Full OS restore question.

Hello, everyone.

I'm trying out Acronis True Image 8.0 on a 15 day trial option. I created an archive image file of my entire Hard Drive (including XP Home Edition).

Upon restoration; will XP ask me to type in my COA key, and if I do that, should I reasonably expect to fully restore everything into working order in the event of a PC crash? I'm completely new to PC restoration - so, apologies if that sounds a dumb question.

I have verified the contents of my backup image files, that I have placed on a RW DVD, and it has passed the check test.

The thing that puzzles me, however, is that 2 image archive files have been created - Backup1 & Backup 2 - can't figure out why this should be, as I only created one file - the archive for the entire Hard Drive!

I have wanted to try a restore, just to see if everything works - but feel a little afraid of screwing my OS up, as its running superbly at the moment.

Any help/advice would be appreciated.

Many thanks,

Dave.

 

Hello!

I just did a restore on the system partition. Windows didn't even know a restore had happened.

 

Thanks - sounds encouraging. Great when things work, eh.

Dave.

 

The current version is 9 build 2337.

If you restore your image to the same PC Windows will run as it did without having to re-enter any keys or do any activation. Hardware changes from the time the image was created to restoration may trigger an activation request.

As far as file splitting goes, there are about 3 ways this can be caused. You requested it in the backup options, you are writing to FAT32 devices so the files will be broken at 4GB boundaries, you are writing to a DVD or CD and the backup is too large for one disk. The part files are named like: Backup1.tib, Backup2.tib, Backup3.tib...

If you've never done a restore and for some reason there is a problem then you do indeed have an even bigger problem. The safest and best way is to try it on a different HD just in case. If this isn't an option you can get a little degree of security by selecting Verify the image First (or words to that effect) before starting the restore. If TI can't Verify the image then it won't delete your good HD partition. (I am not sure about how this is done in V8 or whether you have to Verfiy the image separately before starting the restore, sorry.)

If you have sufficient space in another partition on your HD to create another copy of the image, I would recommend you make another image to it as well for better safety for your first restore. HD to HD (or partition to partition on the same HD) images are IMO the ones least likely to give problems.

 

Thanks very much for all the good advice - much appreciated!

Dave.

 

Hello DavidNW,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please take a look at my reply in this previous thread.

Please also try to avoid posting duplicate requests in the future as it sometimes doubles our work.

Thank you.
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Alexey Popov