TI 11 - No recovery with rescue CD

I made regular images of both my HDs with TI 11 home (I bought TI, it was no promotion copy).
Now I bought a new motherboard (Gigabyte EP45-DS3) and new SATA HDs.
OK, I knew that I could not restore my C: disk from the image because of the different hardware, but I thought that I could restore my D: drive from the latest image.
So I booted from the rescue media CD, found the image on the USB drive - BUT - there were no HDs found on my machine!

I installed XP with the latest updates but no other software at all since all that additional software (anti-virus, Office, etc. etc.) was on the D: drive. The two new SATA HDs are not in a RAID, I don't even think that the BIOS of the MB supports RAID without a BIOS update.

Now luckily I had a copy of the TI11 installation file together with the registration code on an USB stick, so I could install TI11 and restore my D: drive from there, but if I had not had this, I would have been in very deep s...!

What's the use of having a program like TI if it lets you down when you need it most

 

With any backup program you should have zero confidence in it until you have successfully restored. When you changed your motherboard you essentially reset the confidence level to zero.

The most likely reason for your problem is that the TI rescue environment on the CD is Linux and a weakness is the lack of driver or good driver for some hardware. This tends to be more common with newer hardware. TI cannot restore the active partition, typically C, with Windows running so it needs the rescue CD.

I imagine that TI11 under Windows was able to access your D drive with Windows running since it is not the active partition.

You can try to contact Acronis Live Chat and see if they will provide you with a .iso file to burn to CD which handles your hardware or you can download the TI12 demo copy and see if the CD made with it will recognize your hardware properly. The demo CD will restore any previously made archives.

 

That is exactly what I am complaining about. What's the use of imaging software that cannot rescue my data when I need it? And the scenario I described in my post is one of the cases this software is meant for. From now on I'll make a zipped copy of my data on a USB disk. That way I can be very sure to be able to get my data back, no matter what. And it doesn't cost me a cent.

 

I use SyncBack for data files and TI for OS images that have to boot. I want to keep my data files in their native format instead of stuffing them into a container file. I also consider a Zip file to be a container but it is more universal.

TI did recover your data files once you got the Windows version running. It is the imaging part that is problematic because of the Linux driver issue usually. This is an issue with TI, but it is also an issue with various other imaging programs. The other option is to use the TI plugin and make a BartPE bootable CD which is a Windows based recovery CD.

 

Yep, using TI for a quick recovery of the OS and using other means to restore data is a sensible approach. After all, if recovery of the OS via TI is not possible for one reason or other, I still have all my software on CD or on a separate drive from where I can re-install. It's a nuisance but not a desaster.

OTOH I must give Acronis 5 points out of 4 for service. I followed your advice, entered live chat and got an ISO image that booted from CD and recognised my SATA drives. The question is, why was that not included in the first place? SATA is around at least for the last 5 years and I bought my copy of TI only 2 years ago.

And I found a serious bug right away. If one restores files from the image this way, the timestamps are always the time of restoration. If I use the Windows TI-driver that allows me to copy right from Explorer, the timestamps are preserved.

 

The issue isn't SATA drives but the SATA controller and they don't all use the same driver. TI has had support for SATA drives since version 9 at least and maybe earlier.

I believe you can set the options in the restore wizard to use the original rather than the current time and date. This has supposedly been noted by Acronis based on complaints in another post about this poor choice for the default time/date setting. Have a look for the setting in the wizard.

 

You bought new hardware and are expecting older backup software with older drivers to support it. That's expecting a great deal. You need to update the software to match your new hardware.

If you downloaded the TI 2009 Trial version and created the Rescue CD, that should see your new hardware since it's the current version of TI. That Rescue CD would also be able to restore your TI 11 backup images. That's a no cost solution to your problem, and it will also allow you to restore backups of your new boot drive.

If you actually bought TI 2009, and it didn't support your hardware, Acronis tech support would send you a special Rescue CD as an .ISO file that would recognize your hardware.

 

I installed Windows XP from the same CD that I used 5 years ago when I bought my then new PC and it had no problem whatsoever with my new hardware. I booted a live CD Linux from a CD in a PC magazine I bought 3 Years ago and it had no problem to find my new HDs.

Sorry to say, but I still think that Acronis just isnt't up to their job.

 

You obviously don't have a pre-SP1 XP CD if it finds your drives.

I'm not going to defend TI's use of the Linux system for its recovery because it is a weak link in the system as far as I'm concerned. Hardware incompatibility is a problem with all imaging programs, just have a look at the various product forums. Also, TI uses a Linux environment that needs to be memory-resident after loading in case the DVD drive needs to be used for reading the image.

I don't envy anybody who has to provide a program for any PC that is on the market, with a multitude of variants of hardware, driver quality, new hardware models released every day and then top it off with an infinite number of permutations of applications and configurations. Do you ever wonder why the MAC fans trumpet the stability of their systems - it sure doesn't all have to do with their OS - they have a very limited range of hardware and vendors compared to a PC.

That said, I would prefer that TI used VistaPE and with the ability could load any required drivers.

 

I do agree with all you've said and I think all is said about the topic, so let's close it and do something else, probably more worthwhile, instead.

BTW: I just finished a backup of my D drive with 7Zip - took 3/4 of an hour for ~30GB and I can read it with nnative Windows.

Bye