Does It REALLY Work ?!

I recently recovered from a hard disk corruption requiring Partitioning, Formatting, ReInstallation of the OS & Window XP Home & any UpDates of both, and finally ReInstallation of my approximately 50 applications, totaling a bit over half of my approx. 70 Gb drive. I don't want to EVER have to go through THAT again !!!, SOooo ... I got a 100 Gb external (small, like a pack of cards) USB connected & powered hard drive, and purchased Acronis True Image Home 10.0. Created a boot CD, and did a full backup of my system. Now if my HD corrupts or quits, how would I recover to a new HD, not the same as the 1st Would I get USB using the boot disc?

 

If you used the rescue cd to create the backup then your USB drive is visible. To recover to a new hard drive read this Restoring to a Replacement Hard Drive. If your USB drive is not visible from the rescue CD you need to read this to create a BartPE CD. In general read Wilders Security threads on common True Image problems and solutions

 

Just booted from the specially prepared boot CD, with the USB drive connected and YES! there it was with the huge recovery file 'n all! I'd like to, but doing an actual recovery when it's not needed, is just asking for trouble. I may never need it, and what if it didn't work (unlikely), but instead just corrupted my hard drive AGAIN in the attempt !? ...

 

I understand your apprehension. Don't be scared. Just validate your image file first.

Once you see how easy, fast, and reliable this tool is, you'll be using it often. Many times I do a fresh back up before testing new software. Then I install the software and test it out. When I'm done, if I'm not going to keep the software, I just do a quick restore of my backup image - it's very fast, and restores the system cleaner than just removing the freshly installed software.

GO FOR IT!

 

Hopefully, take a few minutes and check out the Guides in my signature. Perhaps there is something being overlooked.

To fully test whether your backup works, test it to a spare hard drive--buy or borrow one if needed.


Can you explain a little more what happened in your comment below?

 

The issue is that even with what you've confirmed so far, there is NO guarantee that, when you go to actually do the restore, it will successfully complete. Of course, it should work, but there are always exceptions. Many of the posts in this forum address to the odd exception.

No question validating the image is a good step, but it is a fair distance short of validating the restore will actually work.

The best bet is to get a spare drive and use it to test whether the restore will work. A 160GB spare drive should be $60 - $70. 80GB's are in the mid $40's [plus a few $'s shipping]. My philosphy has been to spend enough to get a drive I would feel comfortable as my system drive, should it fail.

If you don't have or want to get a spare drive you do need to consider the trade off between testing to insure the restore will work vs the chance it won't and the fact that, right now, you would be forced to rebuild your install.

An alternative is to also create a backup for your 'data'. [Actually, you should consider this in any case] You can test restoring data without overwriting your current system - i.e., you can test to a temp folder. While reinstalling Windows and all the apps is a pain, it pales in comparison to not being able to restore your data. So, if the full system restore does fail, at least you can restore your data.

That said, Acronis is not my first choice for data backups, which I need to do at least daily [i.e., within each day I create new files - some which would be difficult to recreate]

 

Do the test restore onto a spare drive, not your real system drive.

 

Well with all the great response, a little further background is in order. I had been doing regular backups of my critical DATA using NovaBACKUP to our other networked computer, so my "crash" wasn't a complete disaster, just a few PITA days of work restoring everything. I also did full backups using the Nova to the external USB drive, but it turned out, to my great chagrin that NovaBACKUP won't do disaster recovery via USB, so now I've got the Acronis. After the crash, I tried just formatting and reinstalling Windows, and then just writing over the installation with the USB backup using Nova boot disk, and I got something weird, that would boot but ran very slowly with corrupted apps & other stuff

 

Are you saying he way you tst is to do the restore to your system drive? What if the test fails?

 

What's "First Defense"; couldn't find it online but that's probably just me. How do (or what are) "layers" factor in? How can you actually back up to your primary system and not be chancing everything? If your backup source in NG then it's tough nuggies without a paddle, isn't it?

 

www.raxco.com First defense is a snapshot instant recovery system. You can create offline archives that can then be imported. You can have up to 10 snapshots.


Many at wilders use for testing or just Instant recovery.


But harddisk failure is best protected against with an image - like others when testing image programs I always use a spare disk.

 

Steve

As you will see on another thread I have been testing recovery of a dual system (XP & Vista) SATA hard drive under TI10.

All my data (pics, spreadsheet, original programme files etc, music)is backed up using a simple file based programme to a USB drive

However like you I don;t wish to have to restore my system drive piece by piece so I used TI to backup the system drive (now with two OSs)
It is critical to test your backup system to see if it works. That means you need to know if a very large file from a USB drive can be restored via a programme loaded by a Boot CD and then that the drive will reboot giing you back your system. Having a validated image is a big start as you will see TI will not restore what it sees is a corrupt image The only way of getting assurance your backup system works to do it to a spare drive installed in the PC and then reboot with that drive acting as the system drive.

You can disconnect the original system drive while restoring to the spare. MAKE SURE YOU DON'T STARTUP THE PC WITH BOTH DRIVES IN PLACE AT THE SAME TIME.

Once you are confident that the system works then I say you don't have check every tib file you make by restoring it to a spare.

Make sure the validation option is ticked so TI automatically validates the tib file after backup.

I made a BARTPE disk using the TI plugin as it is quicker than the Linux based TI bootable CD.

If you have plain IDE drives and can see the USB and the tib file on the drive validates from the TI Boot CD then you are well on the way to sucess when you need it but if it is very critical to you for it to work then test the system before you really need it.

 

If I restore to diff drive of the same type, I have no reason to think that it won't work with the other drive. And I don't risk mucking up the sys drive is the test fails.

 

Well then it seems that the only alternative to restoring to the actual critical boot drive, is perhaps to have an "identical" drive, swap the drives, then restore and see if it'll boot. Even THEN, you really can't be sure since the material on the drive before restoration wasn't the same. So, back to my original post in this thread, and I pose the further clarification : ... after a failed critical boot drive is replaced by a "similar" drive, what are the statistics on cases where there was no prior "test" of the process? Anybody ? ...

 

I replaced a 80 GB drive with a 250 GB drive some weeks ago and simply restored the last image I made from the 80 GB drive (using ATI 10 under Windows) to the new drive (using the Linux recovery CD).

This was the first time I restored a system drive with ATI (I once restored a secondary drive with succcess before using ATI 9).

I make my back-ups on an external Firewire drive, and always verify.

I've never done a test restore.

I've not had any problems with ATI 9 or 10 so far.

Danny
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It's essentially the same type program as Goback, no? It makes copies of all written-to sectors on the fly and stores them basically in a disk cache and when it fills it deletes the saved sector data first in-first deleted. When you go-back or return to an earlier state, it replaces the Written-to sectors with the prior contents, which were stored in the cache. Defrags can write to virtually all sectors, which essentially wipes out the cache.

I would guess thre's the same kind issue when doing sector by sectgor backups with, e.g., ATI?

Goback used a hidden partition, iirc. Does the raxco product do the same or jsut write to a file?

 

It's a second partition that mirrors the first? HAh, no. It appears to use hidden directories and files rather than it's own partition -- although it would seem to hook into the boot process.