Restore Hangs

Hi there.

I downloaded the latest version of True Image 11 and I imaged my C drive to an external hard drive. I purchased a new hard drive, placed it in my laptop and booted to my Acronis CD. Whenever I run the restore wizard, it starts and runs for a few minutes and then just hangs. I contacted Acronis support (online) and they suggested creating some new bootable cds and trying various options. I have exhausted those efforts with the same result (hang on restore).

I backed up a 100 GB drive (5400) and tried to restore it to my new faster 250 GB drive (7200). I am using WIndows XP Pro.

Any ideas on how to get this to work? Can you suggest other products?

Thanks, Mike

 

Hello Mike, welcome to the Forum

A possible (although certainly not the only) reason is that there may be timing differences coming into play during the Restore process. If the timing goes out of sync, ATI may "hang" as you describe because it is "waiting" for an event.

It is very important that I understand your setup and what you are trying to achieve, so please read the next bit carefully. My understanding is:-

* You have a laptop with a 100GB x5400 drive
* You have an external disk enclosure
* You purchased a new 250GB x7200 drive
* You want to copy the 100GB to the 250GB
* You then want to install the 250GB into your laptop as the default drive

If my understanding is correct then I suggest that you CLONE (rather than Image) the existing 100GB to the new 250GB drive. The CLONE function in ATI is ideally suited to moving the entire contents of a smaller drive to a larger drive. If you have more than 1 partition on the 100GB drive then ATI will automatically create proportionally larger partitions on the 250GB drive. (You can override this with your own settings if you wish).

WARNING - VERY IMPORTANT

The ATI Clone function provides for the "old" drive to be reformatted as part of the Clone process. In my view this is barking mad and I have no idea why Acronis continue to include this extremely dangerous option in the Clone process.

Therefore - VERY IMPORTANT - make sure that the option to wipe the "old" drive is NOT selected BEFORE you start the process. If it is selected and the process goes wrong you will be left with a completely unbootable and useless system.

Before you use the Clone option make sure that you spend some good time with the User Guide and read the section very carefully. To become familiar with the process, from within the software itself go through the steps right up to the end but don't click on "Proceed". When the "Proceed" screen appears either Cancel or go Back.

When you feel quite confident that you know the process well then go ahead.

Any questions, please ask.

T.

 

T -

Thanks so much for the detailed response. Your assumptions are exactly correct. So, I am assuming that cloning is an option in True Image (sorry I am new). I will try that out and make sure to set the wipeout flag correctly. Also, the reason I didn't want to clone is that my original drive is really 120GB and it has a restore partition which I have absolutely no use for (it is Vista and I rebuilt my machine with XP because I hate that garbage!). So, I just wanted to save my C: drive. As you mentioned, I can probably remove the partitions/make the size smaller or something as part of the cloning process. Any other tips on the the partitions as it pertains to cloning etc?

Thanks much.

Mike

 

Hi Mike

The Clone function is specifically designed to do what you want to do - namely image the contents of an entire hard disk to a new, larger disk in such a way that the new disk is bootable. (Note : The Clone process is not the correct method for normal backups).

It would be best to clean-up the "old" disk before cloning by...

* reformating any unwanted partitions
* clearing out duplicate and temporary files
* running your AV and Anti-Spyware utility
* defragmenting the disk
* and lastly running chkdsk on each partition

The utilities supplied with XP will do the job.

Once the "old" disk is in good shape you will be ready to run the Clone function.

IMPORTANT

Please remember that the Clone function is in effect a "backup" and "restore" process all-in-one routine. There are therefore no separate backup and restore procedures. Once the clone function has run the "new" disk will be a proportional representation of the "old" disk, including the key areas such as the MBR.

If the Clone process runs correctly you should be able to boot from the "new" disk without any further procedures.

T.

 

So can I clone it to an external drive? I only have 1 bay so I bought an enclosure for it.

Thanks, Mike

 

Providing that your disk enclosure is supported by both XP and Linux you should have no problems.

To test for Linux support insert the Acronis boot CD into the CD/DVD drive and boot from the CD. (You will have to press an F-key during the startup).

Once you are into the ATI Linux interface navigate to the disk enclosure and determine if you can "see" the enclosure. If you can then the enclosure is supported by Linux.

T.

 

Due to different drive geometry used by some laptops, you may have to do a Reverse Clone in order for it to be successful. This means putting the new drive in the laptop and putting the old drive in the enclosure. Finally, clone from the enclosure to the new internal drive.

 

Hello MichaelLoveUSA,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for delayed response.

Could you please let us know your Acronis request number (e.g. [Acronis #123456]) which was sent to you in autoreply to your letter? We will find out how the investigation of your issue is going. If you have not received an autoreply then please send us a Private Message containing your e-mail address.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov