TI 9 - Full System Restore Time?

I am in the process of trying to do a full system restore from a ~50 GB .TIB file(s) from a Maxtor USB 2.0 drive to a 150GB drive on my Dell 4600 running Win XP. The primary drive on the Dell died yesterday.

Anyway, I think I've gone through the correct steps (booted from TI boot CD I created, etc). Now its telling me 11 hours for the "Disk Partition Recovery from Archive" step.

Does this seem correct?

Also, its telling me that its Restoring Partition C:->E:, which seems a bit odd. I want the restored drive (my primary drive) to be C:. Will it be possible to change the targt drive letter?

As noted in another thread, a simple step by step process for common windows restores would be a big help.

Thanks in advance for any advice/info folks can offer.

 

Paul,

All of my restores start out w/ an ungodly high number, then ATI throttles down to a more livable time. For 12G restore mine takes ~1.5hrs

With regard to drive letters... ATI initially screws them up, but in the end they turn out the correct drive letter e.g. E becomes C


hth,

...screamer

 

Thanks for the reply.

I got up this am and it still has two hours to go (so 9 hours so far). But as I think about, this is a full system restore of 145GB drive, with about 50GB of data. Given your 1.5 hours for 12 GB, 10 hours for 145GB does seem too far off the mark.

Thanks for the E: to C: tip.

We'll see how it goes.

 

Oh well... restore finished. I rebooted. Will not start -

"Windows will not start because of a computer disk hardware configurartion problem. Could not read from selected boot disk Check boot path and disk hardware."

TI still shows the primary drive as e: Any idea if this can be/should be changed?

Thanks!

 

hmmm?? I don't understand the Could not read from selected boot disc. After ATI finished, were you given a msg. that drive restored sucessfully? If so, you would just have to re-boot normally. e.g. no ATI boot disc.

How did you see that E was not changed?

 

After the successful restore message from ATI, I rebooted a few times and the noted "hardware configuration problem" message persited. I then restarted with the ATI boot CD, which is where the drive letters were shown.

Since then, I have spent a few hours on this forum looking for other indications. I found this post https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=162555 in which seven steps for recovery were outlined. This is NOT what I did the first time, so I have now retried using these steps. Basically, following these steps, the HD I am trying to restore now shows up as C: Other aspects of the restore procedure seem more logical as well.

I did find another post here https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=162415&highlight=restore which includes a comment from Acronis stating that if the drive being restored is not the exact type as the previous drive, it will not work. In my case, my dead drive was a Maxtor 160 GB being replaced (by Dell) with an Western Digital 160GB.

The restore is still running at home, taking 12 hours. I'll see how it goes tonight and repost. I remain a little concerned that the changing drive manufacturer may be behind my problem... we'll see.

Thanks again for the reply.

Paul

 

I'm curious if you also purchased the True Image Universal Restore add-on? It is supposed to let you restore to different hardware.

 

I had not heard of Universal Restore, but just checked out the Acronis site. Seems its an option only for ATI enterprise server. I use ATI home.

The restore is running now at home... I'll see how it goes and repost.

Paul

 

Paul, a few pointers for you.

In general a full restore from a USB drive should take less time than it took to create the image in the first place. This can only happen if the rescue CD has the best drivers to suit your hardware.
From the evidence it is plain that such drivers are not there for you. The answer is to create a Bart PE CD with the appropriate TI plugin. You will be amazed at the difference.

I have restored many times to drives from different manufacturers. Ignore any comments that say it will not work.

Just make sure that the drive is correctly jumpered according to its sticky label as the actual configuration varies across manufacturers.
The first time you restore to a new drive you must include the MBR. I always tick the whole disk box even though it is not strictly necessary if it has been used sucessfully before.

A ball park guesstimate for your timings would be:-
About one hour for a full drive image and half an hour for recovery. What will you find to do with all your free time? .



Xpilot

 

Thanks for the reply. I feel a bit more optimistic.

Interesting your comment on restore speed and the rescue CD having the right drivers... when I initially installed ATI I made a "rescue USB stick", not a CD.

When I needed to restore, I had no success booting my target PC off the USB stick.

I tried copying the rescue content from the USB stick to a CD and the target PC would still not boot.

Finally, I installed ATI on my work laptop (Dell 420) and created the rescue CD from the laptop. With this laptop-based rescue CD I finally got my target PC to boot to ATI. So... the drivers are very likely incorrect.

I'll post my results once I get home and test restore.

Paul

 

Well, I got home tonight, the restore finished (after 12 hours) and I still cannot boot. I get the same "Windows will not start because of a computer disk hardware configurartion problem. Could not read from selected boot disk Check boot path and disk hardware."

I can see from within ATI (Rescue disk) that the target PC c: drive now has all the restored files.

What I noticed is the my drive is defined as SATA on the target PC. Yet, when I look at the drive info in ATI (via the rescue disk), its defined as an IDE drive. I know from running the boot diagnostics that I have an SATA drive not an IDE drive.

Thoughts on this one?

Paul

 

I don't think I'm the only one to have slower restore than backup times on some machines. As general rule, it's not the case that restores are faster than backups.

sh

 

My own experience is that restore times are much shorter than imaging times if one uses a Bart PE disk or an internal drive.
When using the Acronis standard recovery CD to an external drive recovery times can be many times longer than the image times.
I have raise this subject with Acronis in the past and never got a satisfactory solution. So I now always restore to an internal drive from an internal drive which is the fastest and most reliable way of working that I have found.


Xpilot

 

Back with more info... the guy with the "Windows will not start because of a computer disk hardware configurartion problem. Could not read from selected boot disk" issue. For late comers to this thread, I could restore using ATI, but could not boot.

I kept having this problem, and continued search via google and came up with an MS document on the topic. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314477 which described how to modify the boot.ini file. I did this an lo and behold, the system booted, and I seem to be back to my pre-disk-crash environment.

I am not really sure why this happened, perhaps it had to do with the fact that ATI Rescue CD did not come from PC I was trying to restore?

So... thanks all for your help.

If you have further questions I'd be happy to provide more infor.

Paul