Help MiniMax/or anyone who can help

Okay, I give up. How do you make an image of just the data on a drive? I made an image of drive C thinking that TI just images the data on the drive and when I went to test it to see if I could pu it on drive D which is a smaller drive, the software said no no in fact right when I saw the image size from within the restorer program and it said 200G <----- or there bouts, I knew that it wouldn't work. Remember you mentioned that it was possible to get an image off of a 200G and put it on a 55G. Can you please tell me how to do it?

Thanks in advance for being clear, as I am an ignoramous

Lonnie

 

How much of that 200 GB was actually in use? What size is the destionation drive?

 

22.6G used and the destination drive is a 57.2G drive with 40.2G free.

 

Okay, so? Does the dragging operation described in the User's Guide not work for your? Or are you stopped before reaching that point in the process?

 

Ok, perhaps I don't understand how this puppy is supposed to operate. I'm assuming that in the event of a system crash, I will have to boot with the bootable cd that I made. I'm using the bootable cd to boot into TI so I can restore my images. I guess that that is not the procedure huh, or is it? When I get into the program, the smaller drive is greyed out and there is some sort of message about there not being enough free space. Am I supposed to be doing all of this within windows evironment?

Thanks for your time and effort in this. Remember I'm a newbie.

 

Booting with the Rescue CD is the correct way to do this. What is on the smaller drive? Is it empty, or do you have data on it?

 

Yes there is data on it. I've been using it as just a place to keep extra copies of my purchased software .. such as TI, but in their own folders. As I said in one of my previous posts, it still has 40.2G free, which is plenty left over to hold my images of data on C which is only like 26.2G.

Lonnie

 

Is the image that you made still on the C drive? If so, use explorer to move (not copy) it to the D drive.

Edit: I read more carefully -- duh -- you are testing the restore function.

 

5.4 Selecting a location to restore to
As a rule, you should restore an image to the same partition from which that the image was created.
It is possible to restore an image to another partition. A partition should be at least the same size as the uncompressed image data.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, the way I understand the above is that the partitions have to be at least the same size minimally. This is what I suspected in the first place. If I image a 200G drive in which you've decided to include "all space available" when it is partitioned, then you must restore it to a partition that is at the very least the same size as the original. But they use questionable words like "should" ... man now I'm really confused.

The above from 5.4 down to the perferated line is pasted from the manual.


MiniMax .. how do you understand the above to read?

Thanks for your time.

Lonnie

 

The scenario would be a drive disaster (this is what I purchased the software for anyway). I'm just checking out the software to see if I can really use it for that purpose without necessarily going out and buying a brand new 200G drive. The way I've understood things prior to giving up my cash was that you could restore to any drive type and any drive size as long as the data that was backed up didn't exceed the capacity of the restore drive. If this is not the case, then I cannot justify spending the money on this software and will ask for a refund.

 

I think I know what the problem is

When you say that you still have 40 GB free on the 55 GB drive, are you then really saying, that you have a 55 GB drive, with a single 55 GB partition, of which you have only used 15 GB for various data?

If so, then I can understand why TI shows the drive as greyed out, since the existing partition is occupying the full disk. Do you have a tool (like Acronis Disk Director?) you can use to shrink the existing partition down to 16 GB, leaving 39 GB of *real* free disk space for True Image?

 

I just tried what you mentioned and it didn't work, but I gotta question for ya. If you say I needed to restructer the partition on D drive to free up some space to put the backup on, wouldn't the same be true of the C drive? What I mean is the image of drive C is of a drive which partition is all 200G even though there is only like 26.1G used for my system. So...wouldn't I first have to restructure the partition of C making it like a 30GB. You know what I mean? I hope I'm not talking outta my butt here but it makes sense to me what you said about the D drive, so I figure it would also have to apply to the C drive as well.

Whenever I look at the image I made of C through TI, it shows a size of around 200G. And the way I figure it, the program is telling me no way is 200G image going to fit on a 57G drive. I hope I'm making sense.

What do you think?

Lonnie

 

No.

While the partition might be 200 GB in size, True Image is able to extract just the used data (26.1 GB) and put that in the new, smaller partition.

 

Ok, I'll take your word for it what do you think is going on then? I did what you suggested and it didn't work. What would you like me to try now?

Again .. thank you very much for your efforts in this.

Lonnie

 

Exactly what did you do?

What are your current disk-layout for the small disk?

 

I used acronis disk director suite to shrink the existing partition on D drive and created a logical drive of around 39G. Once I found out that that didn't work, I tried something else. I just backed up D with all my purchased programs ...etc.etc...and wiped the drive all together, and so the D drive now has it's full capacity available and I tried that and it still didn't work. Full capacity is 57.2G.

I did however see something within TI this time that I didn't see before. I saw an option to resize the original partition (I did not see this before). I chose to resize it and it asked me to put volume 1 in, I did, it errored out and asked if I wanted to continue with the 3rd volume, I said yes, it errored out and said to put volume 1 back in, I did.....and so on and so on....kept erroring out and saying error reading file and asking me to keep switching between volumes. My image is split between 2 DVD-R discs. On one disc there are 2 volumes, 1 and 2, the 2nd disc has volume 3 on it. Any ideas as to how I should proceed?

Oh and does that resizing sound familiar to you? Is that the option I need to use to get things accomplished?

Lonnie

 

And that was the wrong thing to do If you had just left the 39 GB un-allocated, TI could/should/would be able to use it for the restored date.

Hmm, I don't know what the problem could be with the DVD's. There have been a lot of posts about mis-leading CD/DVD messages in recent builds of True Image... I think (but I am not sure) that the latest build fixes this. Search the forum and see if you can find those posts.

If you use the Acronis Check Image tool (http://www.acronis.com/files/support/CheckImage.exe), do the 3 TIB'ss check out ok?

If you copy the 3 TIB's to a hard disk (perhaps you need to temporarily create a partition on the 55 GB disk to hold them), are you then able to Mount/Explore them?

 

Well, I got some new info for ya MiniMax. First, I did try it without creating the partition, but it didn't work, so I did it the way I mentioned and it still didn't work

I'll go ahead and check for those posts you mentioned. On to the new info.

I tried something new just to test it out. I copied all 3 .tib files onto drive C into a folder called "cbackup" (previous tries I wanted to just keep C outta the picture just in case TI tried to fry it somehow ), but anyway TI acted way different this time .. I was able to restore everything to drive D and TI said it was successful. I then took C outta the picture, which made what WAS D into C (I made sure the system recognized the drive as C), it booted as far as the system giving me windows logo screen .. usually I get a welcome screen, but anyway, it got to the logo screen and just froze, nothing from that point on.

Oh to answer your questions about the tibs, yes TI said they checked out, and they can be browsed.

Now I'll search for those posts you mentioned ... sheesh ... in the meantime, do you have anything else to suggest?

Thanks

Lonnie

 

Seems like you are really close now. What if you boot the new C in Windows Safe Mode (F8 during boot)?

Alternatively, boot from your Windows CD and do a Repair of the new C.

 

I thought of the Safe Mode, but it didn't work either. However, it didn't occur to me to do a "R"epair. It's been my experience though that that option don't do much (in my particular scenarios I mean), doing a Fixboot and Fixmbr has gotten me out of a lot of troubles in the past I'll try all 3 however.

Thanks for your continued assistance.

Lonnie