Backing up entire HD on an external drive

I have a Dell Inspiron 4150, a USB 2.0 PCMCIA and an external 80GB HD. I would like to create an image of my Laptop's HD on the external disc and in case of a crash, restore the image to a new hard drive. Could Acronics True Image restore the image on a brand new hard drive with no operating system on it?

Thanks

 

I am fairly certain it could, but why would you want a blank image? If you don't mind me asking, just seems easier to have a bare OS install with no programs on it than just a blank partition. You don't really need acronis for that you just boot your XP(or OS) of your choice and reformat the partition beofre installation. Unless I am missing something.

 

I believe fyazhari was asking if he could restore the image of his current harddrive (OS, Apps and all settings) to a new harddrive which had nothing (including an operating system) on it. He wants the OS, apps and all settings image from one harddrive copied to a new hard drive. He was not asking if he could restore an image that did not include an OS and was a "blank" image; whatever that is.

Yes, True Image can do this and there are several threads about this already including some started/continued earlier today.

 

@anyone - Is this combination is supported by the TI 8.0 Rescue CD? I know for a fact that my antique TI 6.0 has no clue whatsoever about the PCMIA-IDE card in my laptop.

 

Hello fyazhari,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

Acronis True Image can boot the computer automatically from the Acronis Bootable Rescue Media and restore the hard drive contents from the image without requiring installation of the operating system on the computer.
You can download Acronis True Image 8.0 trial version at http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/download/trueimage/ in order to make sure that your external drive is supported in the Acronis Bootable Rescue Media.

Thank you.
--
Irina Shirokova

 

Let me give you my experiences with a similar situation.

I have a Dell C610 laptop with a 60G 5400rpm hard drive with Windows Media Center Edition. I also have a Pcmcia Usb 2 and Firewire combo card, since my existing Usb port is 1.1.
I also have a Vanec 3.5" external enclosure with a Western Digital 160G hard drive.
I also have my old laptop drive which is a 20G 4200rpm
First I imaged the 60G laptop drive which has about 9G of data on it. I prep'd the system by deleting all cookies ,history and disk cache and ran my Antivirus. I split the files at 4200M and imaged successfully to the external drive. The Image checked out OK. Just for good measure I also burned the image to 2 DVD+RW and checked the image again. Checked out fine

Then I removed the 60G drive and put the 20g drive in the laptop and wiped it clean with DriveCleanser. I then booted with the boot Cd which I had burned and did a restore to the 20G drive. EVerything worked and the 20G drive booted and worked fine.

Something strange about the Pcmcia card. The external hard drive was not recognised by the Acronis restore until I plugged in the power to the Pcmcia card from the existing Usb builtin 1.1 port in the laptop. Also I got the strange message when booting after I plugged in the power cable which i read was not a problem and would be fixed in a future release.
Also My Pcmcia card which is a Generic Via chipset seems to write to DVD with the Firewire without corruption and the read from Dvd works better with USB 2.0

So now I now have 2 drives with identical OS and data and both work.The 20G is now my backup in case of a crash