Acronis noob...help plz.

[Encrypted Existence]

Hello all. I am experimenting with Acronis true image home 2012. I am a new tech and I am trying to learn how to successfully create/restore an Acronis image so If/when I screw something up bad I can simply restore the image I have created and start over. I booted from the Aconis boot disc. I then went to tools and utilities and from there I chose "clone disc". I chose "automatic" clone mode (Acronis tells me that after the cloning process is finished the destination disc will be bootable). I then choose my local HD as the source and my external HD as the destination. I check "shut down system upon completion" or whatever it says to that nature. The process finishes and the machine shuts off. I then unplug my external HD and turn the machine on for a regular boot...no problems. I change the boot priority so that USB HD is first and save the changes. The machine then restarts and attempts to boot from my external HD and almost as the four colors come together to form the Windows symbol (Windows 7 x64 home premium) I get a 0x0000007B stop error. I believe it is probably a driver issue (plz correct me if I am wrong). I have looked through the Acronis user guide and the only things that I could find were references to restoring an image to different hardware which is not the case (even though I am attempting to boot from a different HD which is where I believe my issue stems from). Sorry about the long post. Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Xander]

Try it in a system the other way around. I've never heard of anyone successfully booting a full Windows installation from an external. Windows just isn't made to work that way.

What I usually do is install the new HD and attach the old HD by either SATA or USB and then clone 'into' the system. Once done, power down, disconnect the old one and boot up without issues.

 

[Encrypted Existence]

Try it in a system the other way around. I've never heard of anyone successfully booting a full Windows installation from an external. Windows just isn't made to work that way.

What I usually do is install the new HD and attach the old HD by either SATA or USB and then clone 'into' the system. Once done, power down, disconnect the old one and boot up without issues.

Thanks. I am not really looking to put the image on a new HD. I just want to be able to put a machine back the way it was before I started to work on it if I have to. I guess I could just make an image of the local HD using my external as the destination and restore it back to the local HD in the event that I need to. The only problem is that I won't be able to verify the integrity of the image I created. What would/do you do in situations like the one I described? Thanks.

 

[Xander]

Why not just clone it to a spare HD you've got lying around? Pop the cloned HD in..boot...voila. When done, put it back the way it was.

That way, if something goes wrong, you're not screwing yourself over by putting a bad image onto your drive.


Clone HD to a spare. Mount spare in system. Test. Unmount. Replace original.

 

[Encrypted Existence]

Why not just clone it to a spare HD you've got lying around? Pop the cloned HD in..boot...voila. When done, put it back the way it was.

That way, if something goes wrong, you're not screwing yourself over by putting a bad image onto your drive.


Clone HD to a spare. Mount spare in system. Test. Unmount. Replace original.

It looks like that would be the most efficient way of going about it...thanks.

 

[James_S]

Cloning is a easy way to test the software, but I can tell you don't have to worry about Acronis backing up your stuff. I've used it a few hundred times over the last two years without any integrity issues with the backups if the original drive wasn't damaged.

However, Acronis doesn't handle backing up damaged hard drives very well. You can tell it to ignore errors but that doesn't always work. So if the drive is acting up, then it definitely pays to double-check the resulting backup file. For normal backups you really don't have to worry, but under backup options, you can tell it to verify the backup file after it completes the task if you want to be cautious.

 

[PC-MOT]

Cloning is a easy way to test the software, but I can tell you don't have to worry about Acronis backing up your stuff. I've used it a few hundred times over the last two years without any integrity issues with the backups if the original drive wasn't damaged.

However, Acronis doesn't handle backing up damaged hard drives very well. You can tell it to ignore errors but that doesn't always work. So if the drive is acting up, then it definitely pays to double-check the resulting backup file. For normal backups you really don't have to worry, but under backup options, you can tell it to verify the backup file after it completes the task if you want to be cautious.

Ive noticed that with Acronis on damaged drives.
What is a good clone prog to use on a damaged HDD?

 

[computerdoc]

A word of caution. I was a big Acronis fan and use it on my machines.

However, I recently saw that user reviews on Amazon for Acronis 2012 were very poor. It may pay to check out if they have overcome recent problems.

 

[732914TECH]

You cant boot from an external USB drive because its not the same controller trying to boot the drive. You want to do "Backup" to a .tib image on your external hdd, then if something happens you would goto "Restore" and choose that .tib image from your external hdd.

 

[Metanis]

Ive noticed that with Acronis on damaged drives.
What is a good clone prog to use on a damaged HDD?

Acronis or Ghost with the -force option will handle a limited amount of disk read errors. If the drive is severely damaged use "gnu ddrescue" because it skips over the bad areas the first pass. Then you invoke it's command-line again and it will try harder to get just the damaged areas on subsequent passes.

There will be tradeoffs because Acronis or Ghost will do file-based operations which can be much quicker if there isn't much damage. But every time they hit a bad sector they try repeatedly to read the data before giving up. The gnu ddrescue program does a sector based copy right away which can be very slow on large hard drives. But you gain when it quickly steps over the bad spots.

Finally, Acronis and Ghost allow you to clone to smaller destination partitions if necessary, gnu ddrescue can only go to similar or larger partitions.

-Mike