True Image Personal 8.0 - USB boot disk?

Hello all:

I am a newb here. I have an XP Pro system, with True Image Personal version 8.0. My main HDD with the OS and all my apps/data is just an 8GB Solid state drive.

I'd like to create a 'mirror' of my system on an 8 GB USB drive that I could boot from and run from if my main drive fails.

I have read the instructions here:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/supportfiles/acronis_bootable_usb_hd.pdf

, and here:

http://www.purviancecs.com/acronis.htm

Problem is that I cannot seem to get past the first steps. When I 'Create Bootable Rescue Media', it writes files to the USB drive, but it is not bootable. (My hardware does support booting from USB-HDD, and I set my BIOS to do it - but if fails saying unable to find boot partition or similar message.)

So I downloaded the 125MB_FAT32_Empty_Acronis.tib file mentioned above, but when I try to restore it, it claims it to be an invalid tib format.

Also, I notice that if I run 'Create Image' I notice that my USB drive does not show up in the list of available/partitions/disks?

Is there any way to create a bootable USB system using version 8.0 of True Image?

Thank you.


Pointers would be greatly appreciated - it seems that all I really need to do

 

The images on my website require the later builds of TI 9 and up to work.

What size flashdrive are you using? If it's 2GB or smaller, you could use the PeToUSB program to format the flashdrive. Then run Media Builder on it and it should be bootable. If it's larger than 2GB, I don't think the PeToUSB MBR code will work properly.

Another option I like is to use Grub4DOS.

 

My drive is greater than 2 GB.

I just tried attaching the drive to an old 98SE machine, and running 'fomat /s' on my USB drive. That always worked before for me to make IDE hard drives bootable. But it didn't work with the USB drive.

It still cannot find a 'bootable partition'.


I have just found this thread where they give instructions for using PEtoUSB with larger drives:

http://ubcd4win.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=9668


I will try that tomorrow and report back. I'm sure part of my problem is that I really don't know what I am doing here, and what is going on under the covers.

Thanks for your help.