Not impressed !!

Ok, I bought TI-11 after reading a number of reviews about the product. TI was supposed to replace my very old version of PowerQuest Deploy Center.

PQ worked great in it's day, but once disk drives started to exceed 100GB, I started to have problems creating disk images with PQ, so I needed something new! First I tried Ghost, but just don't like Symantec in general. That's were TI came in.

But once I cracked the box, the problems began. The first thing was that it would not boot on one of my machines (Sony VAIO); just crapped out. Sent a message to their Tech Support, but after 10 days of waiting for a response from them, gave up. Eventually I talked to somebody in sales who arranged for a "special version" which does boot.

Recently I had a hard disk that failed. Fortunately I had a recent TI backup. So off to my shelf of spare parts for a new disk I go. Install the new drive, then boot up the special version of TI and try and restore my system.

Well here I am five days later still trying to restore my system. Seems that the drive that died was 250 GB of which I was using about 15% and my spare drive was only 200 GB. No way would this product restore my backup image; nothing I could do would make it work nice. It just plain won't do what I was lead to believe it would do.

My old version of PQ would backup only the used portion of the drive; images were typically very small. It would then restore to a driver either larger or smaller. Of course if the drive was too small, it would let you know.

Why cannot TI do this Seems simple enough! I've worked with image backup programs on big IBMs, PDPs, VAXen, RS6000 and even Windows in the Enterprise that were able to do bare metal restores regardless of the restore media size. As long as the system could fit on the restore drive, the restore would complete. Why cannot TI do this

Anybody have any idea how I can get TI to restore to a disk smaller than the one backed up? Disks are cheap; I can buy a bigger drive (and will), but it's now become a point of principle that I've spent money on a product that does not work!

Thanks.

 

TI normally backsup only the used portion of a disk. However, if you choose a sector-by-sector backup, it will backup the entire drive. Could you have checked that option?

In my experience, you need about 10% more than the actual used space to restore an image. If you were using about 38GB, you'd need at least a 50 GB drive to restore the image. Obviously, you have lots more.

When doing the restore, did you check the box to restore the entire drive? If so, try checking the actual partition alone and then when asked if you want to restore another partition, check the MBR box. This should allow you to set the size of the restored partition.

 

First, thanks for taking the time to reply!

I know that I did not do a sector by sector backup. I just booted the TI CD, and clicked on "Backup and Restore", then clicked on "Backup", clicked on "next", and finally clicked on "My Computer". I then selected the disk to be backed up, told it where to put the backup file (.tib) and away it went.

On the restore, I was never given a chance to select where to restore; the disk was greyed out. Nothing I could do would allow me to select partition or disks, create or delete partitions. It did not allow me to do anything!

Oh well, fifty dollars lost!

 

You ever thought maybe its your disk the problem ? Because I have use this software on many , yes many smaller size disk and it has work everytime .

 

"On the restore, I was never given a chance to select where to restore; the disk was greyed out"

A mistake I made when I first got it was similar ; you have to be able to "see:" the E: drive(ext. H.Drive). Click that and 'grayout' should disapear then you can go further with it. Good luck!!

 

If restoring you might have to click C: drive. Restoring from E: drive-confused me too when I first got it.

 

I always restore to smaller hard drives with no problems. True image works excellent for that.

This how I do it
1. backup each partition individually (don't do clones)
2. manually partition your destination hard drive first (don't let true image do the partitioning)
3. restore your save backup partition image into the new partitions. If the "used" data of the backup can fit in the new partition, it will let you restore it. True image will allow you to shrink the oversize partition to fit in the smaller partition.

example : you backup your c: partition on your 250 gb hard drive 36gb use
You can restore this into a 60gb hard drive with no problems because the 36gb used data will fit in the 60gb hard drive. I've done this many times and it has always worked.

An image backup of a "bootable partition" will always be bootable when restored whether you backup the MBR or not. A full hard drive clone is never required to use this program successfully.

But unfortunately it looks like the true image boot cd has problems recognizing your computer. Many people here in the forum use a bartpe plugin to overcome that limitation. I always try to backup and restore from within windows and rarely use the boot cd.

 

Hello GregW,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for delayed response.

Could you please clarify, have you chosen to restore the whole disk or separate partition(s)? Please notice that when restoring to a smaller disk, you need to resize partitions being restored. The resize option is available when choosing partition(s) to restore separately, not the drive as a whole. Please see chaper 6 "Restoring the backup data" of Acronis True Image 11 Home User's Guide for detailed instructions.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov