Trouble with TI 10 (Home)?

I have been using TI for a few years to clone my hard disks. I cloned my drives on my HP and Compaq computers, desktops and laptops, to USB drives, and successfully traded out the hard drives to replace the ones inside the computers. Last month I started having problems with TI 10 on my Compaq laptop running Window XP Pro. THe first attempt to clone my internal drive appeared to be going well until I was asked if it was alright for TI to reboot my computer so TI could clone my drive. When the computer rebooted, TI started analyzing the drives, then would re-boot right back into Windows. I fould that if I immediately retried TI, I could usually get TI to do a complete clone.
Now, I have a Dell computer running VIsta Home Premium. I Uninstalled TI from the Compaq so I could install and run on my desktop Dell. The first try at cloning required two attempts exactly as the Compaq did. All future attempts have failed. The first attempts now get the first coulpe of lines and 'analyzing drives' after TI reboots, and then the system, or TI reboots to VIsta. Any further attemts to retry cloning with TI totally locks up my system. Should I power down my system, after Vista boots, I get the message that Acronis is finished, but it ain't!

I really want to clone to a USB drive, equal in size to my internal hard drive. This is a completely new operating system to me and I just know I will screw something up. Any suggestions? Would purchasing an second matching internal hard drive make life easier?

Suggestions, and/comments would be greatly appreciated

 

What version and build of TI are you using?

Why are you cloning your drive to an external USB drive? You can only use the drive to hold one copy of your boot drive when you clone. Why aren't you making images of your boot drive? That way, you can store several backups on one external drive. That's a lot smarter and avoids problems that can happen when you clone such as rebooting into Windows before you disconnect the second drive. That usually makes the clone unbootable.

What happens when you boot from the TI Recovery CD and either make an image or clone a drive?

 

I prefer to clone rather than to image. That way, I can simply replace the internal drive with the cloned drive, should a unrecoverable proble arise. However, now that you mention it, I purchased two manufactured external drives, Seagate 250's. With my other system, I was using Seagate drives I had placed into enclosures so I could easily remove them from therir enclosures and install them into my computer. I doubt it would work with these new external drives. S'pose I will have to come up with a different system. Possible a second internal drive to clone to, or possibly Raid 1?

 

You are really using ATI the wrong way. Just make images, a recovery operation from an image is a piece of cake and is done in a reasonible small time.

 

Cloning to an internal hard drive means opening the case to connect it just before cloning so Windows doesn't see it and assign a drive letter other than C and then disconnecting it before rebooting into Windows after cloning so Windows doesn't give it a drive letter other than C. What a pain!

OK, so give imaging a try. You can restore an image without having to open the case which is a time saver.

The perfect test is to:
1. Make an image to the external hard drive.
2. Replace the original internal drive with an empty drive
or at least a different one.
3. Boot from the TI Recovery CD.
4. Restore the image to the internal drive.
5. Confirm that the system boots and runs properly.

After that you can use images with confidence and store multiple images for added security and convenience.

 

Hello Lurch,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please note that it is possible that for some reasons Acronis True Image was not able to get exclusive access to target hard drive. It could be due to another image or disk management software, for example. However, to say it for sure we would need some additional information to investigate this issue thoroughly.

First of all, please make sure you use the latest build (4942) of Acronis True Image 10.0 Home. To get access to updates you should first register your software.

If you already using the latest build, please do the following:

- Create Acronis Report and Windows System Information as it is described in Acronis Help Post;

- Make a screen shot of the Device Tree application the way described in this previous post of mine. Note that for Windows Vista operating system you should unfold \Driver\partmgr and \Driver\volmgr branches.

Then submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with a solution.

Please also note that a possible workaround is to use Acronis True Image Bootable CD in order to perform clone disk operation.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov