So, Universal Restore, Does it work?

So, Universal Restore, Does it work?

Are we in Alpha or Beta?
Lets not forgot it took TI9 no less than six releases to reach a usable build!

What we know:
- requires TI 9.1 Workstation (and $77.98 for an upgrade from 9.0)
- supposedly replaces the HAL and the boot device driver

Sounds too good to be true.

Lets hear some war stories.
Dying to know how robust it is.

Forgetting about SCSI drivers, Midi, and Firewire...I hope they tested some normal target devices like intel NICs (and CPUs!), and maybe at least half of the sorta popular video chipsets like ATI and NVIDEA.

Hmm...sorry just a tad pesamistic here given their TI9 track record!

Tell ya what Detox, let this run for just a tad here, before you rip it out.
If 9.1 does what it claims, we'll eat it up.

 

A little off-topic there... Anyway you know where the lines are. Don't cross them and there will be no problems.

 

I've seen it used to restore an image to three different hardware computers. AUR worked when the basic Acronis TI didn't. I was impressed.

 

I backed up my laptop from my desktop with no problems using Workstation 9.1 3633 with Universal Restore. I use Driver Magician to replace the drivers on the laptop with one click.

It worked very well for me.

 

Hi!
I used AUR now for three machines (from PIII 800 to P4 2,8 Ghz, from another PIII 800 to AMD Sempron and from PIII 550 Slot 1 to PIII800 - quite old machines ). It worked with all systems very fine - no problems at all. One of them had a Promise controller, there i had to add the proper sysfile and then the procedure went through.

I am very impressed of this piece of software - it spared a lot of time for me.

Konrad

 

To: silver0066
From: Michael777

Let me make sure I understand what you did:

1. Used Driver Magician to capture the drivers needed for the laptop, by running DM on the OS that was already running on it?
2. Booted TI9.1UR on the laptop and restored an image you had previously made from your desktop?
3. And then...sorry I think I lost it...

Could you please clarify?
I am curious why you (needed to) use Driver Magician?

Thanks,
Michael

 

I used Driver Magician on the laptop to backup all of the third party, non Microsoft drivers to my external USB Drive. Then I restored my desktop image (which also has the Driver Magician program on it) using the TI Boot disk with Universal Restore to the laptop. Then I used Driver Magician on the laptop to restore all of the third party drivers back to the laptop.

I hope this makes it clearer.

 

Thanks, the piece I was missing was the pre-loading of Driver Magician onto the desktop prior to imaging it.

So when you first boot the restored image, does Driver Magician fire up before the Hardware Wizard, and perform the replacement?

 

No it doesn't. I just ignore or cancel the hardware wizard and run Driver Magician. It takes a couple of reboots and all is in place.

 

Thank you, now I understand how you used Driver Magician to migrate the drivers from the target host to its new OS.

I am still curious why Driver Magician was required? What non-Microsoft drivers were so critical that required such special DM ($$$) treatment that you couldn't just load those few by hand at the end of the process?

Also I imagine that the process you used only applies to like OSs. If W2K was on the laptop originaly, XP as the final OS seemingly would not (could not) use the drivers from W2K? Right?

 

I very well could have just loaded the drivers individually. It is just easier and faster to load them all at once.

I know nothing about W2K drivers.

 

W2K means Windows 2000.
What version of Windows was on the laptop before you started this process?
What version of Windows did you move to it?

 

Michael,

I know what it means! I went from XP Pro to XP Pro.

 

Sorry, just wanted to clarify.
OK so now I understand (fully, I think) your Driver Magician process moving XP Pro to XP Pro.
And now can ask the next question regarding the potential use of Driver Magician. If an OS other than XP Pro was on the laptop initially, then what would be the value of Driver Magician? Because the non-XP Pro drivers DM captured would be usless if the laptop had say W2K on it, wouldn't it?

 

Yes, that is correct.

 

I've never used the Universal Restore but surely any OS and drivers originally on the laptop would be overwritten when you restored the image containing another OS?

Regards

 

Excellent! OK to sum up, WOW, I think we have something here.

I will add my experiences.

My goal in this thread was to evaluate using TI9.1(Universal Restore) as a P2V tool.
I use VPC2004, VS2005, and VMware Workstation.
I have several machines that I would like to preserve and run without being tied to hardware any longer. Makes so much sense to not have to sync hardware and OS upgrades, not to mention preserving functionality into eternaty.

I have a strong feeling will virtualization will play a major part in the future.

Based on all the positive reponse in this thread, I purchased TI9.1UR (with Maintenance!, I was so darn excited) over the weekend and successfully imported into VPC a W2K image that I had previously created with TI9.0.2337 (the only 9.0 build I had trusted up to that point).

This "disk" image consisted of two partitions (OS and Data).
I was successful after two tries.

TI9.1 Corporate Workstation has an additional restore option.
In addition to Disk and its partitions (2), MBR is now a forth option.
It is possible to for instance to uncheck the Data partition and still have the Disk selected (as long as MBR remains checked). This behavior is different than TI9.0, where unchecking any one partition also unchecked the disk.

So I tried this the first time, didn't work, came up with one error "ntoskrnl.exe is corrupt, browse to a copy". I selected a SP0 copy on the original W2K install CD. Got past the OS selector screen (Recovery Console), and the character fuel guage, but failed with the same message, just prior to the grapical fuel gauge.

Tried it again with two changes: selected all 4 options (Disk, both partitions and MBR). Got the same ntoskrnl.exe error message, but this time pointed to another copy (from another PC) dated Oct 2005. Worked fine!

I need to go back and try my theory of excluding non-OS paritions from the restore. I also am stumpted as to why a later version of the ntoskrnl.exe worked. This file is used in combination with HAL.dll and ntkrnlpa.exe. This suite of three files provide (among other things I am sure) APCI (and APIC) functionality.

I am still learning, but it seems the Universal Restore process (that replaces the HAL and the boot device dirver) would not need the old HAL, but rather use the HAL for the target machine (VPC is this case).
Perhaps some HAL gurus can comment further.

Again, Worked out great here!
Next steps for me include restoring an old 98SE image I have, and then on to XP.

Thanks for the ride!

Go Acronis!

 

On many machines universal restore has been a huge time saver. At one location, my client has a number of dell machines, but all differing system types. In the past they would install fresh xp and get it all up to date (takes a few hours). Then make an image. Now anytime that machine or a machine identical to it needed to be put into service (or taken back to a fresh install) it was quick and painless. That didn't help between different hardware...they had to maintain different images for each type of machine (optiplex, laptop, dimension, etc.).

With Universal Restore, they are testing the ability to have one machine that they always keep up to date with windows updates, etc. Then using that image with universal restore to put it on any dell hardware they have in a fraction of the time. It's worked for the most part. Then they just load a few different drivers and it's saved a ton of work. Universal Restore already has great value and will only get better as they make it more stable. Very impressive so far.