TI. 2009 Home: Can I incrementally back-up to "MyBackup.tib"

Hello, the difficulty that many of the people here in the forum will have with your request is that we no longer have access to the same version of True Image 2009 that you are using - this is now 7 years old.

However, you can still access the User Guide for TI 2009 and download this as a PDF document'

http://download.acronis.com/pdf/TrueImage2009_ug.eu.pdf

If you open this document and go to Chapter 5: Creating backup archives, this has information on doing what you are asking about, i.e. adding an incremental backup to an existing backup image.

See section 5.3.2 Selecting the target archive location where it states:

If you want to append an incremental or differential backup file to an existing archive, select
Add to existing backup archive and click the Select button to select the existing archive
you are going to update. If the archive already has incremental or differential backups, you
can select any of the target archive files. It doesn't matter which one you select, as the
program recognizes them as a single archive.

If the User Guide doesn't help you with this question, then you will need to provide more information on exactly what you are trying to do, with screen captures if possible.

     BB. PDF: How to Backup 2010 or 2009--Also applies to 2013-2012-2011 if using the TI Recovery CD.

The above is a pdf which can be viewed if downloaded.

Which version of Windows are you trying to back up? Windows 7 or Windows 10 is not supported on the version 2009.

Acronis True Image Home 2009 supports

• Windows XP SP 2, SP 3
• Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
• Windows Vista (all editions)

Hi Steve, and Grover!
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly, I was expecting email advice of postings but none received despite having made no change to my settings, so apologies for my tardy response!
Thanks for the PDF Steve, but I already have that, and must be too stupid to understand it!
I have always had grave difficulty using this software and have been most disapointed in the value received for the purchase price.
What is missing in my opinion is an "Instructions for Dummies" step by step "This is what you do" sort of guide to the most used tasks!
Grover must have been reading my mind with his PDF!
However, the wheels fell off at Image 5.
I attach my own screenshots when attempting to follow him below.

If I continue, and click on "Summary", I just get yet another entry in the list which lies idle, like the others!
 

Thank you for the screen shots, they help us to understand what you are doing.

Some questions arising from these images:

ti2.jpg - did you actually click on the Select button to ensure that you have selected the existing archive to update?
I can see that you have got MyBackup in the top box and I:\MyVistaPC\MyBackup2.tib in the lower box for the backup location - I am just double checking that Acronis filled in these boxes?

ti3.jpg - did you click on any of the Optional Steps shown on the left hand side?
In particular, did you click on Backup method to select that an Incremental backup be created?

ti4-5.jpg - did you click on the Proceed button at this screen?

ti-6.jpg - were the circled entries all created by you trying these steps?
If so, what options do you get if you right-click on one of these idle tasks shown in the Unscheduled tasks panel?
Do you get an option to 'run now' ?  Have you tried that if one is given?

Hello Steve, I got an email notification this time!
Downside was the link to the thread takes me to a Russian version!
I had forgotten that "feature" of the forum! :)

Just working my way through your queries and noting my replies in "Notepad" before replying.
Can't remember how I arrived at "TI2" so I'll re-trace my steps and document them (for both of us!) and return with answers before I finish.

Returning to query over "TI2":

Launched ATI
It initialises and presents "Home Screen",
"What would you like to do?"
(Selected Backup)
Shown "Backup and Restore" screen.
Selected "My Computer",
Arrive at Screen shown in "TI1", but with only "Disk1", and "C: Drive" ticked, I then added the other partitions, "D:, E:, and F:", to complete the picture as per screenshot "TI1".
Clicking "Next" takes my to "TI2" where the "Radio Button" against "Create new backup archive" is already selected.
The target archive field is inactive and just displays "No archive is selected".
"Backup Location" however has detected "MyBackup(1).tib".
Changing the Radio Button selection to "Add to existing backup archive", the Target Field is auto filled with "MyBackup", so yes, Acronis auto filled the boxes according to the selections I had made.

Regarding "TI3", No, I didn't click on any of the options in the left side panel, I just clicked the "Next" button in the bottom grey pane.

Just tried to access the options you mention in the left hand panel and none of them are "available", ie they are visible but not selectable, so the only option is to click "Next", at the bottom of the wizard (even the "Summary" button is greyed out, so the only options are "Next" or "Cancel").

Re: "TI4-5", yes and then I am shown the screen as per "TI6".
Each time I repeat this Wizard from the start, it adds yet another incremental entry: "MyComputerBackupxx", which remains strangely idle!

The "context" menu for the circled entries is:- "Start", "Edit", "Delete", "Rename", "Create New Backup Task" and "Create New Validation Task".

Selecting "Start" has no effect what so ever!
Selecting  "Edit" returns me to "TI1", and clicking Next" on that takes me to"TI2", ie. a circular tour!
I haven't tried the other context menu options, but I don't imagine they would prod TI into action!

In the hope that something was actually "happening" which was under the radar of "TaskManager", I have left TrueImage running just as shown in "TI6", and my external drive powered on and connected, but there has been marginally more activity inside my skull!

six-h,

On your image 3, where it says "Congratulations", there are 2 buttons you could push "Options" and "Summary".  I believe here is where you need to select Options...see if that will get you to the options menus.

FtrPilot

Hi FtrPilot, preparing to answer your query, I have again started ATI, I notice the following:

If you refer to my post #5, and particularly, " Returning to query over "TI2":"

After changing the Radio Button to  "Add to existing backup archive" , I had previously clicked "Next" (as you would when following a Wizard).

Having reached this point today and being aware of the possibility to select from the further options offered in the left hand panel, I now find that these links are "Live", and may be selected.

During earlier attempts, I was just following the prompts of the Wizard and clicked "Next" which invoked the "Congratulations" screen, after which the aforementioned Options in the left panel were nolonger available choices.

So! Following my nose, and selecting "Backup method", the "Incremental" Radio button is pre selected.

Clicking "Next" takes me to "Files to Exclude" (*.bak *.~ *.tmp and *.tib).

Leaving those "as is" and just clicking "Next", I'm taken to the "Backup options" screen, here, I'm lost!

I don't want to password protect the Archive, so ignore the right hand pane but I don't understand the options in the central pane, so I'm stuck here!

I will post a step by step guide to doing the backup with ATIH 2009 later today once I have collated all my screen captures and put them all together into an Acrobat PDF document for you.  I can see some issues right away that I will cover when I post the guide. 

Hi Steve, that would be fantastic and will give me confidence that I'm doing things correctly!

So far the only successes I have had with TI have been a clone of my "C:" drive, which I've never actually attempted to use, and my "full image" to which I'm wanting to add this increment bringing it up to date.

The center pane is all of the options.  If you hit "Next" it will bring up Pre & Post Comands. 

Steve S. is putting together a step by step User Guide.

FtrPilot

Hi FtrPilot, don't understand the term "Pre & Post Commands", but have jst stepped through, "Next x 3" to the summary screen, which is essentially the same as shown in my screen shot "TI4-5".

I've not hit "Proceed" which previously resulted in "Idle Entries", so thought it best to wait for Steve's PDF.

Since the Image to which I'm attempting to append this backup, dates back to April 2014, maybe I'd be better advised to do a comlpete "New Image.

The problem I had with that is that my external drive's Properties, "General" tab currently shows as :Used - 149GB and Free - 148GB.

Since the only content of this drive is that 2014 Image, I would need to overwrite it in order to create a "current" full Disk Image due to the constraints of Disk space.

My issue with that was due to my inability to confidently use this software, I could not be certain that the overwritten Image would be either successful or viable and I might be left with no backup at all!

Please see the attached step by step guide on how to create an incremental backup with ATIH 2009, you may want to print this but make sure you have 18 pages of A4 paper to do so.

The next step I would suggest doing is to turn to page 17 first where you will see that this matches your ti6.jpg screen shot in terms of showing the list of Unscheduled tasks - you should right-click on all your idle tasks that have the time stamp of 00:00:00 that have never run, and take the option in the drop-down menu to Delete these.

Next, on the same list of Unscheduled tasks, scroll down and find the very latest date/time for when your My Computer BackupX last ran successfully (where X is a number, probably 9).

Try right-clicking on that last My Computer Backup9 task and take the option to Start the task and see if this will start executing - if it does, then this may be all that is needed.  If it gives an error, then you will need to look at the Log tab as per page 16 of my guide document and look for the entry with the most current / latest date & time, hopefully this will be the one for the attempt just made to Start your My Computer Backup9 task (assuming that was the last successful task).

Expand the log entries by clicking on the [+] at the left end of the log entry, and look down through the detailed entries to see if there are any errors indicated as to why the task did not run or complete successfully?

If all of the above does not resolve this issue, then I would suggest starting afresh with a new backup task, following the steps in the guide from the start, but when you get to page 3 for the Backup location, either choose a new folder on your external hard drive or change the name of the backup from MyBackup.tib to a different name such as NewBackup.tib so that your previous backup is not overwritten.

Wow Steve! That's just what I needed, an idiots guide to TrueImage Backups.
Maybe now I can finally start a backup regime, seven years after buying TI!
Since I bought it, I have been stumbling along, totally uncertain if the resultant files would be at all useable or not.
I was really disappointed in the level of help that was available "in the box", even the "Help files" are confusing to someone like me.
I cannot believe that I am unusual in this respect, but maybe I am!

I think I'll abandon my current attempt and start afresh following your excellent PDF Tutorial.

You advise me to right click on "Computer backup9" which was as you expected the one which created the backup currently stored on my external drive.

If I do as you say, and opt to "Start" the task, how do I know that the ensuing action will create an "incremental" backup?
...or was that the point, DON'T do an incremental backup, just do a new image?

Just exploring the unscheduled tasks, using the "Edit" option, I notice all but 3 items present exactly the same screen and details (numbers) as my "TI1" which leads me to believe these details relate to the current state of my system, not the state at the date shown against the task.

The first in the list is:-
"System State Backup1    Idle    05 August 2009 15:36:10    Completed successfully    GEOFF-PC1\admin"
Exploring the "Edit" option for this one shows me a screen similar to "TI1" but with just the "C:" sector ticked it also shows the "Size to back up as 89.87GB, (...the current size of the "C:" drive is 90.6GB) ... could this be the record of my attempt at "Cloning" of the "C:" drive onto another HDD?

I have never tried to boot from that drive since I understand that I would have to remove my current drive which is a SATA drive and replace it with the cloned drive which is PATA and with my machine in a delicate state at present, I don't want to risk tipping it over the edge before I have at least a current backup!

The next entry which varies from the majority is one of those without a time stamp; it  shows the size to back up as 465.8GB, because against that task I ticked the "sector by sector" box.

The remaining anomaly is the bottom entry in that list which reads as follows:-
"System State Backup1    Idle    25 September 2013 13:16:17    Completed successfully    GEOFF-PC1\admin"
right clicking this one and selecting "Edit" shows a screen similar to my "TI2" screen shot, but with the Radio Button "Create new backup archive" with "no archive selected" for the Target selection, and the "Backup Location" I:\MyBackup(1).tib, ...which no longer exists.

How does a "System State Backup" differ from all the other "My Computer Backup" entries?

Sorry to present you with so many questions!
I am truly grateful for the PDF Guide, it will really help my confidence  when using the backup feature.

Let's try to answer your questions one at a time.

First, if you right-click on your My Computer Backup9 and then on Start, this should automatically try to create an incremental backup if we assume that you accepted all the defaults when this task was created.  I would recommend giving it a try and watch what happens - there are just two chances here, either it will work or it won't, and if not, then we can look at the logs to try to understand why not.

Second, I would ignore the 'System State Backup' from 2009 at this time - the only thing that could be worth checking is whether the Backup location for this backup still exists and if so, does it have a .TIB image file in it?  The sizes you mention of 89.87GB versus 90.6GB is the size of your source drive(s) - the size of the backup image file should be significantly smaller due to the compression used when creating them.

Third, with regard to having a clone from your SATA drive that is written to a PATA drive - these drives use different cables to connect to the motherboard inside the computer and would require changes in the system BIOS settings to direct the computer to which drive to boot from, so not necessarily as simple as just swapping over the drives unless you only have one physical hard disk drive in the computer that BIOS picks up as the boot drive (SATA or PATA).  The further issue with putting back the 2009 PATA clone drive is that you will have at least 5 years worth of Windows Updates to action unless you repeated the clone again from the current drive.

Fourth, the 'sector by sector' backup is a backup of every sector present on your source disk drive regardless of whether any of those sectors are used by the Windows OS, Programs or Data - the size of the backup at over 400GB reflects the size of the complete disk drive and looks to be nearly twice the size of your external drive.

Lastly, normally when you see image file names like I:\MyBackup(1).tib which have (?) in them, these tend to be temporary file names that are later replaced by a more normal name like I:\MyBackup1.tib.

So, after saying all the above, please try the action in the First point above.

Hi Steve, tried selecting My Computer Backup9, and "Start" from the context menu but nothing at all happens.

Should I try "Edit" and follow the wizard through?

___________________________________

The 'System State Backup' from 2009 nolonger exists, it and others have been wiped due to constraints of space.

The only "Backup" which remains is the one on my external drive: "MyBackup.tib".

___________________________________

The clone of the "C:" drive was my attempt at a "fallback" position since my Vista OS has no other means of repair or re-install if some catastrophy occurs, as it seemed to do just a couple of days ago, ...upon booting, I was greeted with the statement:-

"No Bootable Media Detected"

Please insert Bootable Media and re-boot"

Bit of a heart stopper!

Looked in BIOS and under Boot order found 6 Numbered positions each declared as "Not Present"

Exited without changes and shut down.

After the panic subsided, decided that the good oldfashioned North of England solution might work:-

Give it a "slap on th'ead", and re-boot.

It worked no further trouble, but I'm hoping it's just a loose connection , though how it could knock out my Boot sequences completely, I don't know.

Boot order was set to:-

1)As I recall was "Floppy A drive" (Despite no floppy reader being built into the machine)

2) DVD drive (This is a PATA drive)

3) HDD 0 which is my 500GB drive

I was thinking that I could try the PATA HDD with the cloned "C:" drive plugged in in place of the DVD drive, and temporarily unplug the Main HDD, just to Validate the drive as being "Bootable".

Before we go to the next steps to try to resolve these issues, can you try to collect the Acronis logs from
C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Logs - if you cannot see this set of folders, then they are hidden on your computer and you will need to change the Folder options in Windows Explorer to allow hidden files & folders to be shown, see the screen shots below for this change, if needed.

The files we are looking for should look something like the third screen shot below, i.e. 29_March_2016_14_34_25.log where this matches the date and time when the backup task was attempted to run.

Please attach copies of a couple of the most recent logs to your post in this forum so I can take a look before we decide the next step.

Hi Steve, sorry for delay, visitor!

I attach the last three Log events, hope you can read the "Runes"!

Thanks for the logs, they all show that ATIH 2009 ran successfully on the dates shown for the log names.

25 September 2013 Successful full backup to I:\My Vista PC Sept2013\MyBackup.tib

27 September 2013 Successful incremental backup to I:\My Vista PC\Vista-latest back-up\MyBackup.tib

28 April 2014 Successful full backup to I:\My Vista PC\MyBackup.tib

I was hoping that there might be some logs from March 2016 to show what is happening when you try to run the backup now.

At this point I would recommend that we delete all existing tasks shown on the Unscheduled tasks page tab but do NOT delete your backup image file on the external drive - disconnect the drive if in doubt while you remove the old tasks.

Looking at the log data, you are using an old build of ATIH 2009 (build 9611) - the final build for 2009 was 9808, so please download the installer program for build 9809 from your Acronis Account and install this over the top of your existing product.

Let me know how you get on doing this step.  Steve

Morning Steve,

Thanks for the link to "My Account", can't recall seeing that before!

Maybe it was created when I clicked on a link to register TI when I bought it, I don't know but I had hoped after examining the entries against my Profile, that it might hold the key as to why I am directed to the Russian site every time I click the links in the email notifications!

Sadly changing my place of residence has made no difference!

One Question before upupdating to the "Final Build"; will this make the Acronis Disk from my "boxed" product redundant as a rescue disk?

Sorry, just thought of another question!

I notice that the account shows "Computers: 1", since this old machine will soon be destined for semi retirement, can I ultimately uninstall the software on this machine and use it on my Laptop instead?

Come to that, will it work on a fairly new machine with an SSD and a conventional HDD?

It's a Medion Erazer Intel i7 machine but this spec was not produced for long it would appear!

These are the specs:-

CPU: Intel® Core ™ i7-3630QM processor

Operating system (OEM version): Windows 8 (Currently 8.1 and soon to be "Win 10" 64bit)

Clock Speed: 2.4 GHz

Memory: 16GB

Memory Type: DDR3 1333 MHz

Number of RAM Slots: 4

occupied RAM slots: 4

Hard Drive Capacity: 750GB

SSD Capacity: 128GB

Screen size: 39.6 cm (15.6 ")

Aspect ratio: 16: 9

Resolution: 1920x1080 pixels

Screen Type: matt surface (non-glare)

LED Backlight: Yes

Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 670MX DirectX 11Grafik

1536 MB GDDR5 memory and digital HDMI® -audio- / video output

NVIDIA® Optimus ™ technology +

In your Acronis Account there are two download options, one is for the installation program, the second is an ISO file which is the latest version of the bootable recovery/rescue media.  You should download both of these and create a new rescue CD from the ISO image to replace your original boxed CD, and use the installer to update ATIH 2009 to the latest build version.

With regard to your new system then the answer is no - ATIH 2009 will not work with either Windows 8.1 or 10 - for those versions you will need to have either ATIH 2015 or 2016, where only the 2016 version is still available on the Acronis web site.

Sorry for delay in replying, was out with the wife to a coffee morning at church and she has some gardening work lined up for me for the afternoon!

Thanks for that Steve, not sure what advantage would be gained by upgrading to the last build in view of my PC's limited life span, though I'm fully prepared to do so if you think it necessary. Since the hardware is still relevant and will run recent Linux systems for fun on a second Disk, I had earmarked the machine to be my "Linux Playground"!

The only reason I would want to keep this Vista install as healthy as possible into the future, would be so that I could continue to have access to my copy of Microsoft Office 2007. For most purposes, I could get by with the excellent array of open source Office suites but it's handy to have a full copy of "Office" in reserve! These days I couldn't justify the expense of buying it again as I don't use it sufficiently.

Good to hear that you are taking advantage of the weather, I'm trying (successfully I might add) to resist the urge to do some Spring Cleaning!

The main reason for upgrading would be to protect your new computer system more than for the Vista machine, but that is speaking more about upgrading to ATIH 2016 which would be needed for the new computer.

I would still recommend upgrading ATIH 2009 to the latest 9808 build on the Vista computer as it should help to resolve the current inability to perform a full and successful backup to your external hard drive.

As to having a play with Linux, I can recommend starting with Ubuntu which should work fine on your Vista computer, plus you could set this up in a dual-boot scenario if you wished.

With regards to keeping Vista to have access to Microsoft Office 2007, I understand this but have to say that I have abandoned using MS Office myself in favour of using LibreOffice 5.1 which I find to be able to do everything that I want it to do, including handling of the latest docx formats etc.

Hi Steve, just called a temporary truce with the cleaning gear for my evening meal!

Point taken re upgrading to build 9808, might do that tomorrow when I'll have a bit more time.

Will the incremental backup made with the new build still be compatible with my current "tib" file created by the old build?

Haven't tried Ubuntu, I started with Mint whilst helping out teaching basic IT to local retired people at evening classes in a local school.

Some of them were "old gits" like myself who could not countenence the cost of new ones. so I have breathed new life into old "freecycled" machines with Mint and passed them on to other "old gits" who were interested. Most found the transition from the School's XP based system to Mint was not difficult and the machines though fairly old, were more than up to email, music and a bit of browsing!

I have an old Optiplex GX280 running Mint 17Mate at present and an eclectic mix of ISO's, for others that I've tried but I've yet to give Ubuntu a try!

I suspect that although the incremental should be fine with your last full backup image from 2014, the number of changes that will be included over a period of 2 years may make the size of the incremental fairly large. I personally would go for a new full backup whilst keeping the previous full image as a safety net backup.

Linux Mint is fine, it is a very close relative to Ubuntu, forked from the same base software so most of the differences would be in the way the desktop looks and how menus are provided (or not provided) depending on the particular flavour.  Lubuntu is very good for very old hardware with limited resources - I just put that on an old Dell machine with 1GB memory & 30GB drive & it ran faster that XP.  

See https://livecdlist.com/ for a comprehensive list of bootable ISO's to add to your mix...! 
I also have an ancient Dell Optiplex GX280 that is running Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS and works fine - I did upgrade it to 15.10 but downgraded again very quickly when the video kept breaking up and losing resolution etc.  Decided that 14.04 was as far as that hardware was capable of going!

Thanks Steve, problem is I don't have any other Large HDD's.

The one in the PC is 500GB and nearly full, the external where the current image is stored is a "Medion HDD2Go" 360GB .

I have another caddy with a 160GB drive in which is storing a backup of my iTunes library.

One last 250GB Drive has what I hope is a viable clone of the "C:" drive, but it is not in a caddy ATM, I have one of those 2.5" and 3.5"IDE/SATA to USB converters which I sometimes use, but not sure where it is now!

The noise level from the PC is a little louder so I'm going to have to shut it down for tonight to give it a rest!

Looking at your earlier t1.jpg, your backup maximum size without using compression is 89GB, which should be around 2/3rds of that size with compression, so should be able to fit on to your external 360GB drive, assuming that you have more than 90GB of free space on that drive.

Hi Steve, just had a last look using my iPad before bed!

If you mean my C drive with the operating system on it, I thought that the sizes mentioned were the "on disk" and the "compressed" sizes, but just doing the maths the first figure looks as if it's the partition size,  so the second must be the "used" space.

The external drive I remember has just less than half its capacity free, so would not accommodate a second "full backup".

I am worried that the disk might not boot tomorrow, so I was thinking I might try installing the 250GB "bare" drive that I hope has a "viable" copy of my OS first.

My problem there is that it isn't a SATA drive like the resident HDD, so I'm thinking I could perhaps swap it into the place of the optical drive, which is PATA, and disconnect the resident drive.

my logic says that the BIOS should find the bootable PATA disk, since the boot order should be :-

Non existent floppy drive, then optical drive, then "HDDO" ...I shouldn't really have to disconnect the resident drive but I will, just to be sure that I'm actually booting from the cloned drive!

What do you think?

Would be grateful for any advice before I try it!

The sizes shown are for the partition and amount used for the same.  The full backup size shouldn't be greatly different to the size of your 2014 full backup on the external drive unless you have added a very large amount of filles inbetween - image files tend to give the greatest increase as are normally already compressed as far as they can be.

If you are intending to install the PATA drive which you cloned from the original SATA drive, then I would advise not to try to boot with both of these drives connected at the same time.  As part of the clone process you have duplicated the drive signature, so that both drives hold the same drive signature and that will cause a problem.  This is why the instructions for cloning state that the source drive must be removed before attempting to boot from the in-position clone drive.

It is also safer not to have the SATA drive in the system as this will avoid any possibility of it being corrupted by the system trying to correct any errors it perceives are there due to the drive signature issue.  If it is disconnected & out of the system, then it remains exactly as it is.

Your BIOS should find the PATA drive but it would be worth checking that by going into the BIOS settings after connecting the drive, no need to change anything if it shows in the list.  You may want to take some screen shots on your digital camera or phone of the settings with the SATA drive connected before making any changes, then you will have a record of what those settings are for when you reverse the change at any time.

Hi Steve, thanks for your advice this morning.

Decided to extend my spring cleaning into the "Dog Box", before attempting any further investigations.

Having moved Heaven, Earth and all stations in between, I have entered the cave of the beast and I now know what nine years of muck looks like! Having tickled around all fans, cooling fins and other places harbouring bits of me, dead spiders, etc. I have carefully sucked out the debris, (couldn't use a hair dryer as I nolonger posess one that allows you to just blast cool air!

Anyway, no apparent harm done, PC booted using the main HDD but the worrying noise continued, having the side of the case off, and access, I tried to locate the source with a makeshift wooden "Listening Stick", technical name "a wooden spoon", could not pinpoint it.

Resorted to "Vigourous Taps" to HDD with spoon, followed by all sites with cooling fans, albeit with slightly less vigour!

The one which seems to have been responsible for the din was the Power Supply fan, so I feel reasonably safe to try once more to create an incremental backup!

Just followed your PDF, but at step 3, having selected the "Add to existing backup archive" Radio Button, it still takes me to the "Congratulations" popup, undetered, I click on the options button and I'm returnedthe screen shown in your  PDF at step 4, all continues as per PDF, until step 12 where clicking on proceed (ensuring the "Run Task Now box is ticked), I am shown, for the briefest few nano secods, a popup screen about the size of two postage stamps, totally impossible to read and then I'm shown the task and log screen with yet another numbered backup doing nothing!

Before I give up on this edition of the software, is there a way to boot directly into TrueImage from My disk, and maybe create the incremental backup thatway, with no interference from the Windows environment? 

Power supply fans are in my experience a regular source of annoying noises from desktop computers, I always keep a spare in my cupboard for that reason as have needed to replace these many times for myself as well as friends & family.

Fortunately, power supplies are very reasonable - I normally pay about £20 to get one from Amazon UK - see http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000O38OPG/ref=pe_385721_37986871_TE_item - they are fairly easy to replace, just have to unplug the myriad wires from the old PSU then 4 screws on the outside that hold it in place, then reverse the process for the new one.

You can certainly boot your system from the Acronis 2009 Rescue CD media and perform a backup offline from Windows in that way - you just need to be aware that drive letters can change when booted outside of Windows - I tend to make sure my drives are given obvious names that I can easily recognise.  You can do that from Windows Explorer by taking the option to rename the root drive, i.e. C:\.   Also check that you can see your external drive OK when booted from CD - again I have found that it is better to power on the external drive after the Acronis CD starts booting, rather than before - it save time by not getting the system to try to work out if the USB external drive should be bootable or not!

Hi Steve, well, today has not been the most productive, but at least I am not quite so scared of a catastrophic HDD failure.

I really don't know how to calculate a power supply capacity needed, the IT Manager at the school who built this PC for me fitted a 600watt one  as he reconed the Graphics card needed it, by today's standards, it is puny, it's an "nVidia GeForce 9600GT with a massive 512mb of DDR3, cutting edge in the day!

...well it was considering the buget constraints.

Trying to find a spare (working) drive with some decent capacity has been disappointing, but I found my SATA/PATA/IDE to USB Gismo and it's power supply! Can't be all bad also found two shoeboxes full of drives left over from cannibalised machines I've made for folks.

Most of them are 10 and 20GB but managed to make a couple of 40GB ones communicate so I took the chance to just copy across the "My Pictures" and just finishing the current iTunes folder, once that's done, I will have an empty 160GB Drive which I was hoping would be big enough to hold a complete "full system image", ... would you agree, based on the figures shown in my earlier screen shots?

The alternative would be to copy the April 2014 image (149GB) across to the "soon to be empty" 160GB driveto at least preserve that backup if everything goes Mammaries aloft, giving me the entirety of my 360GB drive for a full system image.

Question is, would the 2014 image survive being copied and pasted?

If you are intending to create a full system backup of all 4 of your disk partitions as per ti1.jpg then the calculated image size is shown in the same image as 264GB before any compression is applied.  If your 2014 full image was 149GB then the new full image is likely to be larger assuming that you have added new data in the interim period.

You should be able to move the 2014 image from your 320GB drive to the 160GB drive but I would recommend validating the image both before and after doing the move and before deleting it from the 320GB drive to ensure that Acronis sees the image as being good.

On the subject of the 600W PSU, Amazon has a couple that would fit the bill for a reasonable price:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Alpine-ALPINE-BLUE-600W-600w-120mm-Blue/dp/B007QT5ADK/ref=sr_1_8?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1459459241&sr=1-8&keywords=600w+psu

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ezcool-600W-Premium-Power-Supply/dp/B01BVQOT6C/ref=sr_1_71?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1459459801&sr=1-71&keywords=600w+psu

Just an update on my continuing struggle to get this software to work!

Attempting to "Validate" the April 2014 backup I fired up the Ext Drive, clicked on the ".tib" file and selected "validate" from the context menu.

The "Windows Police" cautioned me about opening "Acronis TI", I accepted responsibility, ...and ...nothing! Again.

I prodded TI into action myself, accepting the evident "dubiousity" expressed once more by the "Windows Police", and attempted to persuade it to earn its keep!

No such luck, all I get are "Zero time stamped" entries in the log again, the programme is dead, it has ceased to be, etc.

(echos of the dead parrot sketch!).

Let's see if installing the update to the final build will make it rise from the dead!

Does anything that Acronis make work as expected?

Having installed the latest build over the top of mine, the wizard requested a re-boot, which I did.

Now attempting to validate the ".tib" file by right clicking and selecting "Validate backup", Im told an old version of TI has been detected, I must first re-boot!

Attempting to open TI the conventional way, I am again denied access without re-booting!

Not impressed!

Going down for the third time!

Finally! it's talking to me!

Got a couple of questions whilst it's working:

Whilst doing the re-install of TI, I was offered I think four options, my first concern was to get the update installed, so I clicked on that, thinking that the other options, not sure what they were except for the offer of the current instructions, would re appear!

They didn't and I'm not sure how to obtain them now!

Having requested validation of my ".tib" file, I was shown the progress window with the two progress bar graphs, since that window was obscuring the main TI window, the only option was to "Hide" it, I know that it is possible to show it again, but for the life of me I can't remember how to achieve it! Ahh! Found the little sod! lol

Regarding the creation of a "Rescue Disk", I have saved the iso file expecting to use ImgBurn to burn the disk, however I notice there is an option to "Create Bootable Media", which way is recommended, and do I use a "Recordable CD", or will it need a DVD, in which case I have some DVD-RW disks.

Reason I was a bit put out by the repeated need to re-boot, is that on my old machine, it takes approx 15 minutes to "build" the working desktop, and another 10 for the blessed "Host processes" to let go of a big enough chunk of RAM for me to get a look in! :)

IIRC the other options on the initial install screen are more to do with checking for updates, opening the help information and the like, so taking the option to install was fine.

To get back a minimised window, you should be able to go down to the status bar and look for an Acronis icon there then double-click on it to bring back the minimised window again.

The ISO can be used with any CD creation software you have, so ImgBurn should be fine.  The Create Bootable Media is another way of doing the same but will take the ISO from the built-in image provided with ATIH 2009 rather than the one you downloaded - the key difference is that ATIH itself does the CD creation rather than using ImgBurn.  For your 2009 software, a CD should be big enough, for the 2016 version I need to use a DVD!

Fully understand reboot times on old hardware - the only real answer is to put in the maximum memory plus ensure the drive is defragmented, then wait and see if it makes much of a difference.  Extra memory does normally help in my experience - with 2GB being the minimum for XP SP3.  Shame really since XP used to run in 256MB when it first came out!  More bloatware and inefficient programming in Windows OS I guess, hence Windows 10 now is around 3-5GB in size to do effectively what XP originally did from a diskettes install.

Hi Steve,

[quote/]To get back a minimised window, you should be able to go down to the status bar and look for an Acronis icon there then double-click on it to bring back the minimised window again. [unquote/]

No, the bar graphs don't show diong that, I had to go from the "Logs" screen back to the "Unscheduled tasks" screen, right click on the task concerned and select "Show progress"!

I am reassured when I can see that something is "happening" ! :D

Re: boot Disk creation, probably best to allow TI to control it, that way I can't do anything wrong!

The iso has now allowed me to view its properties and the file is it would appear only 32MB !

It also tells me that it opens with Nero express essentials!

Good luck with that, I only have ImgBurn and CDBurnerXP!

I'm running 2GB on this machine, it was OK 8 years ago, but you are right, it needs another 2GB minimum, was thinking of upgrading it earlier this year but can't get Crucial or Kingston to tell me if current sticks will play nicely with what I have, and I would hate to just bin them!

Might do some more research.

I'm thinking of trying to build one of those "NUC" machines with an Intel Skylake i5 and 8GB of DDR4, mainly because I have an unopened Full copy of Windows 8.1 that needs installing and upgrading to W1o before the deadline of June 29th!

Better get a shif on as 3 weeks holidays intervene twixt now and then!

Glad to hear that you are making and seeing progress after a long road to get here!

I have used CDBurnerXP plenty of times on multiple systems.

The issue with upgrading XP above 3GB is that 32bit Windows won't see anything more than this, the other issue is that the older DDR memory chips are getting like hens teeth, very expensive and hard to find!  Can be worth looking around on eBay to see if you could get 3 x 1GB chips of all the same make.

Duplicate post deleted.

And my cunning plan crumbles to dust!

April 2014 backup is 149GB and my 160GB disk thanks to the variance between the Binary and decimal valuation of a Gigabyte is infact 148GB!

I am short of 674 MB! Grrr.

Looks like I'll have to overwrite the now validated 2014 backup anyway, all for the sake of a few MB's, unlsee you know any way round it!

The alternative would be to leave the 2014 backup where it is, then just backup as much of your internal drive as can fit on the 160GB (148GB) external drive, i.e. drive C:, D:, E: then backup your drive F: to the free space on the 320GB drive.

Once you are happy that you have a good backup, albeit in two parts on two drives, you can decide whether you can live without the 2014 backup which would then make room to make a new full disk backup on the 320GB drive (assuming that there is sufficient free space at that point).

One other option would be to use your PATA drive for doing a backup assuming that this is the same size as the SATA drive, but if doing this, you may need to wipe the PATA drive first so that plugging in a clone of the SATA doesn't cause problems due to the duplicate disk signature.

Have to admit that I've always been confused by the partition "D:" which is labelled "Recovery", it has 112GB free out of 117GB.

I'm mystified because this install of Vista was done using the school's volume licence, which was fine whilst I was teaching there, and ultimately thee allowed me to keep it, but there could not be any possibility of ongoing  maintenance, hence the need for TrueImage.

So what was stored in that sector?

A "cursory butchers" shows just empty folders! Currently 61 of the blighters!

The odd thing is that attempting to open one, I'm told "You don't currently have permission to  access this folder, click "Continue" to get access ("Continue" button with Admin logo), odd since I'm already using an "Admin" account! Once open, they contain a copy of "MRT.exe", Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool.

Curioser and curioser, these folders only commenced appearing from September 2010 and occur roughly monthly, some months are missed but I can't figure out a pattern!

I'm wondering if they are in fact vital, or if they could be excluded from a full image and it still remain a valid image?

I'm beginning to get a bit shell shocked with this, and might just say sodddd it and to hell with the 2014 image after all!

I would suspect that your 'Recovery' partition may be a left over from the original OS that was on the computer before it was used to install Vista with the school's volume license.  If so, then you should be able to safely disregard it and omit it from your backup image which will save 5GB based on the sizes you gave.

If you are seeing MRT.exe in the folders on the data / recovery drive, then that is a byproduct of Windows Update which seems to store temporary files on the drive which has the most space available, again you should be able to safely ignore these folders / files.

It can't be a "Leftover" 'cos my original PC (XP) turned to a cinder whilst the IT Manager was putting some practice exercises and other stuff on it overnight for my classes!

He offered to build me a new one if I paid for the bits, so this was a completely fresh machine.

Can't understand why MRT.exe waited more than 2 years before deciding that my hitherto empty "D:" drive was the place to be!

I knew what it was, but not that Windows Update deposited that file on the least populated drive, interesting!

Why on earth can't it clean up after its self?

I think that with your help I'd now be confident to just delete the April 2014 image and start again with a new Full System Image.

Having now updated TI to the last build, can I still follow your PDF?

I know that it was created to help me  make an incremental backup, but the screen shot at step 3 actually shows "New Backup archive" has been selected, if I too make that selection, and at step 5 select "Full" instead of "incremental", that would initiate a full system image wouldn't it? ...or is there another way?

The PDF was showing how to perform a Full backup but with defaults which would automatically create Incremental backups after that initial full backup has been created.

As far as Windows Update goes, it seems at times to be a law unto itself and cleanup seems to be a forgotten idea!

I tend to do a manual cleanup of these 'leftover' update files using a boot CD when needed to overcome locked files & folders (Linux live CD does the job).

Ratz! just hit "Post" and completely lost my post then!

Now that I have instructions that I understand, thanks to your time and effort, I feel it's probably best to just delete the April 2014 image and create a fresh, current Full System Image.

Regarding Linux Live CD's, I have been able to browse both my "Windows" system files and data files, but no way am I clever enough to know which files are safe to delete!

My Linux experience despite the years I've been using it, is very shallow!

I rely heavily upon the clever folks on the Linux forums who understand Terminal and can post commands that I paste into my machine!

What I like about Linux is that what ever mistakes you make, it will only ever cost you your time, and there are so many flavours to explore and have fun with.

I'll create  a new image tomorrow and post back when it's validated!

From here on in, I'll have the confidence to adopt a better (and more frequent!) backup routine.

Just an update on my adventures over the weekend!

Didn't get chance to do the Image until Sunday.

Set TI to do a full backup and left it to it, after watching for about 10 minutes.
Came back a couple of hours later, it had progressed only one percent more than when I'd left, before downing tools and displaying this message. (attached)
I took the screen shot and asked it to retry,...no change, then told it to ignore it.
The programme continued the back up, the only change seems to have been the time remaining, gone from 3 hours (as it was when I left it originally) To showing 1day 14 hours, and commenced counting down the hours at around two minutes per hour!

Not wishing to spoil what remained of my day with more bad news, I made no further checks for a few hours, when I found that it was near to completion of the final step, "Validation", which it then told me was "Successful"!

With the error encountered at the start of the process, I am somwhat dubious of the veracity of this endorsement!

The fact that a sector could not be read surprised me since when Windows occasionally embarks upon a mandatory "DiskCheck", It never flags up any problems. I'm more concerned that the error was found at the outset, since this implies that the damaged/unreadable sector is somewhere on the "C:" drive.

What do you think?

Sorry to hear about the further problem with the 'Failed to read data from disk' for sector 42,688,712 of hard disk 1 - there has been numerous reports of similar error messages in the forums and unfortunately, they nearly always are caused by an issue with the disk drive identified in the error message.

One point to note here is that Acronis starts numbering disks from #1, whereas Windows starts at #0, so if you look in Windows Disk Management, it is very likely that this is for drive C: (on disk 0 for Windows).

The key recommendation at this point is to do a full CHKDSK for drive C: on your system with both the Repair and Scan for bad sectors options enabled.  This could take some hours to complete depending on the speed of the system, size of drive, number of errors etc.

The default Windows DiskCheck does not perform a scan for bad sectors.

As for the validated backup image, the problem with having ignored the bad sector is simply not knowing exactly what, if anything, resided in that ignored bad sector - it could be nothing of any importance, or it could be a vital system file.  You will not know until such a time as whatever it contains is needed to be used.  The good news in this is that it is less likely to be a critical / vital system file given that your system boots up into Windows OK, or at least not one that impacts on that boot up activity when starting Windows Vista.

Thanks for that Steve, "Disk 0" in Disk Management shows as expected, my one physical drive, with all the partitions Labeled "C,D,E and F".

I have run "Checkdisk" for Drive "C:", with both the options to fix system errors and repair bad sectors ticked and prepared myself for a Looong re-boot, however I was surprised that following the POST screens, the "Windows Loading" screen appeared, ...it didn't run for its usual number of "passes" which can be between 8 and 15 of the chasing green bars, after about three passes, the familiar black DOS screen appeared and showed something similar to:

"Windows is checking Volume "C".

"The file system is NTFS."

"The volume is clean"

Windows then presented the "Welcome" screen!

The DOS screen lasted only as long as it took the system to type up the three lines of information!

I would like to believe what I was told, but I fear trhat it has not infact done as it was bidden!

Why do these ODD things hapen to me?!!

Interesting is one word to describe things I guess!

I have to admit that I have never seen CHKDSK just return 'The volume is clean' without having gone through the 5 phases of the checking process and showing plenty of numbers for the objects, files, security descriptors, journals etc that have been checked.

From looking at some hits on Google you will need to run CHKDSK again with the two options selected and it should run correctly with all 5 phases run over a lengthy time.

See http://superuser.com/questions/1011819/check-disk-says-volume-is-clean or
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_xp-performance/chkdsk-cr-at-startup-took-only-3-seconds/e3977ef6-ef7f-e011-9b4b-68b599b31bf5?auth=1