Backing up from TI bootable CD only question

Hi all,

I had a major system crash where I couldn't access any programs 'This is not a valid win32 program etc' messages. Not sure if this was because I removed the Secure Zone the day before or due to some problem with Commodo Firewall V3 as it has been causing real problems for folk. I tried an Acronis full restore via my external drive but after it was copied to my internal drive I got, 'MBR error please insert floppy disk.' which I don't have, so I presumed I couldn't restore the Acronis disk image backup and did a full Windows re-install off the Windows CD instead. All is well now.

I've now done a full backup of my internal C: drive to my external drive via Acronis that I loaded into ram via the bootable CD. Its validated too. I haven't even loaded Acronis TI 10 this time onto my internal C: drive. Is this okay? All I have to do if I want to recover my system is to use the TI 10 bootable CD and load the full C: image from my external drive, correct?

Thanks for your help.

 

Correct. Just use the bootable cd and do your backups/restores.

 

Only thing about that is that everything is very much faster when done within Windows.

 

If you install and make a ViastaPE CD, yo can then uninstall and the VistaPE Boot CD will run ATI about as fast as it can go on your hardware. It would work with an XP or a Vista computer plus you can have access to a number of other functions besides ATI's, including a file manager, etc. Plus you don't have to own Vista to be able to make one -- look for Mustang's free guide to building a VistaPE disk.

 

Thanks everyone, I appreciate the replies. Will stick with the bootable TI cd for now and see how it goes. I run a fairly lean system and use online email etc, so re-installing windows wasn't too major a task. Still prefer using TI where possible though.

 

I thought of going that way also, but I would miss the "Mount" function, so for this reason only would I have TI installed in windows.
With my old computer XP OS I found very little time difference between backing up/recovering from windows or the Rescue disk. I have Vista ( new computer) now and I am waiting for a stable Bld of version 11 and then I will update to it and see what the difference in time is.
I tried a backup with my version 9 / bartpe and it worked fine and validated. ( except for some reason my backup was much larger then what was shown by windows and by TI ) I hope I never have to use it for a recovery.

 

Yeah, that's a good point re time differences. By the time I loaded the TI backup (mbr issue stopped it installing, see above) and had it validated it was about the same as installing Windows.

I had all of my images and documents, bookmarks backed up anyway so a re-install of Windows was pretty fast and I also now have a very clean system, even cleaner than when it came from the shop six months ago. That's why I just did a TI disk image though, as it would be good to restore to that point.

 

If you're using a USB drive in the backup or restore process, the BootCd can take many times longer to process than the win version of ATI. It depends on the set up. For example, on one of my machines, it's the diff between several hours versus about 20 minutes.