Backup and Restore Acronis 9.0

Sir,
I have been concerned about Acronis 9.0, build 3854 changing partition drive letters in the restore process creating problems when some files are referenced to drive letters no longer available. Acronis chat people tell me that this may be avoided if I make one backup for all partitions. While this sounds like a viable approach, it does raise questions that beg answers.
I have a desktop computer hard drive with four partitions. I also have an external hard drive configured in four partitions to receive the backup images Acronis creates from the desktop. I have been storing backed up images from the desktop to the external, partition to partition, one partition at a time and with success. It is the restore process that concerns me.
If I back up all four desktop partitions at one time, how do I prepare the external hard drive. Do I delete three partitions and use only one to receive the four partitions from the desktop or do I do something different?
I want all of the partitions back in their original location after restoration and with their original drive letters. How do I make that happen? I don’t see guidance for this scenario
in the Acronis documentation. I need to know the proper procedure.
I have the disks to return the computer to its purchased state if things really get sour. Also, the purchased and registered Acronis CD is said to be bootable.
Thank you.
Harvey Pickover
hpickover<at>earthlink.net

 

Hi Harvey,

You have described what you need to do perfectly. Backup all four partitions of your hard drive with one backup. When you restore that backup (all four partitions), they will be the same size in the same order with the same drive letters.

If the partitions still exist on the internal drive, you restore each partition to the corresponding partition on the internal drive. If the drive has been replace or wiped clean, you just restore the four partition and they will be correctly sized and lettered.

I can understand your logic in wanting to partition the backup drive to match the internal drive, but that's not the best way to use it. It's better if the backup drive has only one partition. That allows the most efficient use of the space. You can name backups of individual partitions appropriately if there are times when only one or two partitions need to be backed up. They don't need to be in separate partitions on the backup drive.

Does that answer your questions?

 

I use true image 9.0, and use to worry about drive letters. With windows xp and multi partition hard drives, drive letters have a habit of changing during the restoration.
One thing that I discovered is that if you restored your system partitioned into a larger partition, theres a good chance you won't get any drive letter changes. Example if you have a 20gb C: partition and you restore it into a 21gb partition, your new hard drive will boot up without any problems. Other people here in the forums say that the size of the partition doesn't matter, but from what I have experienced I think it does. I never had drive letter change problems until I tried restoring into smaller partitions.

Besides true image 9.0 , I also have a utility "paragon justboot corrector" that I use just for changing drive letters on a non-booting hard drive. I've use it a couple of times and it's always done the job. I can change the drive letters on all the partitions and cd roms to whatever I want. Usually all you need to do is change the system partition drive letter and that will get the hard drive to boot up.

In your case (with the multi partition hard drive) I think you need a utility that can change drive letters. Especially if you want them all back in the same configuration. You can follow the direction perfectly and you can still have drive letter changes, but it's a 5 minute fix with the right utilitys.
Everytime I do a restoration, I plan for the worst case that the drive letters will change. If they don't everything is fine, but if they do I can fix it quickly.

directions on changing drive letters using freeware
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=174958

 

One way to keep track of your drives, within the Linux environment is to make sure you've given them meaningful names whilst in Windows.

For example, my drives instead of being C:F:H:I: are named
XP Pro: Data: Electronics: Programming.

These names are viewable from within the Linux environment, so I always know where they ought to be living.

You can change the names of the drives in various places, one being from within MyComputer. Just right click and choose rename.

Colin

 

John, In just four small paragraphs you have answered the question precisely.
Thank you sir.

 

Harvey,
My guides below mirror what you want to do except my examples shows only 3 partitions where yours shows 4. The guides still apply. When you tick mark all partitions, the disk will become ticked; or when you tick the disk, all partitions become ticked.

As John as indicated, you really don't need but one partition on the external drive. Simply create a new folder for each partition or backup. For my own personal use, all my backup archives are stored in one folder named "Image-backup". Then every time I create a new backup, I create a sub-folder which I name "Acronis + date" ex: "Acronis-Sep2". Then, I name each individual backup with something meaningful. If my backup is a full backup of all partitions (Disk option "checkmarked"), then I assign "Fulldisk-.tib" as my backup file name; or, if the backup is only of one partition, then the backup name becomes "X_only-.tib" and change the X to the actual drive letter being archived. It is safer if you do not use spaces and periods as part of the backup file name. To make the backup names easier to read when Acronis adds file numbers, I use a "-" as the last letter of the file name just prior to the .tib. All of the above is a matter of personal choice. See my sample image below.

As Bodgy has indicated, you definitely should name your drives to meaningful names and use those as your only means of drive identification within True Image. TI uses a different method of lettering drives so the drive letters will differ. Using names can help to prevent a disaster.