Disk imaging to external hard drive

i have a 40gb hard drive on my laptop
250gb external hardrive Lacie
windows xp sp2

when i try to create a disk image to the external drive.. i get the following message ' non empty destination hard disk' .. then it asks me to erase the info on my external.. i have backups on the external already.. i don't want to lose anything..
i read everything i can.. but i don't see my exact issue
any help is appreciated.

L

 

Are you perhaps trying to clone the disk to the destination rather than create an image?

 

Hello lgold13,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis True Image

It seems to be that you are trying to clone your laptop HDD to your external HDD rather than store the image if it there. Please use Backup and Recovery operations instead. If you have questions or need a detailed tutorial, please refer Acronis True Image 9.0 Home User Guide.

Thank you.
--
Fedor Kurbatov

 

thanks for both of you responding.. I'll respond once .. so others can read the thread easily.

what i'm trying to do is create a total copy of my laptops hard drive.
for 2 reasons:
1) important files i never want to lose (i back them up periodically on my external hard drive already)
2) i bought this laptop from someone and the one thing i did not get was the windows xp pro disk.. so as an alternate and in case of a windows total meldown.. i want to be able to restart. I already created the acronis boot..

what would your recomendation be ?

 

As far as how to do that with Acronis True Image, you'd want to select the "Backup" operation and back up "The entire disk contents or individual partition". You will want a full backup.

It's still not clear: is the above indeed the operation you attempted ? (The error message does sound like a failed cloning attempt)

From a general standpoint, however, in your situation, I would be looking for perhaps a secondary backup method "just in case" and keep that copy in addition to the Acronis image. But, since this is an Acronis forum, I won't go into the details here.

 

hey crofttk,

i tried 'clone' and thats where i got the above error 'non empty destination hard disk' .. so your hunch was correct.

i agree with your idea about getting another drive.. you can never have too many copies!

i will execute a full backup tonight.

 

Oooops....well, I meant another backup from a separate program, but I won't belabor that here, it's just a matter of spreading your eggs among more than one basket, right ? However, yes, another hard drive -- which you actually would clone from your existing -- is also a workable, although possibly more expensive (in the short run), alternative.

 

Hello Igold 13,

If I had your situation, particularly with the absence of an XP disk, I would not duplicate the external storage either by device or program. Instead I would buy a replacement drive for the laptop. If you can get the drive with its own holder swapping laptop drives is a breeze.
Now the neat bit :- Pop in the replacement drive, boot from the recovery CD and restore the latest whole disk image to it and reboot. This process of swapping and restoring can be done each time you create a new back up image or at longer intervals.
The benefits of working this way are :- No need to validate images as they are Proved at each restore. You will have a spare HD ready to put in place in the event of a breakdown and it is as up to date as your last backup/swap. You will also have a set of proved backups on your external drive in the event that you need to take your system back in time.
I use this system on my desktop it works a treat.

Xpilot