Procedure for checking functionality please

After painfully pouring through the help files, the user manual and this forum, I have decided that my use of ATI 11 on Vista home premium is going to be extremely limited. The only thing I need to know at this point is whether or not a recovery will succeed from a boot disk. I have a boxed product, and I do not want to initiate something that I can't get out of, therefore;

1. can someone with knowledge give me a step-by-step on how to boot from the install disk, and;

2. At what point do I know whether the process is good and I can quit it, and;

3. How large should the SZ be (referring to the following paragraph)?

I intend to put a full image on a SZ, and a full backup on a regular partition, both of which will reside on an external USB HDD. Thereafter, I will just do full backups and nothing else. Does this seem reasonable? Any other suggestions would be readily accepted and appreciated, but I really want to know if the program works before I need it.

TIA,
Dave

 

I. Check that your CD drive is listed before the hard drive in the BIOS. Open the CD drawer put the cd in, close the drawer and reboot. Make your selections from the TI GUI when the CD has finished loading.

2. Which process? on the ones I can think of the screen messages make it clear.

3. As long as you make the SZ a bit larger the used space on your drive there will be no problem fitting in your image even if you choose not to use any compression. If you decide to use some compression it is perfectly easy to reduce the size of the zone afterwards using the manage secure zone wizard. This is the best way to go as an image size estimate is only after all an estimate.

NB Contrary to most advice given a secure zone works well on an external hard drive. However Do not activate the startup recovery manager because this can give rise to booting problems in some circumstances.

The 100% safe way to ensure that TI works for you on your hardware is to simulate a failure of your hard drive. You then replace it with another blank hard drive, boot from the TI CD and restore a backup image to the replacement drive.

Xpilot

 

Xpilot, thanks for the info, I will try this, but unfortunately I have already activated the startup recovery manager. Can it be disabled?

Dave

 

Make sure you have a "Vista installation dvd" to make a "repair" in case your restored drive doesn't bootup. That's the only utility you will need when trying to restore Vista.

Sometimes it restores without needing a repair, but always plan for the worst.

http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Recovering the Vista Bootloader from the DVD

 

The way to de-activate the SRM is to use the zone manage wizard to remove the zone and then make it afresh, this time un-checking the pre-selected SRM button.

When you come to do your first whole drive restore a repair from the Vista CD may necessary. This will be true if you overwrite the original disk or a replacement.
Subsequent restores will not need this procedure.

Xpilot

 

I did what you suggested by simply deleting the SZ, recreating it without the SRM enabled, and putting a new image in it. That went fine, although I thought it was going hinky when it estimated 9 hours to do the image. Don't know why cause it was done in 1.5 hours.

My copy of Vista is OEM on a restore partition. I don't have a disk. Am I still able to do repair install, or must I do a complete restore? If that is the case, not much point in doing an image backup, is there?

Dave

 

You need the actual " vista installation DVD" because your going have to bootup with it to perform the repair.

Microsoft has made the "recovery section" of the installation dvd available for those who bought their Vista preinstall. Unfortunately it's a 128mb download, but it does bootup and will let you do the repair. Just make sure you get the right one theres a Vista x86 version and a Vista x64 version.

All you will be doing is a repair of the MBR, to get the restored hard drive to boot. You won't be doing a "repair installation". A repair of the MBR is quick, less than 5 minutes.

http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-vista-recovery-disc-download/

 

DaveyBear,

TI 11 should not require you to do a Vista BCD file repair after restoring your Vista partition. However, it is good to have a Vista DVD or the "repair cd" just in case. TI 10 (and previous versions) had a problem because of Vista's new partition alignment rules.

 

Sorry for the tardy reply...been out of town for a couple of days.

Not a lot of joy to report. After resizing the SZ and placing a new image in it I have been trying to make a full data backup and it keeps failing. The first attempt proceeded to 11% and then just stopped. I shut it down after 4 hours of no progress. The second time I tried, it made it to 17% before stopping. I finally shut it off after 10 hours. According to the log, the backup is still going on. Any thoughts about this, or should I start a new thread?

About the Vista recovery disk, thanks for that info. I downloaded all that I needed and got the disk made.

Thanks to everyone for the help...jury is still out as to whether ATI is in working mode on my machine.

Dave

 

Hello DaveyBear,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Backup software.

Could you please try to back your data up with compression level set to "None"? You can change compression level in the following way:

- Please go to Tools -> Options
- Choose "Compression level" in "Default Backup Options" and set it to "None"

If this fixes the issue please but you wish to back up with the enabled compression you can find workaround suggested by Haeckli here. As for the issue please be sure our Development Team has already found the solution and it'll be implemented in the nearest build of the program.

Thank you
--
Nikita Sakharov

 

When would that be? This is a known issue since last year! The work around offered by the other user is brilliant work by him, perhaps you should hire him! I would like to note that if I were into cult religions like Linux Ubuntu I might undertake the work around, but I have better things to do with my time. I have ditched ATIH11, and am presently searching for my copy of Retrospect. If you ever get this program in order so that it just works, drop me a note. After all, I spent my money and I am a registered user.

Have a nice day.

Dave