Restore Image to Different Drive

I'd like Acronis Tech Support to answer the following questions, if possible:

1) Can TrueImage 8 be employed to create a complete image of one hard drive and then restore it to a different hard drive with no loss of data integrity or functionality?

2) If it can do so, how does TrueImage 8 handle bad sectors on the original hard drive and then on the drive the image is restored to so that no data is lost or corrupted?

3) What is Acronis' official recommendation on creating an image of one drive and restoring to a different drive versus cloning as an alternative?

Please clear up my confusion. Thanks.

 

Ilya? Anything on these questions?

 

Hello iflyprivate,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

Let me answer all your questions in turn:

1. Acronis True Image transfers all the data from one hard dirve to another. The only problem that may occur is when the source and destination drives are of different types. For example, when you transfer the system from IDE disk to SATA Windows may not boot because of lack of drivers for SATA controller.

2. Acronis True Image asks you what to do if it cannot read a particular sector. You may either retry, cancel the whole image creation, ignore the particular sector, or ignore all such sectors. If you ignore the sector it is considered to be empty and therefore not included into image.

3. When you transfer the system to another disk it is recommended that you use "Disk Clone" wizard. "Create Image" wizard is designed mostly to back up the drive. You may find the following artcile useful:

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/faq.html#9c

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Thank you VERY much. This really clarifies things for me.

 

O.K. so what happens in the following case:

1. I do a complete disk image (not a clone) to an external USB drive for "disaster" recovery.

2. My computer HDD suddenly dies. I consider this a "disaster".

3. I obtain a new HDD and install it into the computer.

4. Can I or can I not boot the computer via the ATI boot disk (and with the external USB drive connected) and restore the image? All of the above is done using complete disk "images" not "cloning".

Thanks,
Harvey

 

That's a GREAT question!

 

Of course you can do this. Many of us do this sort of thing all the time, sometimes to a USB disk, sometimes to a network drive and sometimes to a second drive in the same computer. This senario is the most common one in business. We don't normally fool with cloning, everything is done with images. We store a whole range of images on the network. (We are well aware of any MBR problems and how to deal with them, but normally there are none.)

 

Exactly. My point is that every so often, in response to a question, Acronis support restates this position on Cloning vs. Imaging. They always seem to imply that one should clone if going to a new HDD. The link given above by them also implies this. Thus the confusion.

Thanks,
Harvey

 

beenthere,

Forgive me for becoming impatient with your persistent disregard (after reading your posts in this and other related discussions) for those of us who want detailed and accurate technical support, from Acronis, as to the differences between cloning and imaging and also, as to the risks involved when restoring an image of one hard drive to another hard drive.

The published manual and the article referred to under the FAQ's is somewhat open to interpretation and therefore, vague in its omission that risks of failure or corruption may be present when restoring an image to a different drive.

Speaking for myself, what I would like from Acronis is a definitive statement to the effect that TrueImage 8 has been designed to deal effectively and reliably with the process of imaging one disk and restoring to another, within specific parameters. Otherwise, TrueImage 8 cannot be relied upon to undertake such a process. Ilya has come close to answering this question but his response still leaves some element of doubt as to whether the program has been designed to address the variables of restoring to a different disk.

Your on-going stories of previous success and continuing reassurances that you and others do this all the time means nothing as it applies to users like me and it has become irritating because it's a worthless distraction at this point. Please, if you can't stick with this thread's clear intent to coaxe a specific and detailed response from Acronis, butt out and go start your own thread about how successful you are at doing things with TrueImage that are not clearly documented, okay?

Thank you!

 

Hello iflyprivate,

At the risk of being reprimanded for butting in , I feel beenthereb4's reply was valid; Harvey asked a straightforward question and beenthereb4 responded in the affirmative. Surely you're not inferring that other users shouldn't contribute to Aconis Support responses (Ilya and co are only human and sometimes, not often, make slight mistakes). Two or more heads are usually better than one don't you think?

In my humble opinion, the main difference between imaging/restoring and cloning in this particular scenario is that an image can be stored on a backup drive without overwriting other data that may be residing there. An image can also be stored on optical media. Provided the image was created of the whole source drive then it can be restored to a (same type of interface otherwise you're into a Windows repair install) replacement drive or to the original drive and either will be bootable. Cloning on the other hand will replicate the whole source drive to another hard drive (ditto the about the interface), provide an opportunity to resize the partitions in the process, but wipe out anything that you may have wanted to retain on the destination drive.

Both methods are available so just use the one that suits your own specific need.

Regards

 

I appreciate both the responses of beenthereb4 and Menorcaman. They reinforce what I believe is the desired operation of ATI. My point was that Acronis tech support, from time to time, clouds the issue of Cloning vs. Imaging/Restoring for the typical "disaster" scenario.

I would simply like Acronis to stipulate, once and for all, that the Image/Restore procedure is viable for restoring to a new HDD.

Harvey

 

Hi Menorcaman.

Thanks for butting in. You're right that two or more heads are better than one when trying to figure out some of these problems. I agree with you wholeheartedly that everyone should feel free to contribute in any discussion anytime they have something to contribute.

My reply to beenthereb4 was a tad too strong and it resulted from a little clash we had in another recent thread, "Need help upgrading laptop hard drive!" which you can read for yourself. I felt then that he was not being helpful but was being sarcastic. I let that go.

But, in this thread, the questions were crystal clear and the replies from Acronis tech support and the documentation were a little cloudy. When beenthereb4 inserted his reply I saw it as a distraction from the specific track we were on in asking these very focused questions. I still don't see where beenthereb4 contributed anything other than a meaningless testimonial as I said before. Maybe I would have ignored beenthereb4's post had we not clashed in the other thread.

I think the Acronis support forum is a shining example of a really helpful forum. In fact, it's the best one I have ever seen. Ilya is fantastic in his responsiveness and Acronis should be proud of the atmosphere he has fostered in this forum. Members like yourself have a real depth of knowledge and experience and are willing to share it and patiently investigate and follow up Acronis-related issues. That's outstanding and rather rare in forums.

I have never appreciated participants who "me too" the discussions or who imply that the topic under discussion is somehow questionable in its validity just because they have been able to do something or just because they never experienced it. That's one of my sensitivities because I see that when there are lots of those kinds of posts in a forum, the knowledge exchange and the solutions are few and far between. That's what's so good about this forum - lots of quality knowledge and experience exchange which leads to quality solutions.

 

Here's one way to look at the problem and questions asked. Your hard drive has crashed and is dead as a doorstop. What will you do to get back up and running? Clone the doorstop? Of course not, you can only clone a good working drive. So, that's when you restore an image to a new drive.

It's important that the image be of the whole drive to ensure that it will be bootable, but other than that, it's a simple operation that can be done with a new drive that is smaller, bigger or the same size as the original doorstop.

Now, look at the problem this way. You have a good working drive, but you want to replace it with a new drive that is faster or bigger. You can either clone the good drive to the new one or restore an image. Tech Support suggests that cloning is the first choice. That's because a clone by definition is of the whole drive. There's no need to worry whether the image was of the whole drive or only the boot partition. A clone ensures that the new drive will be bootable.

However, if it's not convenient to connect both drives at the same time to do a clone, you can still restore an image (of the whole drive), and be up and running with the new drive.

Does that help?

 

Hello all,

The "Disk Clone" wizard is mainly designed for those who upgrade the computer. For example, you need to get new larger hard disk. If you have your system running properly but there are a lot of applications installed and settings made it would really difficult and time-consuming to install all this stuff once again and set all the application as they were before. It is much easier and faster just to clone the existing hard drive to the new. It will take several minutes instead of the whole day to move to a new hard disk.

The image creation/restoration is mainly developed for back up purposes. However you may find easier to have the cloned disk as a back up solution so if your disk fails you just install another one and may go on working. This is not common solution but some people use it.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Ilya,

I only have one more question on this.....

Is TrueImage 8 designed to safely restore a disk image created on a different hard drive than the one it is restored to?

By "safely" I mean does TrueImage 8 consider that one drive may have certain good physical sectors that are bad on the other drive?

Thanks.

 

I also have this question. I have been searching the threads for a straightforward answer on this, but have still not seen what I need to know.

My own issue bears on iflyprivate's question: I was religiously burning images of one of my SATA drives to my (also internal) IDE drive (see equipmnt details below) for catastrophic recovery, checking the images each time. They checked out. I recently hosed my main drive (actually while trying to get Acronis Power Utilities to load without killing my antivirus and antispyware; but that's a story for another thread) - all of my ATI images residing on my IDE drive were corrupted when I tried to restore. I'm not so much worried about USB drives - at this point, I would like to ask Acronis/Ilya if ATI has these corruption problems when one burns images from one internal HDD to another? Is there a problem burning from a SATA to an IDE?

I also saw some mention of Abit mb users that have a workaround by resetting P2P (I think), but have not been able to find the details. Anyone know where that thread is?

I really need to find an image program that can pull my fat out of the fire when I need it to, and I really like the Acronis features and feel, but can't continue to rebuild everytime I try something new and end up hosing my system.

thanks a 10**6

todell

CPU: AMD 64 3500+
MB: Abit AV8 w/VIA K8t800 Pro chipset
Mem: 2*1GB Corsair xms400pro
HDD: 2*160GB Seagate SATA + 1*160GB WD IDE

 

Hello iflyprivate,

If you have bad sector on the old drive and you choose to ignore it Acronis True Image considers it as an empty sector and therefore the corresponding sector on the target disk will be empty.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

To piggyback on Harvey's question.

O.K. what happens in the following case:

1. On my laptop, I do a complete disk image (not a clone) to the same drive directory for "disaster" recovery. The resulting image archive is 5 gigs.

2. I transfer the image archive from my laptop to my desktop , using network trasfer via my router.

3. A few days later, I have a virus attack in my laptop.

4. I decided to reformat my laptop hard drive. And it is totally clean and empty.

5. Can I or can I not boot the laptop from the image archive that I am storing on my desktop?
And restore the image in my laptop?

All of the above is done using complete disk "images" not "cloning".

The assumption here is I have no external DVD drive , no external hard drive. No exteranl USB drive of any kind. Looks like the only way I can make use of the 5 gigs image archive is somehow through the desktop and my router.

I do have a CD drive on the laptop , and an external CD burner.

Can anyone please tell me if True Image can help me restore from the image archive on to my laptop?

As you can tell, I am pretty clueless about imaging and computer.

Thanks a million.

 

Thanks for the comments... just few followup questions:

1. If an image is being restored back to exactly the same hard drive it came from and a certain physical location on the disk that was part of the image is now bad on the newly formatted hard disk, what does TI do with this information? Or does TI not necessarily restore a physical sector location to exactly the same spot on the disk?

2. If some kind of protected software does something tricky by marking some particular sector as bad (yet may actually put something their), TI would not be able to do anything about this?

 

This whole idea of the new drive having bad sectors is a blind alley. Modern drives reserve some sectors to replace any sectors that start acting flakey. When the reserved sectors are used up, the drive is failing and should be replaced. There are therefore two reasons why iflyprivate started out with wrong information and persists in looking for something that's not to be found.

1. He misunderstood sector based imaging and thought that it meant one to one mapping during a restore.

2. He seems to be unaware of how bad sectors are handled by modern drives.

Well, actually 3 reasons----

3. He seems to have an overreaching ego.

 

Okay, beenthereb4, a/k/a NewfusDufus. Play your stupid little games and ruin the forum for everyone.

 

Hello studentguru,

See if you can creat the image from within Windows direct to the desktop via the router and then verify it using the Check Image Wizard. That could save you a double shuffle.

Next, create TI's full bootable rescue media (floppy or CD), boot your laptop from it and check whether TI detects you're router and "sees" the image on the desktop. If so and provided the original image was created of the whole disk rather than just some of the (including system) partitions you should be good to go.

Regards