Only problems with True Image

Hello!

Here ist what I want to do:
Backup my C disk and be able to restore it to another disk in case of failure- sounds simple enough.

First problem: I cannot create a Acronis boot CD that finds my hard drives. I tried the workaround (noapi... can`t remember) but still no luck. So I decided to backup the C disk from the running system which should also work, right?
The backup went smoothly. But today I wanted to restoe it- as a test, no crash yet.

So I start TI (from my main disk A) and try to play the image from external disk C to my internal disk B (which is not empty but the partition I'm restoring it to is empty).

The process went ok but I went with the check-option after the restore and there it gave me an error message at 90% of the checking operation saying there need to be references to be suspended or whatever the English translation is. I said no and tried to reboot, changing the boot disk in Bios.

Now get this: I got my old desktop which was to be expected (the one from the restored image) but when I checked for a file that I deleted after the backup it was not there, so I looked and the data from drive C was the data from my disk A (whcih sould and actually couldn't have the letter C as it was not the boot disk). How is that possible, the disk I booted from had now the letter X!!

When I tried to physically disconnect disk A (after shuting down the PC of course) disk B (with the restored image) was not able to boot (stopped shortly before the log-in screen).

What is going on here? Can anybody help?

Thanks!

Georg


(Gigabyte P35 board, E6750, 2GB Geil RAM, Win XP Prof)

 

Are you using a different mother board than the backup was made from?

 

Drive letter change during restoration problem

This is a problem that occurs with windows xp when doing backups and restorations. It's happen to me a couple of times. Unless you do your backups and restorations perfectly step by step your going to run into this problem. One thing that is known to cause this problem is when there are several hard drives in the computer.

two ways to fix it the easy way or the hard way.
1. easy way is to get the bootup utilitys that can change drive letters on a non-booting hard drive (takes 5 minutes). I've only tested two programs that can change drive letters "paragon justboot corrector" and "avanquest partition commander pro version 10" (both were able to change drive letters and get my non-booting hard drive to boot.)
2. hard way is to troubleshoot where a step was miss or done wrong when you did the image and restored it, and try to redo the process from there. Below link shows how to change drive letters using freeware.
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=174958


In my case as long as I have true image 9.0, and "justboot corrector" I'm confident I can restore windows xp everytime.
If it's a dive letter problem, it's always better to just change the drive letters quickly after you restored the hard drive, than waste hours troubleshooting. From my expierence it's an easy fix.

As for your problem that true image cd won't recognize your hard drives, that has happen to me with sata drives. But to me this is a minor problem, theres many ways to work around that. Never stopped me from backing up or restoring hard drives.

Use this demo to analyze your hard drive. With it you can verify that you do have a drive letter problem. From what you describe it sounds like it.
http://www.justboot.us/boot_corrector.htm

It's good that you tried to test your backup/restore before you actually do need it. It's the only way to learn how to use it, and trust the program will work when you need.

 

No of course not, everything was the same.

 

Thans for your help!
I get it that it would work with a boot-manager. What I don't get is how this should work without it and without the boot-CD.

Step by step:

I have my system on drive I
My .tib is on external drive III
The disk I want to restore the image to is II

Now I a, running XP from I which has the letter C, obviously. Now I restore from III to II.
It asks me what type it should be and I say acitve, right?
It asks me for a drive letter and I say M: or whatever.

Now I have the problem that even if I reboot and physically disconnect my drive I, drive II won`t boot as it has still the letter M:
And in case of a disk crash on I that is exactly what I would do and I guess that thousands of users would do it this way.
You said that in order for this to work you have to correctly do every step of the way- what did I do wrong or what else is the problem in this scenario?
Thanks!

 

One thing that I know for a fact that causes the drive letter changes to happen, is when you try to restore a larger partition image onto a smaller partition image. You didn't mention what size partitons you have, but a good rule is too always try to make sure that the partition on the new hard drive is at least 1gb larger than the image partition your trying to restore into it. True image will let you squeeze a 21gb partition into a 19gb partition and say it"s succesful but I usually got drive letter changes when I did that. That might be something to look at.
Also when true image asks what drive letter you want it to be, I always leave that blank.
Try restoring your image into a larger partition and leaving the drive letter uncheck when you restore it.