Cloning HD to Partitioned USB Drive

I have an external drive with 3 partitions (to back up my 2 PCs and 1 laptop). When I run Acronis True Image (v9), the software for some unknown reason wants to remove all my partitions on the external drive before proceeding.

Why is this necessary? There's a valid drive letter (X:, Y:, Z: ) assigned to each partition. Why can't I simply select C: as the source, X: as the destination and have it remove the data from X:\ before proceeding?? At first glance it appears that I made a poor software purchase decision unless I'm completely missing something in the GUI or help docs. Any help you great folks can provide is greatly appreciated!

Evan

 

It sounds like are selecting Cloning which assumes you want to make an exact copy of the disk and also assumes you will use the new disk as a replacement for the old. You want to choose BACKUP from the menu to create an exact image of your drive and you will then be able to store it on the partition of your choice on the external drive.

 

That is the way cloning works. It makes a perfect copy of the original source drive to the target drive. All the original partitions, data, settings and operating system are reproduced to the target drive.
This is the clone process. If anything else was left on the target drive it would no longer be a clone.

Backups are normally done by creating images of the source drive not clones.
You can store these images in a folder a partition or even the root of your external drive and they will not affect anything else. That is apart from eating up some of the free space!

Delve a bit more into the user manual and it will begin to make sense. There are many Knights in shining armour here who are only too pleased to help out when you get stuck.


Xpilot

 

Tom/Xpilot,

Thanks for your replies. Maybe I'm confused. When I choose the backup route instead of the image route, I'm being prompted for a location to store a .tib file rather than a drive location to store my backup. Is this correct?

I would like the X: partition to contain a true backup of my C:, such that I could hook up the USB drive to any computer any access files as if they are on the C:, or perform a full backup. This .tib file gives the impression that my entire drive will be stored to this single file rather than create an image of C: on my X: partition.

Thanks!
Evan

 

When you choose the backup route you are creating an image (.tib file) and you will be asked where to store it. Its your choice where to store it. You can select any drive attached to your computer or a network location. The .tib is a single file containing an exact image of your C: drive. TIB is the file format used by TI. You can store it on X:, Y: D:. You pick. See the attached image.

 

So, what you're telling me is there is no way for true image to save an image of your hard drive to an external partitioned drive.

Storing my drive as a .tlb file is great and all, but this does not allow me to take my external drive to another computer and copy files, etc...

In other words>

I have C:\
-- directory A
-- directory B
-- directory C

and X:\
Y:\
Z:\
on my external drive.

I want to take everything on C and copy it to X, resulting in:
X:\
-- directory A
-- directory B
-- directory C
Y:\
Z:\

*NOT*

X:\backup_file.tib
Y:\
Z:\

Hope this makes more sense.

Evan

 

Evan, what I told you does exactly what you want. Once the .tib file has been created you can then Mount the image and you will see the exact directory structure that the drive contains. I suggest you read the user guide at http://download.acronis.com/pdf/TrueImage9.0_ug.en.pdf so you understand how True Image works. You can move the drive to another machine which will require that you install another license of TI to do what you want.