Bare Metal Restore Limitation?

As far as I know, TI will only allow bare metal restore when an image has been created of the entire drive (all partitions) and this is a severe limitation. Most of data is static/non-volatile and it is silly to continually image the same "nearline" data. I want to do regularly-scheduled imaging that will allow bare metal restore but I want to exclude a partition (the "data" partition) from the images. Is this possible or or will it be in the future? I have TI version 8.

 

Sure, you can take an image of just one partition, and you can restore just a single partition. However, if your drive fails you lose all the partitions on the drive, so you better have a copy of that data partition somewhere.

 

TonyTech,

There was a pretty fiery discussion about one year ago on whether TI did true "bare metal" restore or not. I won't go into that.

If you create one single entire drive image and store it to keep and then continue with regular selected partition(s) imaging, you can do all the restoring you'll need.

If you have to rebuild just the system partition (after a Windows crash, an infection or to do a clean uninstall of some trial software) you restore a (recent) system partition image. The other partitions are left as they were.

If you want to migrate to a new drive, you first restore the (old) entire drive image to also write the partition structure and the MBR (which in TI8 is included in entire drive images only) to the new drive. Then you refresh the system partition contents by restoring the most recent system partition image on top of the first restore. Of course, the other partitions will be in the state they were in when you created the entire drive image, unless you have some separate later image of them available for the second restore as well.

In TI9, the MBR is included also in single partition images but even here you are better off if you have one entire drive image available when you want to migrate.

I can't tell for TI10.

 

<i>If you create one single entire drive image and store it to keep and then continue with regular selected partition(s) imaging, you can do all the restoring you'll need.</i>

That won't work for me because I want to be able to restore all partitions except for the "nearline" data partion which I want left intact. The nearline data partition holds stuff like music from purchased CDs that can be restored if necessary from the CDs if necessary so it doesn't have to be imaged.


In TI9, the MBR is included also in single partition images but even here you are better off if you have one entire drive image available when you want to migrate.

It sounds like upgrading is the only solution.

I can't tell for TI10.

Well hopefully TI10 is as advanced as TI9!

 

TonyTech,

- Create the image archive that contains only the partitions you need;
- Restore the needed partition to the new hard drive or to the old one;
- Fix MBR (if restore to the new drive).

That's it.

If you do not need the image of the entire hard drive don't do it. bVolk said that it is better to have the image of the entire hard drive just in case.

_Kento_

 

Kento is right, but let me clarify a little more.

If you want to setup a new (replacement) drive by restoring the C: partition (plus MBR) alone and the C: partition image originates from a multi-partition layout, Acronis advise to first partition the new destination drive to as many partitions as were present on the image source drive.

If you have an entire disk image available (it may be an outdated one), you do not need to partition the new drive. Instead of that, you first restore the entire disk image to the blank new drive following it with a restore of a recent image of C: to refresh the C: contents. I created the entire disk image I have on storage for this purpose when the non-system partitions were still almost empty, therefore just restoring that one first is for me more practical than carrying out a separate partitioning. If the non-system partitions contain great amount of data, then the pre-partitioning route may be easyer - especially so if you have some partitioning software to use.

Both approaches are possible.