Help with True Image Home 2009

Hi everyone, newbee here! Wonder if anyone has some time or indeed the inclination to help me solve a problem, i would be very grateful!. I have just bought Acronis True Image Home 2009 following a recommendation from a friend. I am trying to create a 'cloned' image of the C drive of my dell desktop. I have followed the instructions to the letter, and the software appears to have been successful, however my 'problem' is that there are 9 backup files stored to my external hard drive. My friend tells me that he does not understand this as when he images his drive there is only ever one file

mine are Mybackup1.tib (4,194,304KB) through to Mybackup8.tib (4,194,304KB) and Mybackup9.tib (119,813KB)

Any ideas would be really appreciated, as ive come to a full stop and am not really sure if i have created a cloned image correctly

Y/r
Thanks and Smiles

 

First off, when dealing with True Image, there is no such thing as a cloned image. You either create a Clone or you create an Image (also called Backup).

Your Backup is split because the drive it is on is formatted as Fat 32. If it were formatted as NTFS you would get one file. But it doesn't matter to True Image if there is one file or the split files. One advantage of the split files is that you can burn them to dvd discs for extra security.

 

Hi DND,
Thank you for that correction, had a feeling i was typing some erroneous information.

Thank you very much for the additional information and answer to my plea for help, it is really appreciated, and i am grateful to you. Could i ask another 'slightly ignorant' (or very, you can decide If i had the need to restore these 9 files, is it just a case of highlighting them all at the correct stage of the restore process?

Cheers and best regards,
S

 

You only need to point True Image to the first one. TI will find the rest automatically.

BTW, it is advisable to do a "dry run" of a restore with the True Image Rescue CD to make sure it will see the external drive. Don't wait until you must do a restore with the Rescue CD to find out that it cannot see your external drive - it has happened to many users. Go through the process up to where you are able to select the backup file on the external drive then cancel out.

Or even better, if you have a spare drive do an actual restore to it.

 

Thanks again DND, your knowledge and help is again very much appreciated, excellent tip/advice too, and if i may be permitted for such a new forum member, you are a credit to these boards for new comers like me

smiles
S

 

I agree with DwnNdrty's advice but I suggest also doing a Validate using the TI CD which is a Linux environment. The validate demonstrates that the TI archive can be read into RAM, the numerous checksums recalculated and successsfully compared to the ones included in the archive when it was created. This is not only a test of TI's Linux recovery environment but is a pretty good RAM and disk system hardware test as well. There are 4000 checksums per gigabyte of archive and every one must compare perfectly or the archive is declared corrupt. If this happens when you are doing an image restore, the restore is aborted and you end up with unallocated space instead of the partition.

Doing a successful validate in Windows is not good enough because Windows is not what you are using when you restore your C drive or a whole disk. Once you demonstrate the Linux environment works OK then Windows validations, etc are fine.

 

Seekforever, Thank you very much for your advice and help, I am grateful. May I, at the real risk of sounding very ignorant, ask you if the validate process using the TI CD, is a simple one to perform? I only purchased the product last week and followed the instructions my friend had mailed to me

Thanks again
Smiles
S

 

Validation of your backup files is straight forward and takes only a fraction of the time that it takes to do a backup.

Acronis will prompt you when doing a restore - it will ask you if you want to do a validation first.

You can also do a validation at any time using Acronis or right click in Explorer on the backup file and there will be a menu option here to validate.

 

jehosophat, thank you very much, it's appreciated
Smiles
A

 

Hi guys wonder if you can help me again Please..... I actually wanted to make a clone of my C drive, not a backup... so ...

Now i have backed up my new laptop when it was first delivered this week
my question is can i restore the 'system' to as new 'out of the box' when i made the image of the "entire disk" this was before i installed any OS updates/ programmes etc

Secondly, i attempted to clone the c drive today, (the laptop having a 500gb capacity, my external Buffalo drive being 320gb) but Acronis 'said that the drive already contains data and prompting me to delete in order to select the "next" button.

Sorry to be so thick guys but im getting really confused.

What i really wanted to do was clone the c drive when the laptop was 'brand new' then clone it after all updates, software, programmes were installed. This way if i wanted to pass the machine down the line in the future i could factory install it but also if i had a failure with the OS or hardware i could reinstall the complete OS with all the updates/programmes/files folders etc

Thanks again
S

 

You may be confused with the terminology - and you also need to use it in the same manner TI uses it. IMO, TI's definitions are correct.

A clone is an exact duplicate of the original disk - just like making a clone of a sheep. TI will not clone individual partitions, it only operates on the entire physical disk regardless of the number of partitions. Since you are going to overwrite the new volume to make it look exactly like the original, then all data needs to be erased. In fact, all the partitions will be deleted and recreated to reflect the source disk layout.

An image reads the source disk or partition and then assembles the data in a file or series of files. An image can be of a whole disk, a partition or selected partitions. Since the image is stored in a file or files, it can be placed among the other files in the target disk. Restoring an image of a whole disk to a new disk will essentially give you the same operational result as doing a clone.

Cloning is intended for the case of replacing an old operational drive with a newer one. TI's clone capability will allow resizing the partitions to fit a larger new drive. Since a clone gives you a duplicate disk it can also be considered as a backup and some people do use it that way. The disadvantage is that you an only have one clone at a time on a second disk but if you do need it, the backup is immediately available. However, given the rarity of having to replace a HD, my opinion is that it isn't worth the bother since restoring an image takes little time.

You can also upgrade to a new, larger HD by restoring an image so cloning for that task is not essential.

To get back to what you want to do, you can make images of your disk or partitions any time you want. You can restore the disk or partitions to any point in time you have an image for, by restoring the appropriate image. If I were doing this, I would only create Full images for each important point you wish an image, not a Full for a base then incrementals or differentials to get to different times.

 

Thank you very much seekforever, thats a very clear and comprehensive reply to my query, thank you for your time and energy with my enquiry, it is appreciated.

Could i ask for some more advice please? When creating an image, from the source destination C: Drive is already ticked, however below the C drive, there is also NTFS (RECOVERY) (D and FAT16 (unlabeled), my query is should i also "check" both of these as well

Many thanks
smiles
S

 

These are the partitions put on by the vendor for diagnostics or recovery of the machine to its factory-supplied state should that be necessary.

Most users of TI recommend that you have an image that reflects the entire disk structure and it will also provide a backup of these partitions should you ever want to recover them.

I would make one "whole disk" image and then just image the C partition.

 

Thanks Seeforever
Smiles and kind regards
S