I have all my backups of my c: hd stored on my e: hd. Everything is fine w/my system but I decided to do a test-run recovery. But when I boot into Acronis recovery disk it doesn't see my e: drive so I can't recover the backups from it. (However, when I go into "Add New Disk" option, Acronis does see the e: drive.) In Computer Management the drives are different in Type (c: Basic, e: Dynamic) and Layout (c: Partition, e: Simple) and c: has no name while e: is named Local Disk. My backups are useless if I can't get to the darn things! Any suggestions much appreciated. Harold
Never mind. Got it. I had to change the dynamic disk to a basic disk for the software to recognize it. Problem solved. H
I was trying to figure out the same thing, how to do a recovery. It appears that Acronis works best for a bootable recovery, by cloning to a seperate physical hard drive instead of just imaging, (cloning being the preferred vs imaging)as per the response to these questions answered by Acronis: My hard drive is partitioned in two, C: and D: If I image C to D, in > case of failure of C, can Acronis True Image create a bootable > floppy disk whereby I can select the boot from D instead of C? > You can not boot from the image. You can boot from Acronis Bootable Media and restore the image on its original place and then boot your computer from your C: partition. > Are all working programs able to run from the compressed image on D, > because of the compression and not being a true clone? > You can not run application from the image. You can restore needed files if you mount an image as a logical drive or using Recovery wizard. > If I clone C to D, and Acronis names D as C in the cloning process, > after cloning can Acronis allow me to rename the cloned partition > D, and allow me to create a bootable floppy disk, that allows me to > boot from either C of D? > You can not clone from one partition to another using Acronis True Image. You can only clone from one drive (the whole drive) to another drive. You can create an image and then restore this image on another partition. Please be aware if you want to make this partition bootable you need to use Microsoft System Preparation Tool before creating an image. Please follow the next link to get more information about this tool: http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/faq/clone-windows-to-hardware/ > If I install a second hard drive as slave, when I clone C to the slave > will it name the hard drive C? My idea is to unhhok the slave after > imaging and in case of failure of C, to remove C and physically > replace it with the imaged drive. > Yes, you can clone your drive to another drive and then remove your new drive. Please be aware that you need to remove your cloned drive after cloning and before loading Windows OS. You need to do that in order not to make partition letters mixed that may cause Windows OS to have some problems while booting. > Are there provisions in Acronis to leave the imaged slave hooked up, > and to create a bootable floppy disk, and in case of failure of C, > to allow boot from the cloned slave? > You can create Acronis Bootable Media that you can use to restore the images. This media can be also used to clone your drive to another one.
Hcour, Are you imaging or cloning to e:? Are you or can you keep e: hooked up and running, or are you physiclly unhooking e: after backup? Thanks for the help. Mike
FWIW... I keep both drives connected all the time. Periodically I clone C: => D: for backup. At other times, I replace the D: with another HD and clone to it so that I always have a mostly current HD outside the PC. I don't use Acronis' imaging functions at all.
Well, I was just doing images. But after reading about some problems others had w/it (and also regarding Gnome's knowledgable comments) the plan now is to clone the drive periodically to my secondary drive, while also doing images several times a wk, which I'll store online at Mozy ($5 monthly for 30 GB storage). So unless both of my hd's fail and all of my images are corrupt, I should be covered. H
Acronis True Image 10 does the perfect job of cloning. During the cloning process the cloned hard drive is automatically renamed with a new drive name and automatically recognized by windows, and the computer can now easily boot from the cloned drive, which for some reason I could not accomplish with True Image 9. Much better user interface. A few simple mouse clicks and the cloning job is automatically done. Works like a charm now. Here is a picture of the hot swap removable hard drive tray for the backup drive. Extra drive trays can also be purchased for your second backup drive. http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=GN210-BLK&cpc=SCH Thanks to Gnome for the help.
I use Acronis for several years now. I made dozens of images, did many restores, even used brandnew disks to test the reliability and to be sure that in case of a harddisk crash i could simply start up from a new disk. It always went well. I never had a corrupt image. The advantage of images is that you can keep several older images as well, just in case that there would be a virus on a image of which i was not aware. You can than take the previous one. If you clone a disk, do you need for each clone a new disk? What do you do if you clone a disk and you see afterwards that you have a virus. A virus that you cloned the last time to your clone disk as well without being aware of it? It means that you do not have a clean version anymore i think. In case of images you will never have that problem. I place my images outside of the PC on a network that makes backups every day. If tehy steal my PC iit causes no problems to me, just take a new PC and place the image on it. There are pro's and contra's for both ways of backing up. Note: i don't need Acronis to undo the damage of surfing to pornsites. I use professionally banking software that is very fragile, that has to do millions of transactions a year, and crashes on a regular basis because the database is huge.
I would like to share my experience. Some month before I was not able to access my second patition of my hard drive. Whenever I tried to open my d:\ drive a message flased "you drive is not formated want to formate your drive" a similar kind of message. I cann't afford to loose my data as they were more valuable. After making much hue and cry I got a software which was able to retrieve my data from inaccessible hard drive. Stellar Phoenix FAT & NTFS a data recovery software, which has helped me in recovering my data woth million dollar.
1. Obviously, backups are important to you... as they should be to all of us. 2. As others like you also claim, "no problem with images to non-local, optic media", I'll take your word for it.... but making images to CDs is suspect at best. As for your question about "extra hard drive for each cloning"... the answer is YES. (Of course, one could mount an extra hard drive and just use it for storing images.... sort of like a super System Restore.) As for picking up a virus and unknowingly cloning it... hopefully the user would become aware of the virus before all backups were infected. And of course, the user could make it part of his backup routine to run a virus scan BEFORE cloning (I don't, but I have more than 1 backup.) There is no 100% safe policy, but the more "outs" we have the better our chances of recovery. In 30 years of having computers, I've always been able to save my system with some form of backup... except for my first computer ... it ran on a tape drive... no floppy drive, no hard drive... no backups. I had to have someone put the system back together for me one time.