Restored Partitions Resizing?

The "manual" does not cover this little item. Somewhere after starting to restore an image to my hard disk, I am presented with a window with two choices:
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Restore Image Wizard

Restored Partitions Resizing

* Yes, I want to resize partitions.
* No, I do not want to resize partitions.

Description:
Selecting this item allows you to resize a partition automatically when restoring from an image archive. Resizing a partition from an image on removable media can be quite slow - this usually requires you to change out the removable media one or more times.
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That last caution is a GROSS UNDERSTATEMENT. I am restoring an image saved as 4GB files on several DVDs. The process has required in excess of 3 dozen media swaps per disk and has consumed over 3 hours of manual babysitting. I'm not sure where the automatic part comes in...perhaps I haven't reached it yet (uh-huh) as the restore is not complete yet.

Some possible problem areas:
I believe the target disk may have been formatted FAT32 and I require NTFS for the image restore. I guess I foolishly expected TI to check the target and offer me the option of restoring as FAT16, FAT32, or NTFS as the manual shows. I wasn't given that choice. What I believe may be happening is that TI is pounding a square peg (NTFS image) into a round hole (FAT32 disk format). What say Acronis Support?

 

That has been my experience also - to the degree that I don't ever do that.

If you have access to an external hard disk or can mount another internal hard disk and copy the entire image there, you can save all the disk swapping. In my opinion, this is the only way this feature can be used by humans. If you have a trained, eight arm monkey, you can continue doing things as you have been.

 

Yeah, well this is a laptop and my options are limited as far as internal drives and recognizable externals. That's why I'm being driven to distraction via the DVD route. I just don't understand what comatose code puncher penciled this utility. Utility it ain't.

 

You have my sympathy. You might also wonder what idiot built a laptop with a USB chipset that was so non-standard, but that won't solve the problem.

You might consider buying a USB 2.0 PC card adapter. I have an Adaptec AUA-1420A card that is recognized by the TI recovery CD and works with both my external USB 2.0 drives. No drivers need to be installed under Windows XP. I use this on notebooks that don't have USB 2.0 on the motherboard. There are cheaper PC cards, but I would highly recommend only buying one with an NEC chipset.

 

Hello Boofer,

Thank you for choosing Acronis System Restore Software.

This problem is caused by the fact that you have image split over several DVDs and wish to resize the image. Naturaly, Acronis True Image cannot read the content of all DVDs at once but to be able to resize the distribute the data on resized partitions correctly Acronis software needs to access different parts of the data, these parts being located on different DVDs. The only workaround is to copy all the content of DVDs to a single folder on some media (for example, external drive).

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Why not bail out, do a straight restore, then resize the partions with partition managing software?

 

Hello nolonemo,

This is good idea. Acronis offers you powerfull partition managing software called Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0. It allows you to resize partitions in any way you need.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Hallelujah!

I did bail on that stroll down the garden path. I created a single image that I was able to locate and download via the network connection. Who'd have thunk it? Thank you Acronis. Without a whole lot of fuss I was able to access the image I created within my LAN and restore it to my target laptop. What a concept!

One of the gotchas I faced has been discussed somewhere in this forum: Why would you want to verify an image prior to restoring? Didn't make any sense to me either when I first encountered it. However, when I went to restore my previously-verified (post-creation) image, it choked with a CRC error after negotiating the first sixth or so. I said to myself "WTF?" It was then that I decided to verify the image prior to restoring. It verified fine and restored after that just fine. Question to Acronis: Do you need to validate (not verify) the image for some reason prior to restoring? Then again it could have just been a glitch on the ethernet line.

 

Hello Boofer,

Glad to hear everything worked for you in the end.

If you have corrupted image of the whole disk and try restore it without verification Acronis True Image will first delete all existing partition and then will stop at some point during the restoration. Consequently, you will loose the existing partitions without restoring imaged ones.

In your case, the error message seems to be a problem with LAN. That is why you were able to restore the same image a little bit later.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman