Split Images?

probably a silly question, but i've just backed up my mums PC (just reinstalled XP + all the updates) and it was over the size of a SL DVD, so i've files 4.3GB & 668MB, if i want to load the image again, i take it TI will ask for the second disk to be inserted?

 

If you have more than one DVD then that's what has to happen. However, TI will not likely read one, then ask for the second; you very well may be swapping back and forth several times. Since you don't have much on the second DVD this probably won't be too bad. I don't use DVDs but IIRC, TI will want to read the last one in the set first since it contains information about the structure of the archive.

If you get past a couple of DVDs the amount of swapping can be exhausting. For this reason the use of an external USB drive is recommended.

I strongly suggest you boot up the PC with the Acronis rescue CD and see if you can Validate the archive which will indicate the rescue CD's Linux environment works on the PC and it can read the DVDs properly. If you can't, the archive may be useless when you really need it.

 

thanks for the info there, i'll give it a try.

i do have USB ext/portable hards drives, so i'll maybe do another back-up as a single file

thanks again

as for validating, can the validate utility in the program not do the same job as doing it from the TI rescue CD?

 

More than one backup is always a good idea. Note that if your external drive is formatted FAT32, the archive will get split at around 4Gb automatically. This is because FAT32 has a maximum filesize of 4GB. TI automatically recognizes any one of the tib files as part of a multi-file archive so it causes no problems at all.

If you really want the archive in one file then you need to change the format from FAT32 to NTFS. It does not matter what the format of the partition(s) you are backing up is.

About validating:
Very good question. The answer is yes, after you have demonstrated the TI rescue environment works on the PC.
The reason for is that the rescue environment is Linux. It does not use the same drivers etc as Windows and a problem that happens from time-to-time is a poor driver for some particular hardware, usually newer hardware. People successfully create the archive using Windows and validate it in Windows and feel confident all is well. Then the need to recover and find the rescue environment won't load, won't see the drives on the machine, can't read the archive or whatever.

Once you confirm that the recovery environment does work and the best test is a restore to a spare drive because if it fails you will likely have wiped out the C drive.

My advice to validate with the CD is a pretty good test. It can be improved by actually using the CD version to create and then to validate the archive. Another thing you can do is also run through the Restore Wizard as if you were going to do an actual restore and then Cancel out on the last screen where you have click on Proceed to start the actual restore.

After you are convinced that the rescue environment works, you can then use the Windows validate. If you change your internal/external disk hardware it is a good idea to check it again.

The TI validate turns out to be a pretty good at detecting marginal RAM and disk errors because of the large amount of data being moved and processed at high-speed with pretty stringent data checking. There are 4000 checksums/GB of data included in the archive and every one must compare perfectly or the validate will declare the archive corrupt.

 

wow, thanks for the detailed explanation.

i'll give it a go whan i'm home from work the next time.

Thanks again.