create bootable disk clone in vista

I have a msi k9n SLi platinum motherboard with 2 sata drives in a mirrored array. I am running vista ultimate 32 bit. Everything is working fine now, but i would like to clone this drive to an ide drive i have installed just in case something really bad happens to my main system. i would like in case of emergency to either unplug my sata drives and just boot up my ide drive or leave the sata drives in and boot off the ide drive by changing bios settings. any helpful ideas on how to make the bootable clone on the ide drive using acronis true image 11 would be greatly appreciated.

thanks,
Stu

 

All the necessary info was in earlier posts. although i could not create a bootable clone by running the clone from within windows, i did follow the instructions and created bootable rescue media -i.e. a CD (from top menu choice). following prior posts, i added nousb to the bootable startup parameters. at first it did successfully write the cd but then i opened the task manager and closed down windows media player. then it wrote the bootable cd just fine. i then changed the bios to boot to this cd and did the clone just as in windows copying my raid sata drive to the ide drive. in about 20 minutes it was all done. i shut the pc down and removed the sata connectors and rebooted, also removing the cd and changing the bios to boot off the ide drive. and it worked perfectly making it c:. when i reconnected the sata drives and switched them to first boot in the bios, it booted fine to them and the ide drive became f:. when i changed the bios to boot off the ide with the sata connected it did just that and made the sata array the f drive. now in a disaster i can boot to my ide, or boot to the cd and clone the ide back to the sata just reversing the procedure above. in the meantime, important things like quicken and mail i backup weekly to a usb flashdrive. sort of major overkill, but i had some experiences with vista and so i want to be totally too careful. hope this can help someone like the previous posts helped me. thanks to all the prior posters.

Stu

 

The problem is that Windows doesn't like to see two identical drives that are bootable. So, when Windows sees the clone, it will make it unbootable. You would have to keep the clone disconnected until you needed it, and you would have to reconnect it to redo the cloning to keep it up to date and then disconnect it again. That's very inconvenient.

EDIT: My error. The problem is only on the first boot after the clone. As you demonstrated in the previous message, if you disconnect the drive for the first boot so Windows doesn't see both drives that one time, both will remain bootable. So your approach will work fine.

I still think that this is a better approach: A better solution is to store images of your RAID array on the IDE drive or an external hard drive. There should be room for several backups. In the event of a failure, you restore the image to the corrupted or replaced drives.

 

John:
thank you for your help. i am relatively new with the program and have made the image onto the ide drive as you suggested. that worked very smoothly. after i actually restore an image once and trust it will work i may default to this method only. right now i have a bootable ide drive and the image on that drive also. sort of double protection. thanks for your comment.

Stu