To disk image or not to disk image ??

Good Afternoon All in the Know!

First of all lets get the base set... I am a novice at using this software and I am extremely humble, so don't think you will offend my intellect with any comments.. it can't happen !

I have a Dell xps 400 and for the first time the other day it locked me out and I had to to a chk /r and fix the xp home o.s. to get it to reboot. I have since purchased a w.d. xternal mybook 500 g.b. hd and did a back up of c to the external. My question is I see that this software True Image Home 11 has a "clone" process (disk imaging) available. Should I do the clone (disk imaging) of my computer to the external and then do a reinstall of xp to clean up the original hd and o.s. or will just coping the data be all I need to do?

I did notice when "starting" the "cloning" instructions the information said "All the old partitions will be copied to the new disk...... 'Note that you will have to remove the old hard disk when data moving is completed"...
Any thoughts are greatly appreciated and Thanks in advance for taking the time to answer.

cvbs

 

Here are some links you should find helpful. If you have the time, you might review some of the topics in my signature below.

Clone or Restore using Resize comparison
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1299861&postcount=9

What is benefit of cloning rather than creating backup image?
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=214582

How To Create a TrueImageHome Rescue CD
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=188253

 

Clone = direct hard drive to hard drive copy, the cloned drive will be overwritten completely and will be only usable as a replacement for the original hard drive.

image backup = is a compressed backup of a "system bootable partition" or "data partition". The image backup is compressed into a "TIB" file, you can store as many "TIB's" on your external as you have available space.

After you restore a hard drive, before you bootup for the first time, make sure you only bootup with one c: drive. In other words you need to disconnect the source hard drive or the restored drive. If you bootup with 2 c: drives connected at the same time, registry entries/drive letter problems might occur.

It's always safer and more space efficient to do image backups instead of clones.

You can make an image backup of your current c: drive partition and save it on the external. Now you can run any repairs/reinstall windows etc you need to do on your current hard drive. If those repairs don't work, you can always restore the saved image TIB back onto the original hard drive. It will at least get you back where you started.

 

jonyjoe81 and GroverH

Thanks for the replies...

jonyjoe81... you said " You can make an image backup of your current c: drive partition and save it on the external. Now you can run any repairs/reinstall windows etc you need to do on your current hard drive. If those repairs don't work, you can always restore the saved image TIB back onto the original hard drive. It will at least get you back where you started"

The print shot of my external J drive is in the attached file. please check my attachment and see if this is the .tibs that you are referring to.

Thanks again for the assist.
cvbs

 

Those are the files that comprise your backup and are the tib files for your image. The reason you have a bunch is probably because your external HD is formatted FAT32 which has a maximum filesize of 4GB. TI automatically looks after this. The other possible reason is that you specified a 4GB archive split-size.

If you don't like FAT32 or want one large archive and your drive is FAT32 then you have to reformat it NTFS. FAT32 split archives cause TI no problems. If you select any one of the tib files and tell TI to restore it or validate it or whatever, TI knows they are all components of the archive - in other words, you don't have to act on each file by itself.

 

seekforever

So, to make sure I am clear, what I hear you saying is that as jonyjoe81 said:
'You can make an image backup of your current c: drive partition and save it on the external. Now you can run any repairs/reinstall windows etc you need to do on your current hard drive. If those repairs don't work, you can always restore the saved image TIB back onto the original hard drive. It will at least get you back where you started.' ... This is what these files represent and I can go ahead w/ the fresh re-install of windows xp and if it does not work I can come back to this current moment in time by reloading all of these files?

Second question:
What if the reinstall works and I then have a clean o.s. on the C:\ drive, how do I get just the data and program files back w/o changing the "newly refreshed" o.s.?

Thanks for the insights,
cvbs

 

Seeing as you are new to TI and maybe don't know this, you should make a rescue CD/DVD and make sure that it boots and that you can see all your hard drives. This disk will be needed if your Hard drive goes belly up or you wish to install a new drive and "restore" your image.
It would also be ( in my opinion) a good idea to name your Hard drives ( if you have more then one) so that there is no confusion when using the rescue disk. It is a Linux based OS and has a habit of changing the letters of the drives and this could cause some confusion. Before I make an image ( backup) I make a folder on my external hard drive and name that folder with the date and place my image in that folder. Once you have a image on your external ( or on a second external drive) you can "mount" the image and copy and paste data, unfortunaley software can not be copied and pasted. An image is a snapshot of your complete operating system and will restore the image as it was on the day it was made.
Hope this doesn't add to the confusion. You will get lots of hints on this site. Do read GroverH guides he has spent a lot of his time producing them and they are done very well. Thanks for that GroverH

 

Hello All,

I created a "boot" disk as per instructions w/ in the Acronis 11 program and just tried it in the system. I tried it in both drives and neither recognized it and just proceeded to c:\ and normal start up!!! Any suggestions?? .. I do have the "box" version purchased at a local Big Box store and I believe that according to the info I read the "orig" disk can be used as a strart up? am I correct on that? ... however I still would like to find out where I went wrong w/ the creation of the "boot" disk.

Thanks,
cvbs

 

To boot with the CD you need to change the Boot order in the BIOS to make the CD boot first. There is usually an instruction on which key to press to get into the BIOS in the text that appears whilst the computer boots, might be delete or F1. Someone with a similar computer could possibly tell you.

Check what build you have (Help/About) if it's not 8101 you need to download the update and install it. You should burn a new rescue CD after updating

 

Either that or press the F12 key to bring up a boot device menu. I know this works on Dell computers. When you see the initial black screen with the big blue Dell letters, press F12 when the progress bar is about half way through, then choose the CD-ROM, etc, option when the menu comes up.

 

dbknox makes an excellent point that I missed. I would also suggest that after you get you TI CD to boot that you also validate your archive with the TI Validate command. This will show whether or not the TI recovery environment which is Linux, not Windows, can handle your hardware properly and accurately read the archive into Windows.

The absolute best way to test a TI restore on a system that has never been restored with TI, is to install a spare HD and use it. The reason is that TI deletes the partition that is being restored as one of its first steps and if the restore fails you end up with unallocated space. Now, if your HD is screwed up beyond belief, that may not be much of an issue but if the system is running it is.

Your image will return you to the moment it was made. If you find you want to continue with your fresh install, you can copy your data files out of the image by mounting the image with the TI mount command as one method. It is not possible to just copy applications out since they have to be installed to make the necessary registry entries and setup whatever folders they require.

 

Thanks guys ... I will change the order of boot and see if the disk boots accordingly. As to the valixation... when I did an "append" backup to the above list I used the validation process in the instructions and everything went through o.k. I believe. Is there a way of validating the existing .tibs w/o doing another back-up?

later,
cvbs


seekforever.... am I correct on my post of January 11th, 2009 10:13 PM? or

Thanks

 

Hello all,

Thank you for using Acronis True Image

cvbs, you can validate the archive using a separate Backup Archive Validation -> Operations -> Validate Backup Archive.

Thank you.

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Oleg Lee