Restore image from USB External Hard Drive

I have several questions:

1) Can I use an external USB hard drive as the source for my disk images? (ie - will I be able to restore an image from this external HD?)

2) I make an incremental image every week on top of the full image I created 4 months ago. I'm almost out of disk space. Can I literally just delete these image files (via Windows Explorer) and start fresh with a new full image? Or will this cause problems? Is there a better way to this method of "starting over" that I don't know about?

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

I use a Western Digital external HD to create my images onto and I've been able to restore from that same device. Best way to test if yours will work is to create a rescue CD, boot to it with your HD attached and see if it is recognized. If it is, you're good to go.

As far as I know, there wouldn't be any problem deleting all of your old image files as long as you would not need to get back to a point previous to when you made your next image.

 

I also use a external HD for backup images. No problem at all using Windows explorer to delete .tib files. I would also suggest that you defrag and use "chkdsk" every now and then on the external HD.

 

Ok, that's a relief. Thanks for the input. I still have a question, though:

The last few times I've had to restore an image, I don't recall seeing my external hard drive among the list of drives to choose my image from. Now, when I created my restore diskettes awhile back, I had yet to purchase and install my external hard drive. Does this simply mean that I have to re-create the diskettes for the drive to be recognized during the restore process?

Thanks in advance.

 

You will not have to re-create the diskette, but the diskettes you have reflect the TI version you had when you made the diskettes. If you create a new set of diskettes (or better, a bootable CD), I am almost sure that the external drive will be seen.