Can I use ATI to clone a built in hard drive?

I already have an extra 160 Gig Maxtor hard drive installed on my cpu, it's empty right now.
Compaq 8000T Pentium IV
3.0 Ghz
1 Gb 3200 Ram
XP Pro
SP2
160 Gb Western Digital Hard drive as primary
160 Gb Maxtor hard drive as secondary, (hopefully as a back up, clone?)


My questions:
Can I use Acronis 9.0 to clone my primary hard drive to my secondary hard drive as an entire system back up?
Do I have to unplug or uninstall my secondary hard drive after cloning?
Why is a built in hard drive not recommended for a back up?
Can I create a working clone, as a back up, to a second hard drive of the same size that's already installed on my system?
Is it ever neccessary to use a floppy for a recovery using Acronis 9.0? (My floppy drive doesn't work at all).
If I can create a clone using a built in hard drive is it possible to do a complete system restore from that hard drive?
Can I just switch hard drives, after doing a clone, if my primary hard drive fails?

(I'm on my 3rd hard drive in the past 3 months, all under warranty, all hard drive failures. I don't want to have to re-install Windows and all my other programs/info if my new hard drive goes bad like the others have).

Is Acronis the right program for me?

Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

 

You asked:
=====================
If I can create a clone using a built in hard drive is it possible to do a complete system restore from that hard drive?
Can I just switch hard drives, after doing a clone, if my primary hard drive fails?
=============================
A clone IS an EXACT copy of the original. It WILL boot just like the original. There is no need to restore. You just have to remove the original before trying to boot from the clone.

You asked:
===============
Can I use Acronis 9.0 to clone my primary hard drive to my secondary hard drive as an entire system back up?
===============
That's the whole idea behind software like Acronis True Image.
==============
Do I have to unplug or uninstall my secondary hard drive after cloning? Yes.

Why is a built in hard drive not recommended for a back up? No reason not to use it, but if you have a power glitch that "takes out" the main drive, it may "take out" the secondary drive also. Then you will be up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

 

In addition;
You may want to check your powersupply if you are trashing drives that quickly. At least blow out the dust and check the fans.
You may want to try a mobile rack for your 2nd drive.

 

Hello tboll1,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Besides of the Chutsman's and noonie's suggestions, I would also like to mention that there are two approaches available:

Clone Disk - moves the entire contents of one disk drive to another;

Backup - creates a special archive file for backup and disaster recovery purposes;

Please take a look at this FAQ article explaining the difference between Clone Disk and Backup approaches in more detail.

Actually, Clone Disk approach is usually used to upgrade the hard drive (e.g. install a larger disk), while Backup approach is basically dedicated for the complete data backup and disaster recovery purposes. Since you are interested in backing up your hard drive for the disaster recovery purposes, I would recommend you to follow Backup approach.

Moreover, there are several advantages of creating an image over the disk cloning procedure such as: you can create an image without rebooting your PC, image creation can be scheduled for the particular point in time, Acronis True Image allows you to create incremental and differential images, image archive contains only the actual data and so it has a smaller size, images are ordinary files and so they can be stored on any type of the supported media, etc. However, the final choice is always up to your needs.

We recommend you to download and install the free trial version of Acronis True Image 9.0 to see how the software works on your computer.

You can find more information on how to use Acronis True Image 9.0 in the respective User's Guide.

If you are satisfied with the work of the free trial version of Acronis True Image 9.0 then please visit Acronis online store to purchase the full version of the product.

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

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

 

See my responses to other threads for details but I purchased ATI to do exactly what you want to do.

It work perfectly.

I have left both drives connected - hard wired as primary and slave.

New drive as primary old as slave (in my case it was an iffye slave)

Use f11 or your equiv to boot into the slave if the primary goes awol.

your up and running in the time it takes to boot. diagnose/fix the iffy drive and clone back. far easier than image copying for an existing set up.

 

Thanks to everyone for the great advice. I'm going to try the trial version, hopefully this weekend, and see how things go. I'll post my results here when I've finished.
Thanks for helping a novice, (me), understand all of this.

 

If you clone windows drive, you msut disconnect one of the drives before you boot up after cloning. Otherwise windows will mark one drive as the system drive and the other as not -- or in a few worse cases, it will divide some system repsonsiblilities between the two disk -- which is very messy.

Clone, remove one drive and boot. then you can shut down and reattach the second drive.

sh

 

Thanks for the tip shieber. I can use all the help I can get and I really appreciate it.
Thanks again!!