backup to cd vs. hd clone

My hard drive has 2 partitions on it; one with windows (boot) and the other is just spare data. I created an image of the windows partition, and saved it as mywindows as an image. Then I tried to restore that image on new HD and it would not boot up. SO, I did the hard drive clone, which copied both partitions, and it works fine when i try to boot up with the new HD.

I would like to create an image of my disk that I can save on CDR and then easily restore if my HD ever fails. Is that what the rescue boot disks are for?
how would I go about creating a boot disk that will reinstall everything fresh with a bootable hard drive? I like to wipe everything out about every 6 months and start over with a clean system.

Basically if I ever feel like reformatting my HD to start over, I want to be able to boot from a CD, then re-image the HD in a few CDs and start with a fresh system in 10-20 mins.

 

You got one lesson, the Master Boot Record, MBR is not included in the image unless you do the whole disk which is what you did with the clone. You could have achieved the same thing by selecting the entire disk when making the image. If you only have an image, and there is no MBR on the disk you can write an MBR to the disk from XP's Recovery console FIXMBR command or Fdisk from a W98 startup disk. If the disk has been bootable before then the MBR is already there. Note this is for standard Windows systems. If you have a system with manufacturers diagnostic or recovery partitions, dual-boot, etc then this method will disable those features and in those cases you want to make sure you have a whole disk image.

If you want a clean system to restore, start with a clean disk and install your OS, OS updates, applications, and whatever that you consider to be your base system. Make an image of the disk. When you want to start fresh, restore this image and then bring it up to date.

If using XP I would activate it before making the image so it doesn't expire.

 

So, say I wanted to create the bootable rescue disk, and then restore and image that i have saved on a networked computer. How would I go about getting the MBR on the hard drive that has crashed (or needed a fresh reload for some reason)? Will the bootable rescue disk do that for me? Also, is it the same deal if i back everything up to CDs, and can I use DVDs for the actual backup image?

 

Hello ericblis,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

Besides of the seekforever's advice, I would also recommend you to take a look at the following threads explaining the possible reasons for this sort of problems: auto logoff problem, Re: Mr.

Please be aware that as seekforever has already mentioned above, MBR is included into the entire hard drive image only. In order to create an image of the entire hard drive you should check the tick box near the hard drive's name (usually disk1, disk2, etc.) on the respective screen of the Backup wizard. If you restore an image of the entire hard drive then MBR is being overwritten with the one from the image archive. Please take a look at my reply in this previous thread for details.

Yes, Bootable Rescue CD is basically intended for restoring images when opertaing system is not bootable for some reason. It allows you to restore an image of the entire hard drive independently of which type of the supported media it resides on (e.g. internal\external\network drives, CD, DVD, etc.).

As for saving your images to DVD, please be aware that the current version of Acronis True Image doesn’t write to DVD directly, instead it utilizes third party UDF packet DVD writing software. The ability to write images to DVD directly will be implemented in the future builds\versions of a particular product, but exact time frame is not decided yet. You can find more information on how to write your images to DVD in this FAQ article.

We would also recommend you to read Acronis True Image 9.0 User's Guide in order to learn more on how to use this product.

If you have any further questions concerning Acronis software, please feel free to submit a request for technical support or post any of them on this forum. We will certainly try to help you in resolving any issues.

Thank you.
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Alexey Popov

 

Ok, so I've created the rescue disk, AND created the master boot record disk just in case. So the way I understand it, I have a few options.

Scenario 1:
My hard drive crashes, or I decide that I want to do a clean install.
I insert the rescue disk, then restore the image (not clone) of my hard drive backup that I have saved on a usb hard drive. I reboot, and all should work fine. What If I want to restore from a network drive, will it give me that option?

Scenario 2:
I want to install a new hard drive or one with a corrupt or missing MBR.
I insert the MBR disk that I downloaded the image for, which should create a new MBR. Then I boot again from the rescue disk and install my image and all should boot.

Scenario 3: I am tired of my current configuration and I just want to reload fresh. I plug in my spare cloned hard drive and boot up the computer. Then I create a clone of THAT new fresh drive onto the old drive and save for the next time.

Scenario 4: I keep all of my files and documents on a spare partition on my C: drive. I can set up a schedule to automatically back up these files on a weekly basis, and save them to a network drive automatically without me doing anything, right? Once I have a backup of these files, i can set it up to do a backup of ONLY the files that have changed since my last backup...will the program know which files have been changed all by itself?

If you could please confirm these options and let me know, I would greatly appreciate it. I'm afraid to start tinkering for fear of losing something before it is properly backed up.

Thanks,
eric.

 

Hello ericblis,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Yes, you will be able to restore the image from the network drive. When booted from the bootable rescue media you are able to access any connected hard disks as well as a wide variety of IDE, SCSI, FireWire (IEEE-1394), USB (1.0, 1.1, 2.0) and PC card (PCMCIA) interfaces and devices, including CD-ROM, CD-R(RW), magneto-optical drives, network, Iomega Zip and Jaz. So you can store your image files there.

Please be aware that in order to clone or migrate your Windows system to different hardware, you should first prepare Windows using Microsoft System Preparation Tool (sysprep). Please take a look at this FAQ article.

You should restore an image on the hard drive at first and only after that boot your computer from the Windows installation CD in order to fix MBR.

Yes, you can perform this scenario. Please note that we recommend you to unplug one of the hard drives right after the disk cloning process has been finished, since keeping both original and cloned hard drives connected might cause different boot or drive letter assignment problems.

You can schedule the image creation to the network hard drive without any problem. In order to create the image of changed files, you should schedule an incremental or differential image creation.

Please find the difference between an incremental and differential image in this FAQ article.

Thank you.
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Tatyana Tsyngaeva