recover without a boot disc?

hey Im new to Partition Recovery but this is what i would like to do let me know if its possible. backup C: to a image on a hidden partition. then when the time comes and i need it it lets me boot to a menu to restore and not have to use the disc anyway to do this?

 

No way that I know of. What software will you use to see the hidden partition? If you use the TI Secure Zone that is a hidden partition but you still need a boot disk.

 

There are a number of problems with this approach. One of which is the fact that you are trying to put every single one of your eggs in the same basket. When your harddisk goes bang you might have a problem.

If you are serious about DR I recommend you not only store your images away from your source disk (like on a second hard disk or/and off site) but have at least one alternative means of booting to recovery (e.g. flash disk, ATI Recovery CD, Bart PE, etc).

F.

 

Not sure how useful this will be but I use True Image v 8.0.0.800 and do something similar to what I think you are trying to achieve.

TI is installed on the HD in the normal way and I never use the Disk thereafter.

I re-boot and press F11 on start up.
This allows me to restore an image from a separate partition on the same HD or from an external USB HD. I've never had an Image fail to verify let alone restore and I've restored dozens if not hundreds. I've restored at least 10 in the last couple of days.
Creating the Secure Zone for this to work does overwrite the MBR which could be a problem for some,
Creating an Image is done from within Windows of course.

As suggested I think you can use the Secure Zone but I prefer to have the images on a separate partition where I can see what is going on and copy the image to the external HD thereafter. I can't remember if you can create an Image direct to the external HD but I suspect you can.

I've had more than one version of v8.xxx and I think Acronis had some problems/implemented changes so I persevered with the above version.
Some v8's if I remember correctly do not give you this option of pressing F11 on re-boot so you need the CD.
Again if I remember correctly some v8 versions do not work with SATA HD's, the version quoted does.

If this is what you are after I've no idea where you would get hold of a copy and what confidence you would have as to which version it is.

 

This is one of the features of TrueImage. You create a SecureZone which is where your image is stored and then activate the Acronis Recovery Manager. Pressing F11 on booting will start Acronis and allow you to restore the image.

That said, having your backup on the same drive provides on protection against a hard drive failure. None the less, it's great for other problems such as malware or viruses.

You can install the SecureZone on a second internal hard drive and activate the Recovery Manager for better protection. Do not use the Recovery Manager with an external hard drive because the system will not boot without that drive attached.

 

Not necessarily so. It took build 3677 of v9 before my SATA drive could be seen from both Windows & Linux environments. V8 wouldn't have had a prayer.

F.