Another cloning question

Hi all,

First post here. I have been reading and searching a lot in the forum but something is still unclear to me. I have TI7 build 638. I am considering a cloning (and regular re-cloning) process on a laptop. I have a firewire cardbus card that I can connect to a second hard disk in an external enclosure. My problem is that when the external drive is set up this way, it is not recognized by the TI boot CD.

My question is can I clone (and regularly re-clone) a hard disk using an external enclosure and TI from within windows itself. My concern in this is having two bootable drives configured as master attached to the laptop at the same time. I would power up the external enclosure after the laptop is already booted. I would also remove the external drive after cloning and before any rebooting. Presently the only way I can recover from a dead hard disk in my laptop is from images on DVD using the TI boot CD and the laptop's internal DVD drive. That's a very slow process that I don't have trust in. It's an 80GB drive. A complete disk image uses two DVDs at the present time.

I would appreciate any comments.

Rod

 

I think TI7 is too old to be able to see firewire devices via the boot CD. Newer versions should - sorry, cannot check for you as I don't have firewire.

Sure you can clone and re-clone, but you should test a clone to make sure it will work.

 

Thanks for the reply. I take it then that my concern about having two active boot drives connected (one internal plus the external, previously cloned one on firewire) at the same time in windows (98SE) is unfounded. Is that correct? I suppose I could remove the original drive (the one to be cloned), install the previously cloned drive, fdisk it, remove it, install it in the external enclosure, reinstall the original drive and then do the cloning but that's a roundabout process I'd like to avoid. I plan on doing this on a regular, periodic basis as a backup, not an upgrade procedure.

 

Not sure whether you have to disconnect the external - some have had success without having to remove it. But you don't have to fdisk the external first. The Cloning process will, by default, wipe out anything on the external, otherwise the cloning process will not procede.

 

Hello rodnh,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Please note that using Acronis True Image you can clone the hard drive both under Windows and when booted from Acronis True Image Bootable CD. If the cloning process starts under Windows and disk contains the currently active operating system Acronis True Image will prompt you to reboot the computer to start the cloning procedure. Canceling the reboot will cancel the entire procedure. Cloning a non-system disk or a disk containing an operating system, but one that is not currently active, will proceed without reboot.

Please note that we recommend you to unplug one of the hard drives right after the disk cloning process has been finished, since keeping both original and cloned hard drives connected might cause different boot or drive letter assignment problems.

As Ralphie mentioned the reason why the external hard drive does not recognize when booted from Acronis True Image Bootable CD is either lack of appropriate drivers or the existing drivers do not work correctly. We recommend you to download and install the free trial version of Acronis True Image 10.0 Home, create a new Bootable CD and to see how the software works on your computer.

Please be aware that the limitations of Acronis True Image 10.0 trial version are that you can only restore an image when you run the program from the bootable media. It is fully functional in Windows. The trial version evaluation period is 15 days.

If the issue persists with the bootable CD create with the trial version of Acronis True Image 10.0 Home, please create Acronis Report and Linux system information (sysinfo.txt) as it is described in Acronis Help Post. Provide the exact vendor and model of the hard drive you use. Then submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to your request along with the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with a solution.

Thank you.
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Aleksandr Isakov