True Image - The moment of truth

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by Tinni, Oct 12, 2005.

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  1. Tinni

    Tinni Registered Member

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    G,day,

    Useful forum you have here.

    Ive been using True Image v.8 for some time now to create back-up images of my Dell laptop's hard disk. The software has performed flawlessly all this time, and I can access files and folders easily, no problem.

    But now comes the big test for True Image:
    I need to replace the hard disk in my laptop because the old one is kapoot, and I was wondering how I go about this - and if True Image will cut the mustard and allow me to copy the latest saved image to my new hard disk.

    Whats the best way to go about this, please? Is it simply a case of using the T.I. bootdisk to access my backup hard drive, and then have it copy the image to my new laptop hard drive?

    My plan is to put both hard disks in an old PC tower first of all (the new laptop disk would be mounted using a 3.5" hard drive converstion kit), then I'd copy the image from the backup disk (hopefull) using True Image, and then pop the new disk into the laptop.

    I'm not sure if True Image supports copying the image in this way though. So
    any feedback would be welcome welcome,

    Thanks,

    T.

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    Last edited: Oct 12, 2005
  2. storage_man

    storage_man Registered Member

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    Tinni

    What u suggest should work just fine. But before you start with the restore, insure that your new 2.5" hard drive has been formated. Don't know what OS your using on the desk top system, but if Its windows XP, go into Disk management, and format the new 2.5" drive. If its win98, open a dos window and format to it. THen reboot your system with the TI boot disk and perform your restore.

    Storage_man

    PS: Remove the 2.5" drive before you re-boot the desktop.
     
  3. Tinni

    Tinni Registered Member

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    Hi S.M.

    Thanks for the quick response. Hopefully I'll make a full recovery thanks
    to True Image - ;-)

    One thing puzzles me though, and that is: why didnt the backup drive
    not attempt to boot when put in the PC tower? If it contained an exact image of my original drive, as Acronis claimed, I would have thought (hoped) that it would boot up the same as the original hard drive that it was copied from. Instead I had to boot using the Acronis boot disk, and was asked which disk or partition I'd like to copy the image to.

    Is this part of the process to copy the image to another disk?
    Or should I have used the Disk Clone option in Acronis to backup my original disk, which would have been bootable straight away?

    Thanks,

    T.

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  4. MPSAN

    MPSAN Registered Member

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    The image on your backup drive is a big file, not the bootable drive it backed up.
     
  5. Tinni

    Tinni Registered Member

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    Hi MP.

    Not sure what you mean exactly. The image on my backup drive 'is'
    a big file as you rightly said, but I wasnt clear about the next part
    of your sentence.

    I guess what I'm asking is: Is the image on my backup disk actually a compressed file ...which True Image needs to extract to a new hard disk in order to recreate a bootable disk image on the new disk?

    Thanks,

    T.
     
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2005
  6. Chutsman

    Chutsman Registered Member

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    Yes, it is one big compressed image file which TI uncompresses when you do the restore. Clone is the feature you should use if you want to make a *bootable* copy of your drive.

    BTW, I believe the TI boot CD will format a new drive, using the "Add New Drive" feature.
     
  7. Tinni

    Tinni Registered Member

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    Thanks Chutsman,
    Thats made things clearer.

    The thing is though. I've avoided using the 'clone' feature because the wizard seemed to imply that it would change drive letters on my PC, which I didnt want to happen (I simply wanted a secure backup). So will I now be able to get T.I to make the new image bootable so I can recover the O.S and data from the defunked disk, even though I only imaged the disk but never cloned it?

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  8. quickdraw

    quickdraw Registered Member

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    It should be bootable if your image is of the ENTIRE drive, not just an image of say...30G's on an 80G drive. So you shouldn't have a problem if the image is of the entrie drive and of course if you're sure it is a good image to begin with o_O
     
  9. Tinni

    Tinni Registered Member

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    Quickdraw,

    Thanks for that.

    Zero success on this one though. Ive tried restoring the image to two
    different disk, and in each case the data and Windows folders etc are copied
    onto the drives, but Ive been unable to boot from either. Oh well.

    Maybe I'll focus on using the Clone Disk option next time.

    Does using Clone Disk in any way alter the setup on the PC being cloned? As I mentioned before, when I last tried using Clone Disk it warned me that drive letters would be changed in order to make way for the new cloned drive. However I'd like to keep drive letters as they are and not have my original drive or setup messed up. Just want a clone of the orignal drive, is all.

    Finally, is it possible to create an Image backup, *and* a Clone backup, on the same backup disk, and have True Image restore from either file as required, depending on the type of failure (hardware or software).

    Appreciate any thoughts on this one.

    Thanks,

    T.

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    Last edited: Oct 12, 2005
  10. MPSAN

    MPSAN Registered Member

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    Yes, that is correct. The image is one big compressed file. Even without compression, TI needs to extract all of the files and create a bootable drive again.


     
  11. Chutsman

    Chutsman Registered Member

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    When you do a Clone, there is no compression so you can in fact examine the cloned drive in another windows machine and see all the files.
    And the message about drive letters being changed is like a "disclaimer". After a clone, if you want to test the cloned drive, you should disconnect the original drive from the system.

    To put an image of the original drive on the same drive you used for the clone, I would imagine that you would have to do the clone first and if there is enough space on it to take the image then I don't see why you can't use the same drive.
     
  12. Tinni

    Tinni Registered Member

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    Thanks again for your input. The mud is beginning to clear now - (-;

    Is Cloning a popular way to backup, or do most folk opt for the Imaging method?

    Also, is it possible to recover a corrupt O.S via the Clone Disk backup method in the same way as the Imaging method? Or is Cloning strictly for copying data to new drives?

    Thanxs

    T.

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  13. noonie

    noonie Registered Member

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    I see you have a desktop to play with.
    Try this method.
    Using original laptop network thru a router to desktop, boot laptop with ti cd and image to hdrive of dektop.
    Install new laptop hdrive, boot laptop with ti cd, aim to stored ti image on desktop and image laptop.
    Always do entire drive as image so it will boot.
    This is my preferred method in all cases. I don't want surprises when a drive crashes.
    In your present situation if using 98 or xp you can do a repair os install on your new imaged drive and save your setup.
     
  14. Chutsman

    Chutsman Registered Member

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    I think the consensus would be imaging rather than cloning only because imaging takes up less room. You get an imaging file size about 70% or less depending on the type of files on your drive. Some files are compressed to a greater degree than others.
     
  15. quickdraw

    quickdraw Registered Member

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    The fact that it didn't boot doesn't necessarily mean that the image is bad. It could be that you only need to fix the MBR (Master Boot Record). This is what happened to me initially when I got TI. Somehow the MBR got messed up and I couldn't get my drive to boot after restoring it. Once I found out about the possibility of the MBR being messed up, I of course went through the process to restore it and loh and behold it booted. I've read on this message board that all you need to do is use the Windows Cd to run the process to fix MBR, but that didn't work for me .. I had to create a dos boot disk .. dos version 6.22 to be exact. That is the only way I could get it done in my circumstances. But boy..once I got it to work, with a lot of help from the forum here :), I was a happy camper. So you might want to look into restoring the MBR on the destination drive after you've restored the image to it. Just a thought!! It may work.

    Lonnie
     
  16. Tinni

    Tinni Registered Member

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    Hi Lonnie,

    Thanks for this (and to Chut and QDraw too),

    I did try and fix the MBR using the Win-Xp CD, but I havent yet tried the Windows-98 Fdsik fix that you suggested. I'll give it a go later and let you know.

    Meanwhile, its reassuring to know that I might be able to continue using True Image in 'image' mode.

    Out of interest, has anyone actually recovered from a complete hard disk failure using the 'image' (not the clone) to rewrite to a new disk?

    Cheers again,

    T.

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  17. Xpilot

    Xpilot Registered Member

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    I have used a whole drive image to restore to a replacement drive. My original drive was not broken, I just removed it pretending that it had failed. As all my backups are images I considered this to be the best way to test out my backup stratergy.

    No problems were encountered even though the new drive was smaller than the one it replaced. The recovery process was run from the recovery CD and I just followed the prompts with the comfort of knowing that if I made any mistakes the original main drive was sitting on the shelf!

    I originally did this test with version 8 of True Image. I have not yet done it with V 9. 2277 as there are still some bugs. However I am fairly confident that it would work if I used the V8 CD on a V9 image though unless there is a real emergency I will wait for the next TI9 build.

    Xpilot
     
  18. Tinni

    Tinni Registered Member

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    Thank you XPilot for those words of comfort (they are music to mine ears) :)

    This means that True Image really is an awesome and invaluable tool as it can recover a complete system from a compressed image file - which can presumably be copied onto CD etc for safe keeping, and then transferred to hard disk if needed?

    I'll update you on any progress re my laptop drive.

    Thanks again,

    T.

    PS: Does 'X-Pilot' stand for X-Plane pilot? Or maybe FS2004 pilot?

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  19. Xpilot

    Xpilot Registered Member

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    Tinni,

    You certainly can image the whole of a HDD to CDs though my preference would be to image to an external USB2 hard drive.

    Disaster recovery is a breeze. All you need do is put the new drive in your laptop, turn it on, plug in the USB drive and boot from your recovery CD. Then just follow the prompts. Depending on your computer speed and the volume of your hard drive you will be up and running before you coffee is cold.

    Xpilot ( Power and Sailplanes)
     
  20. Tinni

    Tinni Registered Member

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    Thanks for that update. Its sounding better and better - :cool:

    Now here's a poser of a question. Say we wanted to backup the two networked PCs in our house using Acronis-8. If I scheduled each PC in turn to write its backup image onto the other's hard disk - if some time later, one of those PCs needed a new hard disk, would Acronis reinstate the LAN network connections for that PC along with the O.S, or would I perhaps require a version of Acronis T.I that could deal with backing up networked PCs?

    Thanks again,

    Tinn

    PS: 'Sailplanes', as in a real pilot? - ;)

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  21. quickdraw

    quickdraw Registered Member

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    Yes indeed you can. :) I didn't have a drive failure or anything but I tested the program out by imaging the whole drive which is a 200G, and then took it outta the picture, restored the image onto a 55G and booted it with just a little bit of trouble with the MBR as I mentioned before. In the end, I hope everything works out for you as well.

    Lonnie AKA QuickDraw :)
     
  22. foghorne

    foghorne Registered Member

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    Although you need to be a bit careful if Computer A is writing its image on Computer B's harddisk, and that image includes the image that Computer B wrote on Computer A's harddisk. You would soon fill up both disks :)
     
  23. Tinni

    Tinni Registered Member

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    Ah. OK. Good!

    Thanks once again. This really is a useful forum for us relatively new T.I. users to learn more about this great product which I'm sure will grow even more famous (in-famous?) as the years go by.

    Tinn
     
  24. Tinni

    Tinni Registered Member

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    Thanks FogHorne, (luv the name!) :)

    Point Taken. I would probably write the Images just once or twice though, and then I'd re-do the backup every few months or so.

    Cheerz,

    Tinn

    =
     
  25. Tinni

    Tinni Registered Member

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    Latest update.

    Hi Folks,

    I did the fdisk /mbr fix (although there was no confirmation from Fdisk that the fix had been done), and when I rebooted I got the dreaded Blue Screen of Death, error ref:
    Stop: 0x000007B Blue Screen Error

    Any suggestions?

    Thanks,

    Tinn
     
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