Acronis True Image 11 & Vista

I could be starting to use Acronis True Image 11 on my new PC which would have Vista Ultimate on it.

I have used TI 10 on my XP machine for quite a while, I created a Bootable Rescue Media CD when I first installed TI 10 and I have used this Bootable Rescue Media CD several times to restore my system from my external hard drive without any problems.

If I do install TI 11 on my Vista Ultimate PC and I created a Bootable Rescue Media CD and had a full backup of my system on my external hard drive, would I be able to restore my PC to the same condition as it was at the time of that backup, i.e. starting up and loading into Vista with no problems?

I will add that I am going to be making my own external hard drive, from a 400 GB drive and I will be buying an enclosure for it and connecting it to my new PC via the external SATA connection that it has it.

Or is it not as straight forward as this with it been Vista?

 

Should be just as easy with Vista ... just make sure the Rescue CD can see the external Sata drive.

 

Thanks DwnNdrty for the reply,

I should have added as well that the enclosure can accept USB or SATA connection, so I can imagine if the SATA connection isn't seen the USB should be?

 

Fatboy71,
Just curious. What brand and model enclosure did you buy?

 

I haven't bought it yet, but when I do I will be ordering the Icy Dock MB559US-1S, here is a link to one of the reviews I found on it, it seems a good bit of kit. http://www.guru3d.com/article/gengoods/384/

 

So with my first post in mind,

"I could be starting to use Acronis True Image 11 on my new PC which would have Vista Ultimate on it.

I have used TI 10 on my XP machine for quite a while, I created a Bootable Rescue Media CD when I first installed TI 10 and I have used this Bootable Rescue Media CD several times to restore my system from my external hard drive without any problems.

If I do install TI 11 on my Vista Ultimate PC and I created a Bootable Rescue Media CD and had a full backup of my system on my external hard drive, would I be able to restore my PC to the same condition as it was at the time of that backup, i.e. starting up and loading into Vista with no problems?

I will add that I am going to be making my own external hard drive, from a 400 GB drive and I will be buying an enclosure for it and connecting it to my new PC via the external SATA connection that it has it.

Or is it not as straight forward as this with it been Vista?"


And also regarding the Rescue CD been able to see the external Sata drive. If for some reason the Rescue CD was not able to see the external SATA drive, would the Rescue CD definitely be able to see the external hard drive if it were connected via its USB connection, as with the brand/model of enclosure I would be getting I would be able to chose either SATA or USB connection?

 

Just to clarify, some USB enclosures can take either an IDE or a SATA drive. I have such an animal. Is this what you mean? I haven't come across an external enclosure which has a Sata connection to the computer - of course, it may exist. The external enclosures I've seen are either USB or Firewire.

 

The only way to really know if TI will see the eSATA drive would be to try it. I think it's a good idea to have the USB option available. If the eSATA works, great. If it doesn't, the USB 2 connection should.

You should also be able to create a BartPE or VistaPE rescue CD that includes any drivers (if any are necessary) to enable the eSATA connection if TI's Full mode doesn't work. Depending on the drivers used by TI, you may find the USB connection to be faster when normally the eSATA connection would be. In Windows, I'd think either would work fine.

 

There are quite a few externals (and enclosures) available now with USB2/FireWire/eSATA connection combinations.

 

It was only a few weeks ago I started to use a laptop (not mine) with a Sata drive and bought a spare Sata drive for it. Presumably the eSata connection is even faster than Firewire or USB 2 ... how much faster is it? Do you have a link to one of those enclosures?

 

According to the below link, the transfer rates are as follows,

3 Gb/sec. via eSATA ;
480 Mb/sec. via USB2.0

http://www.guru3d.com/article/gengoods/384/

 

There are a lot of different brands and models available (here is an example).

The eSATA speed can be as fast as SATA 2 (3Gbps) so it's just like having an internal SATA drive if it works properly.

 

Thanks for the links guys ... seems like I "gotta get with the program" and not get left behind.

 

Thos are surst speeds, aren't they? Not sustained data transfer speeds that one can expect in most circumstances.

 

I usually get about 4GB/min on my SATA2 drives for sustained transfers (like image backups and copying large files).

 

You'll never see anything like that with USB ;-)

 

Not until USB 3.0 when/if it comes out (maybe by 2010). It's supposed to be 4.8Gbps.

Until then eSATA or internal SATA2 is going to be the fastest. I'm thinking about getting a SATA2 tray for my computer and using that for my backups (in addition to my USB2 drive secondary backups). It would be a lot faster. I still wonder how well the eSATA connectors hold up (will hold up) to tons of connects and disconnects. It doesn't seem to be nearly as robust as the USB connector.

 

I haven't found usb connectors to be very robust, especially the mini-B types.

As for USB 3, I wonder if it's enough of an improvement to warrant another short-lived standard.

ATI has a hard enough time keeping up with diff hardware implementations of a standard like USB 2 much less short-lived standards.

There's a good summary of speed performance for diff bus types here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA