Question & help

I use this product and I really like it. It seems very effecient. I'm quite good with PCs and malware removal and stuff. But not HDD stuff. I have one HDD and one partition with my only stuff on it and everything on one partition on C.


I have a backup of my whole C drive located in My Documents, but I cannot restore because I'm restoring the HDD that It's located on.


What can I do? I badly need that HDD image to be used now.


Any help appreciated, thanks.

 

You need to get the image onto its own device or partition.

Easiest way is to get another HD and restore the image to it. This is also the safest way because if there is a problem you haven't blown the current system away.

Buy or borrow an external HD and copy the image to it.

If the image archive will fit on a DVD or has been split so the tib files will fit onto DVDs, copy it to a DVD. Be sure to use the burning programs "verify after burning" feature.

Another method is to create a second partition on your HD and copy the image files into it.

It seems obvious you haven't done a test restore with your system so all but the first recommendation carry a higher risk since you don't know for sure if the TI Linux recovery environment works well on your system. When you run the Linux recovery environment be sure you do a Validate before restoring. This will ensure that the archive can at least be read properly. One of the first things TI does on a restore is to delete the existing partition so it isn't nice to find out you can't even read the archive after this happens.

 

How I make another partition? and whats partition actually mean?

 

When you have a 500 gb hard drive (example only), it can all be formatted as c: drive or you can divide it (partition) into smaller sections. Each partition will be isolated from the other and have it's own drive letter and file system
example below:
500gb harddrive with 4 partitions
c: = 20gb NTFS with system files only
d: = 80gb NTFS with data files only
e: = 300gb NTFS with movie files only
f: = 100gb FAT32 with temp files

most people only have 2 partitions, but each have there own methods.
In your case, you would probably have 2 partitions, and save your image to the other partition(not c: drive).
It's always best to partition your harddrive when it's brand new before installing an operating system, but there are programs that can partition your harddrive after the fact (by moving your data around while dividing your harddrive)
When you bought your harddrive, it usually comes with a cd that you can use to partition your harddrive.

 

well it didnt, I have Acronis True Image Home 10, will this make partitions?


thanks alot, great explanation! Appreciated.

 

Before you go much further into this I suggest you Google something like "disk partitions" and get a better understanding of what they really are.

Two commercially available programs for disk partitioning are Acronis Disk Director and Partition Magic; there are others as well.

TI is not made to do partitioning but there is a trick you can use to create a partition. The trick is based on TI's ability to create a Secure Zone on a currently partitioned drive without destroying the current partition. You essentially create a SZ of the desired size and then delete it and then assign the now unallocated space to a new partition.

I have only done it once so I am not confident to write out a set of instructions. Some kind may post them in response to this or you could try and search the forum for them; its likely been posted several times.

 

Some times I can't read between the lines. So excuse this query can"t Relemar use disk management ? ( I am presuming he has XP)

 

Disk Management is a great tool and will partition the drive but AFAIK it can't do it without destroying the existing partition. It won't even let you delete the Active partition (typically C).

This the real feature that commericial partitioning products offer, being able to modifiy the structure and still maintain the data.

 

Hello Relemar,

Seekforever is correct in that you can use TI to non-destructively create an additional partition on your hard drive. The following instructions should help to restore your existing image:

1. Use TI's Manage Acronis Secure Zone Wizard to create a Secure Zone (SZ) large enough to contain the image that you wish to restore but not larger than the free space available on your C: drive. Do NOT accept the default option to also activate the Startup Recovery Manager. As you are creating the SZ on your system partition (C: drive), TI will prompt you to reboot your computer in order to complete the operation.
2. Once the SZ has been created, right click on "My Computer" and select Manage > Storage > Disk Management.
3. In the Disk Management window, right click on the Acronis SZ and select Delete Logical Drive (click Yes when the warning about the partition not having been created by Windows pops up). You will now be left with an amount of unallocated free space equal to the SZ that you deleted.
4. Right click on the free space, select New Logical Drive and follow the New Partition Wizard to create a new logical partition using all of the unallocated space.
5. Once the partition has been created, format it and then copy the image you wish to restore from your "My Documents" folder to the new partition.
6. Boot from the Acronis rescue CD and use TI's Restore Data Wizard to restore the image that now resides on the new partition back to your C: partition. You do NOT want to restore the original MBR/Track 0 data to your newly partitioned HD. Therefore, when selecting what data to restore, only tick the checkbox next to the C: partition.

Hope the above helps.

Regards

Menorcaman

 

Thanks for that info seekforever good to know.

 

Hello Relemar,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please note that as it was mentioned by other Forum members you should have the image archive stored on a different disk/partition that you wish to restore to. You can store image archives created with Acronis True Image on almost any PC storage device: local hard drives, network drives or a variety of IDE, SCSI, FireWire (IEEE-1394), USB (1.0, 1.1 and 2.0) and PC card (formerly called PCMCIA) removable media drives, including CD\DVD discs etc.

Acronis True Image is a backup and restore solution that allows you to restore the system should the disaster happen. To operate with partitions you can follow seekforever advice and use partition manager program like Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 to create a partition to hold the image archive. Note that using Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 you will be able to split your partition without losing your data.

You can find the detailed instructions on how to use Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 in the respective User's Guide.

Please visit Acronis online store in order to purchase the product.

Would also like to mention that Windows Disk Management (which can be started via Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management) allows you to create a new partition using unallocated space, but does not have the ability manage (split, for example) the existing partition.

Thank you.
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Aleksandr Isakov