quite understand and I would like to learn about. These 3rd party raid drivers and imbedding them in XP. What does that mean? Are you concerned that acronis won't back up the raid drivers or the system they are imbedded on? Please explain so that I can do some research. What I think you are talking about is if there would be a conflict when trying to back up the files. Am I correct in my assumption?

 

Hi Mark,

How are you triple booting with XP, XP and Vista? If you are using the built-in Vista multiboot feature, you have to be aware that one of the XP partitions has part of the Vista boot info. Therefore, backing up the partitions individually may not result in a bootable system when you restore only one or two partitions.

In my opinion, you should forget about the SecrureZone. It was a useful idea when people had only one hard drive and external drives were not yet common. Just make your backups to an external hard drive or, at least, to a different internal hard drive that doesn't contain any of the XP or Vista boot partitions.

You have already installed the RAID drivers. When you backup a boot partition, all the drivers are included in the backup. When you restore that partition, they will all be there.

You might want to read some of the threads here about backing up dual boot systems with XP and Vista. Search the archives for dual boot.

 

Well, when you do a regular install of XP on a modern machine such as mine with a raid setup there is a point during the install where it says on the bottom of the screen press F6 to install 3rd party raid drivers. Then later on during the install it will get to a point where it does not recognize the hard drive because of the raid setup. At that point you have to press S to install those drivers off a floppy disk. I made mine with a utility that comes with my motherboard CD that has a function called make disk where it installs the proper drivers onto the floppy. Without these drivers XP will not install on most newer computers. I had heard that it was possible that Acronis would not pickup those drivers during the imaging process.

Thanks
Mark

 

I will check out some of those topics to see what they have to say but I'm really not too worried about the boot partitions. I also use another forum pretty much dedicated to boot problems and they know many solutions to boot problems and how to repair. My bcd is already stored on a floppy so I think I should be Ok. I'm going to try it eventually cause I just have to know if it will work. I backup on a daily basis so I'm not worried about losing info. I'm just trying to avoid the headache of all the setup involved in installing an OS, especially XP which takes forever.

Thanks
Mark

 

Sounds like you are good to go.

 

Mark,

Since you are aware of the "booting fix" problems that may arise, you should be able to handle those okay.

You don't need to worry about any "F6" drivers. All installed drivers for the OS will be included in the TI image of the partition. When the image is restored, the drivers are restored with it and the OS should boot normally.

Since you are using Vista's boot manager and Vista will (most likely) have the C: drive letter assigned to the Vista partition (a non-Active partition), you can get into problems if you run into a drive letter change problem.

To try and avoid this, I strongly suggest that when you do a restore, you only restore one partition at a time, boot into it and reboot if necessary. This will allow Windows to only have to redetect one partition and that one partition will usually get reassigned the same drive letter. After making sure the restored Windows boots properly, boot into each of the other installed Windows and let them redetect the restored partition. Finally, continue to restore another OS partition (if needed).

Of course, if your drive dies, then you'll have to restore then entire Disk Image or multiple single images, but it would still just be a matter of getting the BCD entries corrected (if necessary) and booting in the correct order (with correct) settings.

Absolutely test it out. Make sure it works. If you have problems, post back and we'll try and help.

Test doing restores of the individual partitions (one at a time, as above) and also, if you want, do an Entire Disk Image (check the Disk # checkbox) backup and then restore that as an Entire Disk Image restore. I like to have an Entire Disk Image saved once I have my mult-boot system setup. It allows me to return to a working state quickly and then I can restore the single, more current, individual partition images as needed.

Some people have reported a problem with an Entire Disk Image restore not allowing all the systems to boot properly when using Vista's boot manager. This is another reason to run this test. It's always nice to know if something will work properly before you need it.

I don't use Vista's boot manager so I haven't run any tests on this. I may later, if I have time, since it seems more and more people are running into problems with this.

 

So I can do a combined image restore with all 3 OS's? I am going to test this. Might as well do it before I get too involved in customizing my system.

Thanks
Mark