Attempting to restore to smaller disk, many mounts/dismounts

I am starting another thread, although this post is also in an earlier post titled "Not given size choice by TI at archive create."

My objective is to be able to test a backup from an existing XP primary disk to another PC's SMALLER disk as a test bed. The thought of yet another Windows bare metal re-build if I screw up, makes me try a test restore on a little used PC.

I am attempting to restore a 36GB XP image of NTFS C partition and FAT32 D partition, to a smaller (28GB) PC HD. The combined content is 5-6 GB in size.

My problem occurs after choosing Resizing. The TI window advised that it would be much slower if I made that choice, that "more than one CD mount/dismount may be involved. After more than 15 CD changes (with no indication of how many more might be needed), I gave up: I didn't know if 16 more or 256,000 more might be needed. Could you please tell me if it is feasible to continue with the changes, that one just has to be patient; or could it be that in some (or all) cases there could be too many changes to make it practical to continue?

The basic question I have is "Is it feasible to create an image of a disk, say, of 28 GB with only 5 GB of data, and restore it into (another PC's) disk with less than 28 GB capacity?" My objective is to test the image creation on a test PC without jeopardizing my (wife's and my) PC to restore. If I can at least boot the transferred primary partition to the test PC and check out a number of applications, the restore has a chance to work at disaster time, even if not all of the network and other devices are supported on the test machine.

Any thoughts you might have toward this objective would be greatly appreciated. Again, Acronis TI looks like it will provide exactly the functions I need. I just have to gain the experience and confidence of creating images that will work on the smaller test PC.

 

Hello BlueGoose,

Thank you for choosing Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

We are really sorry for the inconveniences.

Yes, it is possible to restore the image of the larger disk to a smaller one if the target drive has enough space to contain all the data stored in the image, i.e. the space used on your old disk is less than the new disk capacity.

If it is possible you may copy all the parts of the image to another disk from CDs (pleae copy these parts to a single folder) and restore the image from this folder. In this case Acronis True Image will find necessary image parts automatically.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

This means I would have to have another partition at least at large as the image in which to place the folder containing all the CDs for the image. Is this correct?

This then obviates the need to mount/demount CDs under TI control, correct? I assume there is nothing special about the CD files and they can be copied with, say, Windows Exployer.

Sorry to make this so elementary; I just didn't see any requirement for this in the Guide.

Thank you.

 

Hello BlueGoose,

Both your assumptions are right: you need a partition to copy all the image parts from the CDs. You may copy these parts as ordinary files using Windows Explorer.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman