Restoring from DVD's

If I image my entire winxp 80G harddisk to a portable USB harddisk, can I then burn this image from the USB harddisk to a number of DVD's so I can free up my portable USB harddisk for other uses. And if I need to restort can I do it from the DVD's and how?

 

When you create a backup you will have an options screen that has such things as password protection, compression amount, etc. There is an option to split the back up in to chunks and you need to specify a size. I usually put in 1464mb. If you restore this from DVD's TI will ask for each DVD in turn.

 

Yes, you can create the archive on the USB external HD and then burn them to DVD with your favorite burning program. Be sure you set the archive split size so the files will fit on a DVD. In the archive creation wizard this can be done in the options screen. Also, use your burning program's "verify after burning" option so you know the burn is good. Ideally, you will validate the archive with TI on the external HD before you burn them as well.

To restore them, you should be able to read them with the TI rescue CD. If the archive is spread out over more than 2 or 3 DVDs you will be better off to copy them back to external HD and restore from it. TI does not restore all the files on DVD1 then DVD2 then DVD3 etc. It jumps from disk to disk and the joke is you will wear out the DVD tray before you get your archive restored.

As always, if you haven't done a test restore to a spare drive with the rescue CD you don't have any certainty a restore will work on your system.

 

You would be much safer and much better protected if you were to get another hard drive so the switch is not necessary.

 

Thanks for the replys....

 

If you care, you can put in 1492MB and 3 of the files fit nicely on the DVD and it still uses the ISO file system (not that it really matters to TI).

Easy for some of the other colonists to remember: In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue...

 

Hello all,

Thank you for using Acronis True Image

If you want to write an image to DVDs you should create an image set with the archive splitting size at, for example, 2 GB on a local hard disk drive and then to copy the created image archives to DVDs. In this case you will have to copy all the archives back to one folder to restore the image.

Please note that once a full image is created as one consistent file it instantly becomes indivisible and in case it exceeds the limit of 4.7 GB (the maximum capacity of a DVD disc) you will not be able to divide it into parts and burn to DVDs. So when creating an image you should bear in mind where you want to store the image to.

However we would recommend you to set the archive splitting size manually if you are planning to transfer an image archive to DVD discs. The archive size should be set at 2 GB to avoid possible discrepancies when being restored later. This proviso relates to most of the modern DVD-writing software.

Thank you.

__

Oleg Lee

 

True Image Home 10...
My backup is 2.8gb and I put it on a dvd with the recovery folder aswell through the media options...
The validation of the backup is successful as is the restoration of the backup.
I wonder how large the backup can safely be on a bootable dvd...3.5gb??

 

TI will allow the archive to span several DVDs. I think the 2GB mentioned by Acronis is to ensure the ISO file system is used rather than the UDF file system. This ISO is typically considered to be more trouble-free and works with more OSs.

If you have an archive that spans more than a couple of DVDs you will drive yourself and the drawer on the DVD player nuts since TI does not restore all of one DVD and then the next, it restores the data in some order and will skip around the DVDs. It is best to copy the DVDs to a folder on a HD and then do the restore.

 

Hello george67,

Thank you for your interesting in Acronis True Image

Also note that Acronis True Image supports CD+R, CD-R, CD+RW, CD-RW, DVD+R, DVR+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM. DVD+R Double Layer is fully supported; DVD-R Dual Layer is not supported.

Best regards,
--
Dmitry Nikolaev