Two ATI Bios related questions

I have two questions related to Bios settings, and ATI.
1. I have an ATI 8 image of my C drive sitting on an external 80GB usb drive, and if I want to test my previously made bootable rescue CD and go into Bios making the CD drive first in the boot up sequence instead of the hard drive will this work and will I be able to revert back to normal once the test is completed.

2. My external drive F does not appear at all in the Bios as do the HD, CD, DVD writter, is it's presence required for correct operation of ATI, and if so how can I have it included.

Regards BOEING

 

1. Yes, it will work and you can change it back. I often just leave my DVD drive as the first boot device. If there is no disk in it, the BIOS goes to the second device which is my HD.

2. Your External drive is just that and to what extent the BIOS routines will care about it depends on your motherboard and BIOS. Regardless, when Windows starts it goes out and finds out what USB devices are connected and takes appropriate action or if you plug the drive in later, Windows is notified and recognizes the drive. When you use the standalone rescue CD, the linux OS on it does the same thing.

 

Many thanks seekforever, that answers my uncertainties completely.

Best regards BOEING

 

Well, my external HD is on the verge of compatibility with TI9 (I had to take some steps to make it work), but it definitely requires to be powered up and plugged in before booting from rescue CD.

Not only that - it takes about 70 seconds to initialize, so I always wait on the selection screen for some time before clicking the Full version button.

 

I was probably a bit slack in my reply. It would be more prudent to have the drive plugged-in and ready to go when using the linux recovery environment which is not likely to contain all available linux features.

Thanks

 

Hi guys before reading your two extra posts I today full of confidence after seekforever's assurance, run my bootable rescue CD and it all seemed ok, but I did not have the external USB drive containing the image plugged in.

What exactly should I see when doing this, because after the full Acronis welcome screen I clicked on 'enter' and received another page with the various options but did not click any as this was just a test to prove the disk is working.

Regards BOEING

 

The majority of users seem to be perfectly happy with the external HD solution, but checking that standalone TI9 can see the external, before sitting back and starting feeling secure, is in order.

It will be a matter of TI9 seeing (or not seeing) the external drive after booting from rescue CD. To check, first unplug (or just power down) any USB devices you don't need for TI9 (printer, modem etc.). Power up the external and plug it into a USB port, preferably one on the back panel if using a desktop. Plug it in directly, don't use USB hubs. Boot from rescue CD. On the first (selection) screen, where the three options are available (Full version/Safe version/Continue booting in Windows), move the mouse pointer off the default (Continue booting in Windows) to stop the countdown displayed at the bottom border. Wait for a minute or two before clicking the Full version (maybe you won't need to do that later, but I have to).

After some more CD drive activity you are presented with the main TI screen. You go on from there as you would when running in Windows. Select Check Archive. Your drives will be listed, but they may carry a different letter than when in Windows. Find your the external (it's B on my computer), select the image stored there and proceed to verify it. If you can perform this, you are OK.

Later, you may find that some precautions outlined here are superfluous for your system and you can work with your external in a more straightforward fashion.

 

Thanks bVolk I am just about to start that procedure and will report back later on my findings.

Regards BOEING

 

Hello again bVolk I have now completed the job as per your instructions, and here is the run down, First screen full 'Acronis True Image' then after about 1 minute 'Loading please wait' next there is a screen with 4 icons as follows 1. Create Image. 2 Restore Image. 3 Disk Clone. 4 Add new Disk. on the left hand side there are 3 headings 'Operation' 'Tools' and 'Details'

The 3 options you named were not displayed and there was no countdown, what can you conclude from this, and I wonder if your description is appropriate to my ATI 8 latest version.

Regards BOEING

 

Sorry, Boeing,

I missed that you had TI8, not TI9.

I never used TI8 (did use TI7, though) but it seems that there is no selection screen for you. You are getting to the main screen straight away (same as TI7). No problem, except for not having the easy opportunity to wait for the external to initialize before TI starts loading. Maybe your external HD won't need that waiting phase of mine at all.

You should find Check Archive (or Check Image, as I think it was called before) under Operation or Tools, somewhere inside the utilities on the left, anyway.

Report success.

Addendum: Tools will be the correct one, Operations are the main functions you have already displayed (1, 2, 3 & 4 from your post).

If nothing else like "... USB ... failing ..." comes up beneath the "Loading, please wait..." line, you should be OK.

 

No problem as there are so many using ATI 9 it's easy to forget some of us are still lagging behind, and I must upgrade soon, maybe after I have a better understanding of V8.

Nothing like that did so seems a good sign.

Based on your further info I will have another attempt tomorrow and let you know.

Many thanks for your kind help.
BOEING.

 

Hello BOEING,

I can confirm that, for TI 8, the "Check Image" function is listed under "Tools" at the left of the screen (you may have to click on the double arrow symbol to expand the Tools pane). It's also listed under Tools on the upper toolbar or you can just select the Check Image icon (looks like a hard drive with a tick through it) on the Icon bar.

Regards

 

Hello guys following your advice I went through this sequence Tools->Check Image->Next->Check Image Wizard->this lists all of my drivesand the last one is 'CD drive (F) which I recognise as the external USB drive holding the previously made TI image of my (C) drive.

When I select that one and 'Next' nothing at all happens, it just sits there, and higher up the list of drives is a drive (D) and selecting that one causes the program to spring into life with the image verification process starting and completing successfully.

The strange thing is the external USB has changed from (F) to (D) and in normal Windows operation (D) has always been my CD rom drive which incidentally is where the Acronis rescue disk is operating from.

Is this drive letter changing a thing that happens and we should just ignore it, and why is (F) present when TI shows it has no content, must admit I found this a bit confusing.

My thanks to seekforever, bVolk, and Menorcaman for help given.

BOEING

 

The drive letter changes are normal. Windows assigns them one way and the Linux which is used on the CD version uses another method.

Best thing to do is to assign meaningful labels to each of your drives (logical or physical) so you can tell them apart without relying on drive letters.

You can change the label of a HD by right clicking on the drive in Windows Explorere and selecting Properties. The label is in the box in the top. Labels, AFAIK, should still be 11 characters or less; this was a DOS restriction but I think it still applies. Maybe somebody can confirm that.

 

Hi BOEING,

When you boot from the rescue CD you enter a Linux based environment. This uses an entirely different methodology to Windows for drive letter assignment, so hence the letters you see will differ.

We recommend that TI user rename their drive volumes whilst running under Windows to something meaningfull e.g. Main_NTFS, Data_NTFS, Backup_FAT32 etc. (Open Windows Explorer, right click on a hard drive and select "Rename"). When you then booot into the Linux based rescue environment the volume names stay the same, even though the drive letters have changed.

Regards

 

Oops, sorry seekforever. Seems you overtook me in mid-air . You are quite correct, the Volume Labels are restricted to a max of 11 character (spaces and certain special characters will not be accepted).

Regards

Edit: Corrected my error re "spaces". Many thanks bVolk .

 

Thanks both of you for the easy to understand information you have given me once again, and I am now feeling secure with the knowledge that in the event of a critical hard drive failure my TI image is ready and waiting for the restoration process.

Best Regards
BOEING

 

I see that as a measure of the great enthusiasm of you two guys and this forum is very lucky to have you and of course lot's of other similarly helpfull members.

BOEING

 

I wouldn't have dared touch those names if I didn't read these posts. I thought the names were linked to the Windows assigned C or D.

By the way, spaces are welcome in XP Professional. I had them in the original names too

 

Hi there bVolk,

Many thanks for the correction. Spaces are valid in XP Home too. A silly mistake on my part I'm afraid .

I've amended my Post accordingly.

Regards