Sector Based Imaging???

At least in previous versions of TI (in theory) if a bad directory sector or invalid partition table was discovered, then TI would kick into sector based imaging mode and backup EVERYTHING, is this still the case?

Or better yet, is there a way to get TI9.1 to shift into a sector by sector mode via a command line option (from the restore CD)?

Actually, I could even live with it if there was simply a way to tell TI to *NOT* exclude the Hibernation file and paging files -- for debugging purposes I will often hibernate a machine with a running application in a specific (bad) state that I need to be able to come back to later. With old versions of TI this worked fine, but with new ones it does not.

[actually, for a different reason I would still like to have a sector by sector based option -- i.e. if I am doing a backup for forensic purposes that I may need to run recovery tools on later or when I am backing up one of the few old DOS/Win31 based machines I have that have protected applications on them that store data in "out of bounds" areas of track 0]

I have no problem with adding nifty new features, but at the least give us the ability to turn them off if they break previous functionality!

As a last case solution, the old versions of TI6-8 I have work fairly well for most things (TI6 worked the best actually) but the boot CD's will no longer work on almost any platform I have. Could Acronis *PLEASE* release updated versions of some of their past versions just built on top of a newer version of the Linux boot platform -- i.e. same application, new boot kernel/drivers. As a software engineer myself, I imagine it would be almost trivial to have a copy of an old version of TI stored on the current restore CD and accessible via a boot time option.

 

Hi,

the sector based copy would be fine for transfering your data to a new harddrive WITHOUT losing your Adobe Activation status...my harddrive crashed (hardware failure) twice in the last year...backup was fine, but every time the activation status was lost and I had to "reactivate" the product.

Volker

 

That is exactly one of the reasons I am wanting this.

If you are replacing the drive with an exact duplicate of it -- e.g. when the prior one failed in warranty and they send you a new one -- then it would be nice to be able to put back an EXACT copy of the data.

Right now, I still have to resort to using older products from a TI competitor -- and I would love to move away from it.

In essence, I want the ability to do a DD with GZ but saved as a TIB from within Acronis.

 

Hello mdburkey,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Acronis True Image 9.0 Home can work with any unknown file system or "bad directory sector or invalid partition table" in a special sector-by-sector mode in rescue mode. If the software cannot identify the file system, it simply creates an exact image of every sector on the disk.

However, it's impossible to make Acronis True Image work in sector-by-sector mode if the program recognizes your file system.

If you want us to change the behaviour of Acronis True Image in any way or add some new features to this product, please feel free to post any of your suggestions in Acronis True Image WISH-LIST thread.

Thank you.
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Tatyana Tsyngaeva

 

I will post this in the wish list thread, however, as a software engineer myself, I would be willing to bet money that this feature already exists in the code and is just not exposed to the end user.

Actually, knowing software engineers and test procedures, I strongly suspect that the Restore CD version probably has a command line option that would trigger this feature for testing/debugging purposes -- otherwise there would be no simple way for the development staff to trigger a sector by sector backup during internal product testing.

In the past, the TI staff has been kind enough to occasionally give out some of the internal options when asked for and has also been kind enough to send custom ISO's with various options enabled/disabled (e.g. TI6 with ACPI disabled for use on certain Dell boxes that crashed the Linux kernel on the Restore CD). Would it be too much to ask the engineering staff if such a feature might already exist and just not normally be "exposed" to the end user??

 

Hello mdburkey,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are still provide our customers with necessary internal options and ISO images, if it's really necessary.

I have already forwarded your request to our Development Team and they will try to add such feature in the future builds/versions of the software.

Thank you.
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Tatyana Tsyngaeva