Dell Media Direct & Acronis True Image 10

Hi All,

I am a newbie who owns Acronis True Image 10, and I am looking at buying a new Dell Vostro 1500 notebook. I will be ordering it with Windows XP. I have read several posts in this forum and others that there may be problems if I ever want to image or clone a drive if Dell Media Direct is on the notebook. Because I am about to order it now, I presume that it should have some version of Dell Media Direct 3. According to information I have a read referenced at this site (http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/mediadirect.htm), "with Dell Media Direct 3 With MediaDirect 3, Dell has switched to installing MediaDirect in a logical partition".

Can anyone tell me if this means I will not have problems restoring an image or cloning a drive with Dell Media Direct 3? If it seems I will have reinstall the Operating System (Windows XP) or have other problems due to Dell Media Direct in restoring or cloning, then I will probably have to order a notebook without Dell Media Direct.

Most of what I have read is over my head, so please keep your answer simple enough for this newbie.

Thank you.

Bob7

 

First of all Bob, why are you ordering ATI 10 and not ATI 11? Secondly, you shouldn't have any problem imaging/restoring your system (including Dell's restore and diagnostic partitions) with ATI. However, if you want to preserve Dell's Emergency Restore (to your PC's shipped configuration), don't install Acronis' Secure Zone & Startup Recovery as that will overwrite your MBR and in so doing, permanently disable Dell's Emergency Restore!

 

Hi,

Thanks for responding. First of all, I already own 2 licensed copies of Acronis True Image Home 10. If I take your advice, should I have no problems with this, or do I need to upgrade to the newer version Acronis True Image 11?

Thanks for your help. Best wishes.

Bob7

 

No, you do not have to upgrade to v11, v10 will do the job (as long as it doesnt have driver issues with your new laptop). You didn't mention your OS, but since most new PCs are being delivered with Vista, imho v11 works even better with Vista than v10. Furthermore, v11 offers a new sector-by-sector backup option (which can be valuable in special situations).

 

Thanks again for responding. My new laptop will have Windows XP Pro. I am too worried about legacy application and hardware support to look at moving to Vista at this point.

By the way, I think I configured both my desktop and older laptop Acronis True Image 10 installation with Acronis' Secure Zone & Startup Recovery, but I am not sure. How can I determine this, and does this mean that I will not be able to use their restore disks in the future? By the way, my desktop's hard drive is configured with RAID 0 (not my first choice, but it came this way).

After reading some of these posts, this newbie is pretty confused.

Thanks for all your help. Best wishes.

Bob7

 

Bob7,

You won't have imaging or cloning problems with MediaDirect 3. It doesn't use a HPA, which led to the cloning issues.

 

Your link doesn’t work because the [ ) ] at the end is included in the URL. Not a big deal however. I for one would also like to know the answer to imaging a Dell PC with Media Direct 3. Thanks for bringing this issue up. Hopefully someone can comment, perhaps Acronis support.

Edit:
You might want to create a backup copy of the system using Dell’s method of restoring to the as purchased status immediately after taking it out of the box.. I find it unlikely that they will provide an OS CD. I quickly reviewed their manuals but didn’t see the procedure for perfming this type of restore. If interested I found the manuals here:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/vos1500/en/index.htm

 

Bob, I should clarify that I was addressing Dell’s System Restore (DSR) and not Media Direct, which has nothing to do with system restore. Regardless, my point is that once your Dell-modifed MBR is overwritten, you will be unable to boot the DSR partition upon bootup (by using Ctrl+F11).

Similarly, changing your hard drive's partitioning (as shipped) will cause DSRcheck to fail, so even if Ctrl+F11 seems to work at first glance, the DSR process will not run to completion. However, Dell's Windows Recovery CD should still work.

 

Thanks to all for your help.

I think I configured both my desktop and older laptop Acronis True Image 10 installation with Acronis' Secure Zone & Startup Recovery, but I am not sure. How can I determine this? By the way, my desktop's hard drive is configured with RAID 0 (not my first choice, but it came this way). Should I have any problems with my desktop image if I did use Acronis Secure Zone?

Thanks again.

Bob7

 

You might want to read some other threads on the use of the SZ & SRM. Click on the Sticy below in my signature and locate the relevant topic.

Suggest you try some of your recovey hotkeys and see which work including any shown on the bootup screen. You can look under Windows Disk Management and the Secure zone location should be indicated.

 

Press the F11 key during bootup - after the BIOS finishes it's thing, but before Windows starts loading and see what happens (if anything)!