Recovery: Which Destination Disk to Select?

David,

I'm using TI 2011 on a Win 7x64 PC.

This may help as this is my routine when I Clone and Image from my Acronis boot CD.

Before I boot my PC on the CD, I'll do the following:

- Disconnect all other storage devices while still running Windows. For example, I have an external USB HDD that I use for my automated Acronis backups. I'll disconnect that HDD before rebooting into the Acronis CD. I do this to simplify the step of selecting the Source and Destination HDD's when Cloning or Imaging. For example, when the software lists all connected storage devices, you'll only see 2 devices connected, Source and Target, if all other devices are disconnected prior to booting into the recovery CD.

- Prepare the Target HDD for Cloning or Image-restoration. In your example, that's not necessary since your Target HDD contains no data.

When I Clone and Image-restore, my Target HDD's always contain near-identical content as my Source/OS HDD since it will display the content that was the result of my previous Clone or Image process.

For example, I Clone every 2 weeks as part of my full-HDD backup routine. I also use 2 identical HDD's, same Mfg and size

To make it easy to identify the Target HDD, I'll prep the Target HDD by deleting the Target HDD partitions in Windows before booting up onto the CD.

This will make it easy to identify the Target HDD since it will appear in any Rescue/Recovery media as "unallocated", containing no data.

I use the "Add New DisK" option under the "Tools and Utilities" option on the Acronis CD. I don't actually add a new disk but when you click on that option, the software will display all recognized disks that are connected to the PC. Then I'll click on each one and look at the bottom bargraph that displays the amount of content on the disks. The Target disk will display no content and appear "unallocated".

So in your example, you'd only need to look at the "Add New Disk" dialog screen and note the bottom of the screen to see that your Target HDD will be the one that appears empty.

I like to prep the Target HDD's this way since it eliminates any confusion that may arise when the CD assigns drive letters to the HDD's that are recognized by the software. Since the software will sometimes assign drive letters that may seem random, if you have one of the HDD's is empty, it won't matter since identification will be easy.

Regarding your question about the MBR/ Track 0, if your goal is to restore your Target HDD as a complete bootable spare HDD containing the OS and all of your data, then you'd need to include those items. I haven't Imaged with Acrconis in a while but my 2011 TI version has a small font option in the upper right-hand section of the Image setup dialog screen that says "switch to full disk mode" or something similar. That needed to be selected when creating the Image.

Assuming that your source Image file was created in the same mode (full-disk Image), your restored Image should result in a complete bootable HDD.

Thank you Scoop for that very informative reply! I'm going to take some time to study and fully understand your suggestions before I try anything.

Several years ago I restored an image to a spare internal disk as a test. Again, this disk was an exact replica of my boot disk (without data of course). I think I may still have some notes on that. Pretty sure I disconnected the internal boot disk first, booted from the rescue media, and recovered to the "only" disk showing in the destination box (the spare). Rebooted into Windows (from the /spare restored disk). Once I was satisfied the recovery process had worked, I reconnected the original boot drive and booted from it.

Thank you for taking the time to share your experience with this. I'll post the results in a few days.

I assign a label to each disk using Disk management. I have Win 7 so your steps may be different.
Click Start--->Right Click Computer-->Manage-->Storage-->Disk Management. Right click on any disk and select Properties. In the box near the top type the name of the disk. Click Apply and OK. To verify click Start-->Computer. See the attached file for some help.

Thank you thomasjk for that suggestion.

I just booted from the recovery media and worked my way partially through a test restore. Once I arrived at the Destination choice screen both internal drives were show (as they should be). What I found (and what I believe Scoop is saying), is that clicking on each disk individually in the Destination window shows additional disk information in the bottom of the window. The information shown there makes it very easy to differentiate between the two disks. It's very easy to see which has the OS and other partitions and which is my empty spare.

I worked my way through to the point where I could review which disk is the target and which partitions would be included in the recovery (the MBR was included in this). Did not hit the Proceed button of course but feeling much more comfortable with how to perform a recovery.

Thanks to both of you for the insight!

Dave

David,

You're welcome :). I think it's a good idea to do a test-restore occasionally since that will verify the complete "worse-case" scenario in the event that you encounter malware, the Source HDD fails, a bad download, or a mistake. I've made them myself :d .

I usually do a test-Restore about once every 4-5 months onto my 2nd spare HDD. I always boot into the CD to process my Cloning and Imaging process to verify a complete recovery methodology that's independent of the OS.

That way, there's a good "peace of mind" knowledge that the media will load into RAM, run the Clone/Imaging job, resulting in a complete bootable spare HDD by booting up onto the newly-Cloned (or restored with an Image) HDD and running Windows for a short time.