Acronis True Image query

[Andyuk2007]

Hey All, I finally got round to buying Acronis® True Image Home 2009 but I'm not sure on how to do a clone of a hard drive because when ever i select the destination it asks me if i want to wipe the partition off my external hard drive (thats the drive i want to use to clone the drive on) How do you do it so you just copy the drive to back up drive without the program formatting your destination drive ?

please see image



Thanks

[bitznpcz]

Hi Andy,

The clone facility allows you to clone a new drive to fit in the computer. i.e. take a complete snapshot of the computer so you can swap hard drives. To do that, the destination drive has to be formatted.

Do you just want to do a backup for recovery purposes? If so, select the backup task and take a full backup.

You can restore this using the Acronis boot cd from your external hdd if required.

Kevin

[Andyuk2007]

Originally Posted by bitznpcz

Hi Andy,

The clone facility allows you to clone a new drive to fit in the computer. i.e. take a complete snapshot of the computer so you can swap hard drives. To do that, the destination drive has to be formatted.

Do you just want to do a backup for recovery purposes? If so, select the backup task and take a full backup.

You can restore this using the Acronis boot cd from your external hdd if required.

Kevin

what i want to do is to back up the customer's data because windows xp on the laptop is very unstable and i cannot even boot it due to a bsod appearing, i cannot view the bsod as it comes on and goes off very quickly.

I ran a memtest on the laptop and the results of that were not good so i replaced the memory but the same problems still happen so i spoke to the customer and she agreed to let me back up her data and then reinstall windows xp for her.

So i select full back up then ? and then i install true image on her laptop and restore the back up file ?

[Simmy]

Originally Posted by bitznpcz

Do you just want to do a backup for recovery purposes? If so, select the backup task and take a full backup.

^ This. I also find it useful to validate the backup archive (in the advanced options) once the backup image has been made.

[Simmy]

Originally Posted by Andyuk2007

So i select full back up then ? and then i install true image on her laptop and restore the back up file ?

Sounds about right. Reinstall Windows XP, install Acronis and mount the backup image to copy "My Documents" etc from it. Make sure to do a virus scan of the files you copy from the backup image too.

When you say "restore the backup file", I assume you don't mean restore the whole image?

[Andyuk2007]

Originally Posted by Simmy

^ This. I also find it useful to validate the backup archive (in the advanced options) once the backup image has been made.

i've selected the full back up option its currently backing up the entire hard drive. Simon do i select the validate Archieve after its done the task ? I think i found in the operations tab.

[bitznpcz]

as a slight aside, if you have a video camera, video the bsod then hit pause... had to do this a few times!!

If you have made an Acronis Boot CD, you can run the backup from that, rather than installing it on the customers PC. Probably better doing it this way if XP is unstable.

[Andyuk2007]

Originally Posted by Simmy

Sounds about right. Reinstall Windows XP, install Acronis and mount the backup image to copy "My Documents" etc from it. Make sure to do a virus scan of the files you copy from the backup image too.

When you say "restore the backup file", I assume you don't mean restore the whole image?

I think i mean restore the back up thats its currently doing via the back up option so its not a hard drive image.

[Andyuk2007]

Originally Posted by bitznpcz

as a slight aside, if you have a video camera, video the bsod then hit pause... had to do this a few times!!

If you have made an Acronis Boot CD, you can run the backup from that, rather than installing it on the customers PC. Probably better doing it this way if XP is unstable.

how do i make a Acronis boot Cd with the program ? is it called "create bootable rescue media" ? My camcorder is in boxes right now but i could do it with the camera on my phone as it can record video, if i upload it to youtube or something maybe you can suggest a less drastic way of restoring the laptop

[schwags]

Maybe I am missing something, but doesn't this seem like the hard way to backup data off of a hard drive? Couldn't you just pop the drive into another computer and copy the data off? Imaging entire hard drives over USB 2.0 is painfully slow in my opinion.