Disaster Recovery Checklist

I bought Acronis specifically as a disaster recovery tool.

I have successfully (and easily) created a disk image to an external hard drive, and a bootable rescue CD.

What I DON'T have is a detailed instruction list of how to restore that disk image onto a new internal drive in the event I had to replace a crashed drive.

I read the HELP instructions, but I'm new to this, so I'm not familiar with the terminology and couldn't find answers to my questions.

How do I get my computer to boot from the rescue CD?
Does my replacement drive have to be formatted?

Has anyone made a simple CHECKLIST that includes all these little details and doesn't "assume" any previous knowledge?

Thanks,
Steve

 

When the system is the same hardware and you just replaced the disks.

1. boot from resque cd
2. restore image to new drive
3. Boot your system

When you want to restore the image to a complete new hardware system in case of a flood or something

1. boor from reque cd with universal restore
2. restore image to new system with universal restore and add the new massstorage drivers in the wizard. You can also make a driver base on you network and specify this as driver searchpath (ideal to fill is with are www.driverpacks.net)
3. after successfull restore boot your new system
4. New hardware will be found.
5. Add manual the drivers that windows can't find and that weren't find in your specified driver search path.
6. DONE! ;-)

 

I'm afraid Help is not enough for a new user. You'd better download the User's Guide from the Acronis site.

To boot from the Rescue CD, insert the CD into the drive and Restart the computer. If on reboot the CD drive doesn't get into action and you find yourself inside the usual Windows instead of in True Image (select Full on the TI selection screen), you should put the CD drive on top of the boot order list in the BIOS. You need to consult the computer (motherboard) manual to perform this.

No, the replacement drive doesn't need to be formatted. Partitioning and formatting data will be transferred from the image upon restoring.

See that you are doing whole disk imaging/restoring. The box next to Disk 1 should be ticked for both operations.

 

Hello StevoK,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Please note that in order to restore your system to another (or the same) hard drive in case the system does not boot you will need to boot your computer from Acronis True Image Bootable CD first. As bVolk in order to do so your BIOS should be set to boot from the CD drive. After you boot from this rescue CD the standalone version of Acronis True Image loads. There are two variants of the standalone version. The full variant is based on the Linux operating system and uses Linux drivers for getting access to all hardware devices. The safe variant is based on the DOS environment and doesn't provide you with an access to the USB, PCMCIA, SCSI, RAID devices and the network. We recommend you to use the safe variant only if the full one doesn't work. The standalone version of Acronis True Image has almost the same GUI as in Windows so you will be able to start the "Recovery Wizard" and restore your system from the image archive you have created before.

No, it is not necessary. All the data stored on the restored partition will be replaced by the image data.

You can find more information on how to restore the backup in Chapter 6. "Restoring the backup data" in the Acronis True Image 9.0 User's Guide.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov

 

If you are restoring from an image stored on the computer just use the Recovery tool to select the archive on the computer and restore it to a destination OTHER THAN the disk/partiton contianing the stored immage. This usually work very well. I have found that if the destination disk already contains Acronis Software the restore may not be succesful so it is safer to foramt the destination disk first if ti contains Acronis files.

If you are trying to restore to another computer with different hardware, the Universal Recovery tool is suposed to enable this. I have not yet got it towork.

 

Hello onclejean,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Please note that there is no need to format the destination drive/partition prior to the restoration because Acronis True Image formats the destination partition and all the data stored on the restored partition will be replaced by the image data.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov