True image 10 questions

Hi all,

First up, excuse the stupidity of the questions ...

1. Media Builder

I only recently installed TI 10 .... I attempted to copy True Image Home (both the full and safe versions) and burn them to CD for the purposes of testing the recovery process. I use Adaptec Easy CD Media Creator 6 however True Image gave me a negative response. I did however, achieve success with creating and burning an ISO image using Adaptec.

My questions under this heading are;

A. What exactly is on that ISO image ?
B. With that ISO CD in the tray, how do (or indeed can I) boot into True Image ?


2. Backup Wizard

There are four backup options ... My computer / My data / My Application Settings / My email.

I backed up "My email" successfully, didn't bother with Application settings as I take a vanilla approach to all my programs and also bypassed "My data" as I have a removable drive, an external seagate and CD copies of every single file in the event of disaster to the C Drive. In other words, 3 copies of the My documents folder which is alos present on the main drive.

I did however, backup "My Computer". The stupid question is this ...

C. Precisely what is backed up when selecting this option ?
D. Working on a "what happens" scenario, if for example (and when I've obviously worked out how to boot from the ISO) I needed to recover the PC and restored from the backup of My Computer, would that restore the C drive in its entirety after I've also restored "My Email" ? Stating the obvious, I would recover file data from one of my other sources.

Hoping someone out there can help me with answers to these questions.

Regards to all

Mike Dixon - Australia

 

No sweat. We all start this way.

Argh! You are making this hard when it is easy. Choose your CD (or DVD) burner. True Image will create the bootable CD for you automatically.

You are very smart to be testing the Recovery CD. Congratulations on realizing that this is very important.

An ISO image is a file that can be burned to a CD using a burning program to create the CD. If you created the ISO image of the Recovery CD and then burned it to a CD with Easy CD 6 using the choice for burning ISO images, it will be identical to the CD automatically created by True Image. If the ISO image that you burned boots your computer and starts True Image, you did it right.

Check that you can verify your backup image after booting from the Recovery CD. If you can, that's as close as you can get to guaranteeing a successful restore short of actually doing one.

This is definitely not a stupid question. It's a very important one.

When you select My Computer, everyting on the drive or partition you select is backed up. That includes Windows, Programs, Settings, Data, etc. All of it. This is called an image backup because you have a copy of the drive or the selected partitions that can be restored to a new drive to recreate the old drive.

Better than that, when you restored My Computer (all the partitions on your hard drive and the MBR), you would have a new bootable drive with everything back and working. You would have all your email, etc.

Therefore, if you regularly backup My Computer, you don't need to make any other backups.

The other backups are offered in case the backup of My Computer is so large that you don't want to do it regularly. Then you can use the other partial backups. However, in most cases, it doesn't take that long to backup My Computer, so that's all you need to do.

Obviously, there is a question of how often do I need to backup My Compter. The answer is "It all depends." If you are about to install a new programs, make a backup first to protect yourself against a bad installation. After installing a new program make a backup so you don't have to install it again. If you have added a lot of new data make a backup to protect the data.

Save two or three older backups just in case there is a subtle problem that you don't recognize until some damage to your data has occurred. Yesterday's backup will be corrupted, but a month old or two month old backup will be clean. Then you can restore just the uncorrupted data from the newer backups.

I hope that helps, but ask more of your good questions if there's items not covered.

By the way, we had a McWilliams Australian Chardonay with dinner tonight, and I've got a couple of bottles of Jacobs Creek Shiraz and Merlot in the wine cellar. These are great bargains for daily use. It's harder to find the great, smaller Australian wineries, but then when you drink a lot, it has to be reasonably priced.

 

Many thanks John.

Appreciate all that advice .... and part 2 of your response I understand totally ... what had me mystified was whether a "My Computer" backup would include backups for all emails and as you've indicated, it does ... which now makes my "My Email" backup from TI redundant but in the common vernacular, "big deal" .

Back to the recovery CD in Part 1 of my message .... when I selected to burn to CD, the full and safe versions of TI, True Image came back with a "Device is busy" response. No idea why .... there was a blank CD loaded in the tray and I fully expected Easy CD Creator to launch but to no avail.

I knew of the ISO alternative .... so I created a directory in which to place that image before burning it ..... and as I indicated, I completed that task and burnt the image as I would any other file .... thru creator classic.

I have no idea whether I missed anything in Easy CD creator that required me doing something unique to burn an ISO image (but I suspect I've made an error somewhere) and as a result, I'm none too sure that what I now have on that CD will actually boot into TI; presupposing that I first change the boot order of the PC of course.

Am I on the right path so to speak ?


P.S. You should try the Jacob's Creek ... nice drop

Mike

 

Hi Mike,

You get the "device is busy" message because you closed the CD tray before TI was ready. You should leave the drawer open and it will close automatically and the CD will burn.

Provided the CD drive is listed before the main drive in the BIOS it will boot the computer into the recovery environment.
This is a "must do" exercise to establish that all is well and you can get as far as the "proceed" button. If you have a spare hard drive you could remove the existing drive and replace it and do a full recovery to the new drive.


Xpilot

 

Xpilot

Thanks for that .... I'll give it a try and report back ...

Mike

 

It worked .... thanks to both of you for your patience and assistance.

Makes me breathe a little easier

Mike