Newbie + new computer > help appreciated!

Hello,

I have Acronis True Image Home 11 and have been faithfully backing up my laptop (system, programs and files) onto an external hard drive.

This laptop being too heavy to lug around, I've purchased an ultra light notebook
whose hard drive is much larger than that of my office laptop.

I'd like to clone (import/copy/install??) all that I have backed-up on this external HD to the new laptop so that both machines have the same programs and files I need for my work.

Both laptops run under XP Pro SP2, but I am assuming each has its own drivers, bells and whistles (the main laptop is an Asus, the light one a Dell) and thus I am concerned that a straight cloning might mess up the system files on the new laptop.

As you can tell, I'm a neophyte with such types of software and situations and your help and advice would be appreciated!

Thanks!

Crozan

 

Hi crozan,
You won't be able to successfully clone form one laptop to the other because of the different hardware configurations, Windows will fail to load if it finds a lot of hardwrae changes at one time! Windows has a component called "Files and Settings Transfer Wizard" which may be of some value. Once you have both systems running as you like them then regular backups with True Image is the way to go. Let me know if this is not a sufficient an anaswer or you need more info.

 

Hi Aussie,

Thanks for your quick reply.. That's what I thought.. hardware setting problems..

To prepare for this new laptop, I've just tried to use True Image to save my emails. It froze at 50% and damaged my Outlook file. Thank goodness, System Restore managed to fix that. Is freezing midstream and damage to the source file a common occurrence? Should I stick to exporting a .pst file??

Indeed, I have two more questions

1) Is it possible to use True image to install all my software (save for the OS) from the external HD to the new laptop to avoid having to do so item by item (i have a lot of software both on CD and downloaded and this would take me days!). If so, can you walk me through it??

2) Since the idea is to have identical data files on both laptops, can I use my external HD to back up each and update each? Again, if possible, if you could walk me through it, that would be great. I find the user manual not terribly pedagogical!

Thanks so much for your help.

Crozan

 

What you can do is make an image and then restore it to the other PC BUT before you boot the new pc, put in the win install disk and and do a repair install and us the F6 key to add the approriate hardware drivers. Then the PC should boot fine -- you'll need to run windows updates a whole lot fo times to finsih all the updates.

 

Hello crozan,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Backup software.

Actually you can transfer your system from your old laptop to the new one, but you need to use additional tools due to the difference in the hardware environment. There are two possible ways to perform transfer: you can use Microsoft sysprep tool or Acronis Universal Restore. You can find instructions how to transfer your system using sysprep tool in the respective Microsoft article. If you want to use Acronis Universal Restore add-on you will also need Acronis True Image Echo Workstation. You can transfer your system using Acronis True Image Echo Workstation with Acronis Universal Restore add-on in the following way:
1. Install Acronis Universal Restore add-on and create Acronis Bootable Rescue Media as described in the Chapter 10.1 of the User's Guide.
2. Boot from Acronis Bootable Rescue Media and create your old hard disk drive backup. You can use scenario described in the Chapter 6.2 of Acronis True Image Echo Workstation User's Guide.
3. Replace your old drive with the new one and restore created backup as described in the Chapter 7.3 of the User's Guide.

If you transfer your system in the described way you do not need to transfer Outlook or any other applications settings separately. At the same time if you want us to investigate the issue dealing with Outlook tell us please what is the size of the .pst file which can be found in C:\Documents and Settings\[your_account_name]\Local Settings\Applications Data\Microsoft\Outlook folder (this file represents the settings of the mentioned e-mail client)?

Following your question dealing with keeping different laptops backups on one hard drive, you do not need to set up anything in a special way, just save your backups to the external hard disk drive when the disk is attached to the laptop being backed up. The only recommendation we have is to create separate folders for keeping backups for each laptop separately.

Thank you
--
Nikita Sakharov

 

Thank you Nikita and Shieber!

I actually like Shieber's idea best as it is pretty straight forward and does not involve the use of additional software. Let's hope it will work properly!!

As to backing up both laptops on my external hard drive, I guess I did not express myself clearly. Indeed, one can, in distinct areas, back up each unit separately if there is enough space. What I wanted to do is a bit different. I need both my data file sets to be identical, and I was looking for a way to update the laptop that was "resting" with whatever changes I made on the laptop I was using -- without getting into a synch type of soft that I've never found to work trouble free.

My outlook .pst is 1.3 M, and I have no clue why the back up email process froze or damaged the source file.. That is not convenient, as exporting each time is very time consuming. Do you have a clue why such a simple thing would have failed??

THanks for all you help folks!

Crozan

 

Come to think of it, Nikita, I would need to install True Image on the new computer. Can I just access the "my order" page and redownload the installation file onto the new unit so implement the suggestions kindly offered?

Crozan

 

Make the bootable Rescue CD from the old system, boot with it on the new system, and do the Recovery from its menu.

 

Hmmm. Would that not mess up the new computer, whose hardware drivers are not the same at all??

 

Shouldn't ... if you follow it up by Shieber's suggestion in #4. The boot CD just has the basic Backup, Recovery, Clone functions and doesn't care which computer it runs on.

 

Hello crozan,

We are sorry for delayed response.

Please be aware that the outlook backup process is performed by Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI), so the speed of the backup process fully depends on MAPI performance which is considerably slow. Our Development Team is constantly working on optimizing program interaction with MAPI, but of course they cannot make MAPI itself work faster.

If the issue with backing up your mail persists, please collect some information to let us investigate it thoroughly:

Please create Windows System Information as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

Please also collect the following information:
- Exact title of E-mail client (e.g. Microsoft Outlook Express 6.0, Microsoft Outlook 2003);
- Quantity of user profiles;
- Amount of the accounts for these profiles;
- If the accounts within a single profile are of different types, please provide the amount of the accounts of each type. (E.g. profile [XXXX] contains three imap accounts and two pop3 accounts);

Then submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will do our best to investigate the problem and provide you with a solution.

Please note that according to Acronis License Policy you need to purchase one copy of the product for every machine it will be used to manage.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov