Two stupid questions

I have Acronis True Image V9.

I have made a backup on a external hard drive.
(I made it into DVD sizes to also put it on DVD discs)

First dumb question.
1. If I should have to format my hard drive or replace it,
(It is starting to act just a little off) how to I go about
using this backup? Acronis will be wiped off my system.
I have read the help files, but you will have to excuse an
old man for not understanding.

2. My stepson got a computer from Dell with Norton Ghost 10
on it. Recently, he could not boot up his system and Dell has
this thing where you could hit Control F11 (or something like that)
and Ghost appeared and put his system back to the condition it
was shipped in. Is there anything like this in True Image? (Maybe
not back to ship status, but something like it was. I saw the Acronis
Startup Recovery Manager, but I am not sure what this does or
how much space it takes up. (I have a 120gig hard drive with 68gigs
free.
Sorry to ask these dumb questions, but I am starting to worry about
the computer becoming unstable.

Thanks,
Bill

 

True Image has the feature where you make a bootable Rescue CD from the installed software. This cd has the basic Backup, Recover, and Clone features on it. So in case of a hard drive crash, you would boot with this cd and restore the Image you have on the external drive.
There is a similar F11 feature but I have never found the need to use it to restore a backup. The Rescue CD has always worked for me.
What build number of version 9 do you have?

 

Hi Bill

Welcome to the Forum... ... hope that we will be able to sort out your questions here.

A couple of guidelines to using the Forum.

• To save confusion it may be helpful if you posted your 2 questions as separate posts as they deal with different topics.
• It is also helpful if the Title of your question said something about the question itself.
• Provide some details about your system - for example - Windows XP SP2.

Firstly, I suggest that you immediately run the Windows Check Disk utility on the disk that you think is "acting a little off". If you are using Windows XP then do the following: -

• Login as the Administrator
• Click Start > Run
• Type in "chkdsk c:/r" without the quotes (if C: is your system partition)
• Click OK
• In the CMD window that opens answer Y
• Restart
• Check Disk will run when the computer restarts

I will try to answer your first question about how to use the backup.

1. What type of backup did you create? For a disk or partition that contains the operating system (Windows) you must create the backup using the "Image" method. You must image the entire partition and you must include the MBR. Have you done this?
2. When you installed ATI 9 did you tick the option to install "Rescue Media Builder" ? If you did then you will be able to create a bootable CD. You do this by clicking on "Create Bootable Rescue Media" in the main program window. See attachment below.
3. Should the main disk fail you will boot the system from the bootable CD and then restore the partition and MBR to the failed disk.

WARNING

You MUST be sure that you have created the correct type of backup (image) and that the backup validates. If you try to restore a "Files & Folders" type backup or a corrupted backup to the system partition you will be left with an unbootable system.

You must be VERY CAREFUL about this.

If you are not sure please ask. It is much better to ask now before you do anything rather than afterwards when it will be impossible to restore your system.

T.

 

With ATI you can restore an image you have prveiously saved. So if you use ATI to make an image file whent he computer is new, then you can restore that image.

Dell puts a hidden partition on their disks that contains an image file, which is why you can return Dell PCs to "original" state.

The F11 key, during the Boot CD startup is not like the Dell feature. In ATI onthe BootCD it is merely a way to gain entry to the command line so that you can add paramters for booting the OS (linux) on the boot CD. The default parameter is "quiet", which makes the bootup occur without lots of boot messages showing onthe screen.

 

I believe he was referring to the F11 use when the Acronis Startup Recovery is activated. In this case it is similar.

 

Sorry, been gone for a day or so.
I have V9 build 3,625.

I did a chkdsk. And it seems to be acting better.
I did a image of the whole drive. (The NTFS)
I believe I did make a recovery disk, but just in case, I will
make another one. Never used a bootable disk before so that
is why I ask. And I wasn't sure about what the "startup recovery
manage" was. I didn't want to go thru with it and then find it took
up most of my remaining hard drive.
Thanks for all the answers. I think I have everything ready to
go now, just in case.
Bill

 

Many users recommend that you do not make the start-up recovery manager as it changes the MBR.

You do not say whether you validated the backup file, this is important as it will be too late if your disk goes down and you find that you have a corrupted file.

After you have burned the rescue cd boot your computer with it to make sure that you can see the external drive from the Linux environment that it boots into and that you can find your backup file.

 

I did validate the file the first time that I did a backup.
I really don't remember if I did the last time. I will do another
backup and validate.
Thanks,
Bill

 

A successful validation is no guarantee that a Recovery will be successful - as many, many users have found to their dismay. You simply must do a Recovery to a spare drive to be sure.

 

Wayneout,

This is from one of my previous postings. Perhaps there is something in these links that would be beneficial.

As you are a new user, here are some of my suggestions.

1. Do create a full disk image backup as soon as possible. Before you do, however, download my beginners guide to backups. This will help explain your procedures. Also included in that pdf is several tutorial links.
http://206.128.27.80/gh-misc/acronis-backup1.pdf
http://206.128.27.80/gh-misc/acronis-recovery1.pdf

2. Do Not install the Acronis functions below until you have taken the time to find out how these functions work.
..."Manage Acronis Secure Zone"
..."Activate Acronis Startup Recovery"

Many choose not to install the Secure zone--especially if you store your backup files on other internal or external drives. Secure zone should not be created on external drives. Other members find the Secure zone helpful.

The Startup Recovery can interfere with your normal computer recovery functions. Understand its good point and not so good points should you decide to install this function.

Do your research (forum search) on those functions.

For those having difficulty downloading my pdf files, I have converted the 2 pdf files to a zip file.
If interested, the temporary zipfile is 2.3mb and is about a 17 min download using 56K dialup.

http://206.128.27.80/gh-misc/gh-backup-recovery.zip

Both pdf files are functional in Adobe reader 6 and Foxit reader.