New TI-9 user needs help

Hi All,

I am somewhat confused after reading the posts here regarding the best type of backup because of issues copying the MBR. I have a XP Pro SP2 with two internal hard drives in my computer. Disk O (master-40GB) with partitions C, D, & E (with partition C approximately 18GB and D & E approximately 10GB each) and Disk 1 (slave-80GB) partitions F, G, H, & I (each approximately 18.5GB). I will be making image back ups to an external 160GB external hard drive connected by a firewire card. Do I need to make an image back up of each disk, or can I make up image back ups of the partitions individually? I made an image back up of all of Disk 0 on partition G. On partition F I have image backups of partition I from another program. I'm planning on making an additional image of Disk 0 on the external hard drive. I would also like to make image backups of partiton H and I only (as F and G have image backups). Should Disk 1 fail would I be able to reformat Disk 1 into 4 partitions and restore partitions H and I or would there be a problem because of a lack of a MBR from Disk 1? Any suggestions would be appreciated?

 

Hello jmspdx,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

First of all, please be aware that only the image of entire hard drive contains MBR which is "responsible" for your hard drive to be bootable.

Please also note that you can restore your beforehand created image archive in one of the following ways:

- If you restore an image of the entire hard drive then all the data which currently resides on the hard drive that is being restored will be overwritten with the data from the image archive including the hard drive's MBR;

- If you restore an individual partition from the entire disk image then only the destination partition will be overwritten with the data from the image archive and your hard drive's MBR will remain intact;

- If you restore an individual partition from the image of the individual partition then only the destination partition will be overwritten with the data from the image archive and your hard drive's MBR will remain intact.

Independently of what kind of disaster took place there only two possibilities available:

1. You want to restore an image to the original hard drive (e.g. Windows is not bootable for some reason) and your MBR is not damaged or lost.

If that's the case then you can just restore an image of a system partition either from the image of the entire hard drive or from the image image of the individual system partition. There should not be any issues with your hard drive's MBR in this case and your system should boot fine after the image is restored.

2. You want to restore an image to a replacement hard drive (e.g. the original hard drive failed for some reason) or to the original hard drive but the hard drive's MBR is damaged or absent.

If you have an image of the entire hard drive then just restore it in order to recover all your data along with the hard drive's MBR.

If you have only the image(s) of the individual partition(s) then you should re-create the original partition layout (in case of the replacement hard drive), restore each partition to it's place (generally, the system partition) and fix your hard drive's MBR either by issuing "fixmbr" command in Windows Recovery Console or using one of the methods described in Acronis Help Post. There should not be any issues with your hard drive's MBR in this case and the restored operating system should boot just fine.

Please also take a look at the following threads describing the known issues which appear when Windows is being transferred to the hard drive with a different partition layout (number of partitions in fact): auto logoff problem, Re: Mr.

You can find more information on how to use Acronis True Image 9.0 in the respective User's Guide.

If you have any further questions concerning Acronis software, please feel free to submit a request for technical support or post any of them on this forum. We will certainly try to help you in resolving any issues.

Thank you.
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Alexey Popov