How long does a complete restore take?

Hi,

I have created a complete image of my drive. I booted from the CD and started the veryify a backup image process. It told me it would take 5 hours! Is that how long it will take to restore my disk also?

Does it matter if I choose "normal" backup of if I make a "sector by sector" image? If one is faster to restore than the other it would be good to know.

 

Hey Christian,

How large is you HD? When I perform a backup / restore the "time remaining" starts out very high but quickly counts down. If this is not the case in your instance, it is probably a poor driver on the recovery disc for your hardware. To correct this you can build a BartPE or VistaPE disc that is better suited for your hardware (Windows Drivers). This should speed up your backup and restore.

Also, a normal backup is quicker than a sector by sector. My understanding is that with a sector by sector backup if you have a 500GB HD and are only using 100GB it still backs up 500GB. With a normal backup it only backs up the portion of the HD you are using, in this example 100GB.

Corey

 

It's 160 mb laptop drive. My back-ups go fast, but the verify of the back-up from the CD goes slow. What I wonder is if the veryfy may be slow while the real restore is faster? I guess it's no way to know unless I really do a restore.
If the restore fails, is there a way to get the data off a full image on to another computer drive?

 

For peace of mind, invest in a second laptop drive and do the restore to it. The drive only has to be large enough to hold the used space on the original. And after a successful restore to the spare drive, you can always use it as an external drive - an enclosure for it is all of $10 (in the USA).

PS. I suppose you meant 160Gb ... one of those will cost around $70 or less.

 

One question: If I use another boot CD like BartPE, how do I get the Acronis programs on it? Do I not need to have that to be able to restore from CD?

 

I suggest you use mustangs BartPE plugins or VistaPE scripts, he charges a small fee but his guides are free see this link.
Also search this forum for BartPE and VistaPE, you will find numerous posts that will help you.

Edit You don't say where your image is stored

 

You can create a cd using ATI -- see manual. or make a windows CD -- see below for links or search for any message by GroverH and check out the links at the bottom of the message.

Good idea also to read through the manual.

 

What version and build of True Image are you using.

The long times from the CD usually indicate poor support for your hardware by drivers of the Linux operating system of the CD. The latest version and latest build usually have the best likelihood of supporting a new notebook and therefore being fast.

A restore usually takes quite a bit longer than a validation.

 

Just to embellish a bit here -- validation/restore times can vary a lot depending on your hardware and the OS. Ime, generally, a validation will take about the same time as a restore if they are both run from the same OS and prog (bootcd). If run form the ATI bootCD, both can take 2 or three times longer than a backup run from windows.

A validation run from windows generally will take a little bit more or less than the backup if run from windows.

It's basically a matter of how well that dreaded linux on the bootcd works with your harwdare. It one reason why some of us have given up on ATI bootCDs and swtiched to VitsPE bootCDs.