True Image 2009 Home Restore Need Help

I have 2 1tb hard drives on my computer, I installed windows xp, programs and files on the C drive and backed everything up the F drive (slave hard drive) with Acronis.

I was getting blue screens of death and eventually computer would not boot, I used the acronis disc to get the computer back up and running and restored, the problem is it is the set up from January and since then I've added and changed alot of programs and files that arent showing up, the most current tib is march.

I have 6 back up files (tib) on my C drive totalling about 650 GB with 51 gb free on that drive and the F drive has some folders on it now (Documents and settings, program files, windows, docs, temp, etc...) totalling 389gb. I don't understand what happened, I thought the C drive would automatically go the the latest backup on F from acronis but now with the TIB files are on the C drive I'm not sure how to proceed and haven't found any info on this, other than I can't format if the back up files are on the C drive.

Do I need another (3rd) drive to make this work? Then put all the music and picures that somehow ended up on the F drive, and put all the tib files on it also? This is very confusing, I would greatly appreciate any help or suggestions I can get so I don't mess things up any more.

Thanks in advance!

 

I'll assume the current March .tib file is one of the ones on your C: drive and that's the one you want to restore.
I'll also assume that the March .tib is a full backup and NOT an Incremental or Differential backup.

If I've got that part wrong, please correct me.

Since you have successfully restored your C: drive once, you know how to do that when the .tib file is on the F: drive, and you know the process works successfully.

You can simply copy these .tib files to your F: drive. When they are on F:, you should boot from the TI Rescue CD and validate the backups.

Are these copies of folders on your C: drive with the same data? If so you can just delete them.

If they have new data that isn't in the March .tib, you want to leave them where they are for now.

If your data is all in the March .tib backup, you could just move that to the F: drive and then restore it. That will wipe out everythng now on C: and replace it with the March backup. As long as you don't need any of the other backups on the C: drive or any other current data on C: that's not in the March backup, that should work.

How are you making these backups? If you are doing them manually, you just need to pay close attention when you select the Source drive (C: ) and the Target drive (F: or a folder on the F: drive).

If you are doing the backups as scheduled events, I'd delete the job and recreate it being careful about the Source and Target locations.

If you have any worries about losing the data on F: or any of the backup .tib files now on C:, a third drive might be helpful. You could move the data files to the third drive and move some of the .tib files there also just be sure you don't lose them. However, it's not essential.

If some of the backup files currently on C: are not needed, they don't need to be moved to F:, and they will be deleted when you restore the March .tib.

Is that clear enough?

If any of the backup .tib files on C: are Incremental or Differential backups, you need to save the original full backup they are based on and all the Incrementals or Differentials based on that full backup to restore the last Incremental or Differential.

Let us know how things go.

 

Thanks so much for your advice

Since you have successfully restored your C: drive once, you know how to do that when the .tib file is on the F: drive, and you know the process works successfully.

Basically I had a ton of programs, files, music, pictures etc.. on my c drive originally and I thought I had acronis set up to automatically back everything to F in case of failure, when I restored C it is now the original back up from Jan and not one of the incrementals, the March .tib is in fact an incremental Whats puzzling me is whats on my c drive documents are from the original Jan back up and the more current files are on the f drive, (I had downloaded and rearranged a lot of music since Jan so I recognize the files on F as being most recent)

I will try that, F doesn't have enough room so I think I will get another external for all my music, pictures, work files etc.. that somehow ended up on F, in case I get lost at least I'll have those safe!

The original Jan back up is 280 gigs, then MyBackup #2 through #6 are 18,38,106,160,20 gigs, march being 20 gigs and the 6th back up. I thought there would be a way to put all these backups together as one?

I recall setting it up as a scheduled event and was planning on just loading up the C drive feeling secure everything was automatically being backed up on the F drive, I've just been using laptops since this happened so there is no new data on the computer until I get this squared away.

Looks like a new drive might be in my future, I'll have to look into the difference between an incremental & differential file. It may be a blessing in disguise that this happened, computer has been running great and before I was getting blue screens. I may just take my time and install one program at a time and see what happens, at least the original Jan back up is solid.

Thanks again for your valuable input, I couldn't figure this out by myself

 

You can restore the original full backup or select any one of the incrementals based on that full backup to restore. You picked the full backup, so the system was restored to January.

In order to restore the March incremental, you will have to have the January full backup and ALL the incrementals up to March in the same place. Then you select the March incremental and that will be restored.

Perhaps you dragged the My Documents folder from C: to the F: drive. That would move My Documents to F:.

When you restored the January backup, the old My Documents from January was restored to C:.

There is a process called consolidation, but it is very slow, and with backups this large, it would be extremely slow.

You can restore the March incremental once you get all the backups on F:. Then you can make a new full backup. That's basically a consolidation of January through March. If there's room, you can keep just the January full backup and delete all the old incrementals. You don't have to keep the January full backup, but it's often good to keep an older backup or two in case you discover a problem that developed between January and March. Then you can go back to January before the problem.

I'd delete that scheduled backup and create a new job after you get this all straightened out. Just be sure that the you have the backups being saved on F: with the new full backup.

It's smart not to do more than 5 or 6 incrementals. When the incrementals get to numerous, a problem with one makes all the incrementals after it useless and you can lose a lot of backups.

I think you would be smart to have another drive with the amount of data that you have.

Incrementals are the changes since the last incremental. Differentials are the changes since the last full backup. Differentials always get bigger since they are the sum of all changes. For your situation, I think incrementals will be best, but not too many.

And that's the proof of what I said about keeping an older backup. You can still try restoring March if you want to and see how it runs, but go back to January (or an intermediate date) if it is unstable.

Good luck.