Copying Present XP Set-up to external USB HD

Please look at the screen shot attached and let me know if it is possible to transfer my complete Windows XP Set up (consisting of the 1st 3 partitions shown attached)
1. Partition Basic FAT Healthy 55MB
2. Partition Basic FATS32 Healthy 4.95GB
3. (C Partition Basic NTFS Healthy 166.87GB
from my internal drive to the FATS 32 SEA DISC USB External Drive (Partition shown in the screenshot attached)
I am aware that I would have to reduce the partition that my "C" drive is in so the total GB's of the internal drive is the same size or have less GB's than the external drive. I plan to take all the 149.01GB's off my USB External Drive
and allow more room for ACRONIS SZ which will reduce my transfer GB size.

What I would like to accomplish is have the external drive located at another address just to be used in case my internal hard drive is no longer operational. Backups are not that important to me. I just want to not have to experience the nightmare I recently went through when all my hard drive was inaccessible and I had to format & reinstall all that was lost!
My questions are:

1. If this is possible what do I have to do in the way of getting my external usb HD ready to accept the transfer such as formatting the drive etc.?
2. Will I be able to boot up from & use the external USB HD without accessing my internal HD and have a fully operational system?
3. What am I missing or not understanding?
4. Will there be a conflict with one drive (internal) having NTFS file system & the external drive being FAT32?

I have read the entire TI-9.0 Users Guide and as you can see, still have a lot of questions! I really like using the TI 9.0 software and am hoping that what I am proposing to do is possible.

Many of you folks have previously assisted me in learning the ins and outs of TI 9.0 and I want to thank-you all so very much for all your assistance.
Also, thanks in advance for any help you might be on this matter.

Respectfully,

Aarond38

 

There's absolutely no need to use the SZ. Since you have an external drive for the Image, the SZ is unnecessary and is just something else that might go wrong.

So far, WinXP cannot be booted off a usb drive - at least I have not read anything that says it can. But I'll be the first to try it if someone says it can.

You can have a backup in two "flavors" - Image or Clone.

The Image will be a compressed file of your entire original drive and has to go through a Restore process on to a drive before it will become bootable like the original drive.

A Clone on the other hand is a bootable copy of your original - identical in every way. If you intend to use that external only for the backup and if you can remove the drive to put in place of the original if the original goes bad, then the Clone procedure would be better - if it works. And with the latest build it should work. But be sure to actually test it right away if this is the way you decide to go. I know ... lots of 'ifs'.

Both Image and Clone will include ALL your three partitions.

 

If you CLONE this drive
AND
if teh external usb drive is just an IDE drive in a usb conversion box

then you can pop the drive out of the box, plug it into your machine, and boot it up.

BUT, you want to TEST that out immediately after cloning, so that you know if it works (realize that if it is a self-contained unit with a warranty, you mnay void the usb external box warranty; just be aware...)

Otherwise, not usre about booting with the usb drive...
nick

 

Hello aarond38,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please note that since you are interested in backing up your hard drive for the disaster recovery purposes, I would recommend you to follow Backup approach. Using Acronis True Image 9.0 Home you will be able to create the image of the entire hard drive and store this image to the USB hard drive. If your system fails you will be able to boot from the Acronis True Image Bootable Rescue Media and restore the system from this image.

Please also note that as Chutsman mentioned the current version of Windows does not support USB hard disk drives as the primary boot device. Please read this article by Microsoft for additional information.

The clone procedure, however, can be performed through the USB cable. Just follow the instructions provided by aoz and connect the drive through the IDE cable after cloning.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov

 

From the instructions on the Acronis TI Home, it appears cloning of a drive must be done internally in the computer and cannot be done on a hard drive in an external drive. Correct? Or, am I missing something? I just purchased the Acronis TI 9.0 and have read the manual from the disk and this is my understanding. So, the steps would be to install the hard drive into the computer as a slave and clone. Then, either leave in the computer or take it out and put in an external case. If the computer crashes and I need to restore image, the drive needs to be reinstalled into the computer to either clone back on to crashed drive or changed into master to use. Is that correct so far? I really would like to have a cloned drive so I do not have to go thru the hassle of reinstalling windows and searching for all the drivers. Have been reading all I could here in these forums and getting a little lost.

 

You can clone to an external drive and clone from the external drive back to an internal drive but you cannot boot XP directly from an external drive.

I think you are missing a bit of information in your analysis of what you need to achieve your goal.

TI will clone a disk which means to make an indentical copy of the old disk on the new disk. This is intended for upgrading an old disk to perhaps a larger new disk.

TI will also make an image of a whole disk or partition. An image is stored as a big file or a collection of files with a tib extension. This image normally is compressed to make it smaller, it only contains the used sectors of the partition. If you have a 40GB partition and only 17GB is used out of the 40 then your image will contain only the information contained in the 17GB. This means you can store more than one backup image on a drive. If you clone, you have one clone of the drive and that is all.

The image files can be stored on another internal drive or an external drive. If you are making an image of one partition on a drive you can store the image on another partition on the same drive.

Image file are preferable to a clone for backup purposes.

Note that when you go into the Backup Wizard TI will also give you the option of making a Files and Folders backup. This option is best used only for making backups of data files; it is not the proper solution for making a backup of your C drive such that you can restoe a bootable system.

If your hard-drive fails, or you want to restore to a previous state from an older image you boot up the CD rescue/recovery version of TI. It runs in Linux and can read your image files and restore them to the HD. Windows does not have to be reloaded to do a recovery.

The command to make a recovery CD version is on the main screen of TI and it is the first thing you should do when you install the program. Without the CD you cannot recover if you system is dead.

 

Thank you for the explanations of the various methods TI is capable. I did try to clone my 10gb hard drive to the 20gb partition of a newly formatted and partitioned 160gb Seagate drive, with the intention of installing the new 160gb into the computer and keeping the 10gb as emergency. But when I tried to do this, TI could not see my new drives, even though I can see it under Explore. That is when I checked out the instructions on the TI disk, which says cloning can only be done to an installed internal disk. Which step am I missing? Thanks for any enlightenment you can provide. It would be perfect if I can clone to an externally enclosed hard drive.

 

Xamxam, there's something else coming into play to prevent TI from seeing your external. Is it firewire or usb? As for cloning to an external, yes, TI will do it. I've done it a few times successfully just as a test, but my choice for cloning software is not TI.

BTW, what version and build of TI are you using? And are you running TI from within Windows or using the bootable Rescue cd?

 

You have to clone a disk to a disk, not a disk to a partition or do you mean create an image of your 10GB hard-drive in a 20GB partition on your USB drive.

 

I am on a win98se dell dimension xps t700 with 10gb hard drive. The external drive enclosure is an MPD miniportable disk in which I installed a 120 gb hard drive, partitioned into 20-20-80. The hard drive enclosure has both usb and 1394, but I used the usb because the computer does not have firewire capability. I just bought the TI 9.0.

All I want to do is have the new hard drive act the same way as if it were the old hard drive, but with more storage space. No need for any backups of any files as the important things are already stored on two separate pen drives.

Could the trouble be that I am trying to clone from 10gb to 20gb? And should I be creating an image instead?

 

Yes, as seekforever said, when you Clone it is from an ENTIRE disk to an ENTIRE disk. To do what you want you have to use Image Backup and you have to have a third disk to hold the image. Some have said that TI will actually save the Image to a folder on the Source drive, space permitting, but I've not tried this.

 

So, if I got rid of all the partitions on the new 120 drive and cloned it, it would work? Then I would go back and partition it the way I want. Correct?

Or, break out third hard drive and do an image backup. Then, restore it to the drive that will eventually go into the computer to replace the 10gb. Correct?

 

Yes, you can clone it. I don't use the clone function so I can't really give you the details. I do have a concern that since I believe your machine is an older one, will it fully recognize your 120GB drive or will it only see a smaller size.

 

Now that was an explanation I can uderstand. I have it clear now. Thanks so much "Seekforever" for putting it in layman's terms.

Aarond38

 

Seekforever: My computer has the limit of 120gb that it will recognize. And I was trying to do the cloning from TI software once it was installed on the computer. I bought TI because it was my impression it would take less of my computer resources than the other popular cloning software.

Thanks to all you guys in this forum for making it so much clearer than when I tried to read the instructions online and in this forum. I do have some senior moments and have to struggle at times.

 

Hello xamxam,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please note that as seekforever said clone procedure can be done between two hard drives only. Please also note that in order to be able to clone to the external USB disk it should be recognized as a hard drive not as a removable media.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov

 

Now I have gone and really messed up my W98 machine. I tried to clone my machine from my 10gb to 120gb and it did not work and froze. Thought it would only mess up the 120, but instead it messed up my 10gb. Spent the last 24 hours formatting and reinstalling w98 and its drivers back in with the various security software. Even went into the bios setup, but could not find anything wrong. Now I have lost all my w98 updates and MS no longer provides updates for it. When it first froze up, I tried to reinstall 98 to see if it would boot into windows, but it would not. I only have some updates on CDs, but not for the last six or seven months. Anyone know where I can get it? Might be too soon to look for it, huh? I give up on the cloning of that machine.

Now, the question about from hard drive to hard drive only on a laptop. Since my laptop only holds one hard drive, that means I need to have another laptop to clone to, since the external enclosures won't work. Or, how would I make sure the external hard drive will not be recognized as external? Is there a special type enclosure?

Sorry about sounding so dense, but when things don't go as planned, it's a good idea to have a backup strategy.

 

Hello xamxam,

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Please note that in the case you are not able to connect two hard drives to the computer in order to perform clone procedure using "Clone Disk" tool, you can clone the hard disk by creating its image, saving it to any supported storage device and restoring it to the new hard disk with larger partitions.

As for external USB disks, usually external USB hard drives recognizes as a hard drives, however, I will recommend you to address this question to the vendor of the device or ask shop assistant before purchase.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov