Ex Ghost User-Need advice on Acronis Cloning

Greetings All,
I am a recovering Symantec Ghost user. I never want to see another Symantec product on any computer that I support. Ever!

That said, I want to use Acronis True Image 10 to clone my IDE laptop drive.
My method when using Ghost is to use 2 44pin to 40pin adapters plugged into a PC that is booted from either a floppy or CD. Then run the clone program (Acronis True Image).
Then clone original (source) drive to target (destination) drive.
The object here here is to have a bootable XP Pro drive without the need to re-load OS and tons of software.

Am I correct in my method for the Acronis product?
What should I do differently?
Thanks in advance
Ken Wood
Camarillo, CA

 

Hi Ken,

Fwiw, I share your sentiments about Symantec products. I realize I'm not answering your cloning question, but as a long-time ATI user I would suggest that disk-imaging is a much better choice than disk-cloning to realize your objective.

If you don't already own one, I highly recommend buying an external USB2 hard drive. Then you will be able to easily and conveniently use ATI to create and retain multiple disk-images (e.g., 'grandfather/father/son') of your laptop's hard drive onto the external drive (ATI compresses disk-images). You should also create the ATI Emergency Boot CD for use in the event of a disk-crash, or just when Windows won't boot up.

Restoring any of the images from the external drive to your laptop's hard drive will be simple and straight-forward and can be initiated from within Windows (when you are able to boot into Windows), or from the Emergency Boot CD (for disaster-recovery situations).

Hth

 

You jumped from "when using Ghost is to use 2 44pin to 40pin adapters plugged into a PC that is booted from either a floppy or CD." to "Then run the clone program (Acronis True Image)." That was not clear to me.

Anyway to clarify first when it comes to Acronis:
Clone is different to Backup (Backup is also called Imaging)

For your laptop if that adapter you mentioned lets you connect the laptop drive into a desktop system, then you should use Backup to make an Image of the laptop drive on to the desktop drive.

Now if your laptop drive goes bad, you would then connect the new laptop drive in the desktop and use the Recover feature to restore the Image you saved.

But there's another way, and that is to get an external usb drive which connects to your laptop and save the backup image directly to it.

You should also make the bootable True Image Rescue cd and do all the Backup, Clone and Recover procedures from it, if for no other reason than the fact in case of disaster, you will be relying on that CD to work.

It is always advisable to do an actual restore to a spare drive to make sure it will work. Of course this means getting another laptop drive when you don't actually need it.

Oops, I see pvsurfer beat me to it by 1 minute.

 

Sorry if I 'aced you out' DnD.

Ken, just one more piece of advice ....set your your default backup options to perform an automatic verification of the image after creating it. On my version, that setting is found under Tools > Options > Default Backup Options > Additional Settings. If for any reason, an image does not verify successfully (a rare event), do re-create the image! I have never had a verified disk-image fail to restore.

 

thanks guys,
That was quick. Didn't even get to finish my coffee.

So, I made a what I thought was a ATI bootable CD. Tested it on a vanilla Dell PC. No joy.
Explorer shows all boot files in a sub-dir /Recover. Why is that?
Vanilla Dell sure can't see it.
I used the ATI boot cd defaults.

As I see it I now have choices:
I) I have a USB hard drive will plenty of space. Do Backup Image to USB drive.
II) I can also plug in my laptop 40GB to vanilla Dell with adapter and do backup image. Need to Reinstall ATI on vanilla Dell.

My choices on moving to new 120GB HD:
If I go choice "I" I will need a bootable ATI CD, then install 120GB in laptop and do restore from USB drive "image".
If I go choice "II" all I need to do is install new 120GB drive with adapter in vanilla Dell and restore "Image".

Which is best practice and guaranteed to boot?

 

Ken, I can only presume that something went wrong while creating the Emergieny Boot CD. If you have burning software that you know from past use can successfully burn an iso image, try using the iso file option when creating the Boot CD and then use that burning software to create the CD. I do not recommend going on to either plan I or II until you are able to create a Boot CD that works!

If I understand your 2nd plan, I wouldn't trust it because the target hard drive in the vanilla Dell PC will be created within the desktop's environment and that could cause problems when you remove that HDD and install it in your laptop.

-------
After-thought... When you say that vanilla Dell can't see the Boot CD, are you sure that the booting sequence within its BIOS is set to first boot from your CD-ROM drive?

 

I am just doing testing of my PEBart boot disk including the ATI10 plugins.
CD is ready to test.
Wish me luck.

 

So far so good!

Built and tested BartPE boot CD
Booted and did Full ATI backup of C:\ to USB drive
Verified Image archive.

I think I'm in fine shape.

Tomorrow I will install 120 GB HD in Laptop and use BartPE to restore image.

Anything I need to be aware of before the big bit move?

And, once again, thank all of you for your help.

Nice to see a software product that does what is says it is supposed to do.

I can kiss all of my #$%^ Symantec CDs good bye.

 

kentek,

I'm still confused about your cloning technique. Do you have two laptop HDs installed in a desktop computer for the cloning process?

PS What brand laptop are you using?

 

Hey Brian,

Thanks for your concern on my clone techniques.
I have an IBM Thinkpad T40.
Before I found Acronis (BA) in order to clone a laptop I would use Ghost (older version as 2003 sucks) and plug in 2 40pin-to-44pin adapters one on each IDE channel. Then, boot from floppy or CD with DOS and Ghost.
I could then do a disk-to-disk clone. Which I did but new drive would never boot no matter how I changed the settings.

Read my next post on how well Acronis worked for me.

ken wood

 

Friday Greetings to all:

I was successful in using Acronis to clone my Thinkpad hard drive to new Western Digital 120GB drive.
The BartPE PE Builder worked like a charm. I followed instructions and no issues.

30minutes to do the FULL backup and 25 minutes for restore.

After boot and checking 'things' I did a CHKDSK and all is well.

Thanks to all that provided guidance on my project.

Have a good weekend.

ken wood

 

kentek,

Thanks for that. Unfortunately you were using an IBM laptop which has different CHS geometry to a desktop computer. When you clone a laptop HD in a desktop the clone acquires the desktop geometry and then won't boot in a laptop. It's not fixable. This also applies to HP/ Compaq but not to Dell.

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