Writing Image To External Drive?

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by Carmina, Feb 5, 2007.

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  1. Carmina

    Carmina Registered Member

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    I'm still using ATI 8.0 as it's always worked well.

    I'm buying a Sony Vaio laptop and they all come with pre-installed junk programs so I want to do a clean install of XP Pro.

    I plan to extract the Sony drivers with Driver Magician, but this may not work, so I need a restore image of the original configuration.

    For various reasons, there's no way to partition the drive before the clean install, so nowhere suitable to write the image.

    I remember that ATI was always useless at writing to DVD. Can it write to a removable drive with more success? I plan to use my 40 GB iRiver mp3 player, which Windows treats as a USB external drive.

    Should I be able to write to, and restore the image from the iRiver?

    If not, is version 10 of ATI any better at writing images to DVD?

    TIA.
     
    Last edited: Feb 5, 2007
  2. Ralphie

    Ralphie Registered Member

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    Make the bootable Rescue CD of your Version 8, boot with it and see if it will recognize your iRiver player. Ver 10 will write to dvd media but just so you know that process is excruciatingly slow, both at making the image and restoring from it. If you can, better to get an external usb drive to hold your images.

    As for the drivers, you can always go to Sony's web site for drivers if the Driver Magician doesn't work, although I don't see why it wouldn't. It's likely that XPPro will have all the drivers anyway.
     
  3. seekforever

    seekforever Registered Member

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    Why not do the Secure Zone trick before you start.

    Create a Secure Zone the size you want to have as a partition. Then delete the Secure Zone and unassign the now unallocated space to a logical drive. Now you have a partition to store images and whatever else. Now make an image of the C drive.
     
  4. Carmina

    Carmina Registered Member

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    Thanks for the reply.

    Yes, I was thinking of getting one anyway, so I may do that.

    But is the DVD writing reliable now? I'll only have to do this once, so time isn't an issue.

    As soon as I've made and archived a working image I can format the Sony's drive and zap the hidden partition where the files from which the "rescue discs" are made reside. Then I can just create two partitions and proceed normally.

    You would think so, but a glance at this thread:

    http://tinyurl.com/264ja7

    will show you some of the hoops that Sony owners have to go through to get rid of the pre-installed junk.

    There are all sorts of proprietary drivers for bluetooth, fingerprint recognition software and God knows what else.

    Many users who've done clean installs can't get them to work even after downloading the drivers on Sony's website.

    I wouldn't buy a Sony notebook if it wasn't the smallest, lightest model on the market.
     
    Last edited: Feb 5, 2007
  5. Carmina

    Carmina Registered Member

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    I haven't been keeping up with the forums so I missed this trick.

    The problem is that Sony notebooks don't come with a set of rescue discs.

    These must be created by the user from files on a hidden 6 GB partition on the 80 GB drive.

    I want to create these disks as a second emergency recovery option.

    Apparently, the partiton is seriously] well hidden, and can't be unhidden or accessed by normal means - even by the Sony forum supergeeks.

    But the "rescue" discs sometimes fail if the Sony forum posts are anything to go by, and ATI is a much more reliable solution.

    But I'm not sure if I can create another partition to write the ATI image to without somehow damaging the integrity of the hidden partition or the C drive that I want to image?

    Would the secure zone trick make that possible?
     
  6. seekforever

    seekforever Registered Member

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    Make your rescue disks as advised by Sony.

    Make a TI image of the whole disk and write it to your C drive, if necessary, split the image into pieces that will fit on the DVD. TI will warn you but proceed anyway (you could not restore from this image if you had to because the first thing TI does is delete the partition).

    Validate the image with TI.

    Burn the resulting image to DVD using your burning software and be sure to verify it using the burning programs verify after burning feature. If you are paranoid make a second one as well:D . This is the trusted 2-step process and has always been a reliable method, unlike the TI direct-burn method.

    Now you have the Sony backup and a TI image of the disk.

    Do the Secure Zone trick taking the space from C. I did it on a Toshiba notebook with a hidden recovery partition and it worked fine although I must admit I never have done anything with the hidden partition stuff.
     
  7. Carmina

    Carmina Registered Member

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    Great idea. I didn't realise that ATI would allow me to write an image to the system drive itself.

    Yes, I've done this the past as an extra safety measure.

    Great info, thanks. :)
     
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