Don't know if it's the right forum to ask this, but it relates to Acronis
Hi all:
Today is my first day to use Acronis and I run into some problems. I'm using the 2010 version.
here is what I wanted to achieve:
I'm attempting a triple boot on my laptop, just in case if you guys are not familiar what a triple boot is, this is a way to install three operating systems on one hard drive, and every time you start the computer, you will be presented with a system boot loader with all three installed OS for you to choose. I want to install Windows, Hackintosh (a hacked version of Mac OSX that can be installed on non-apple computers), and Ubuntu. Currently my laptop has only Windows.
So how does this relates to Acronis, well, I went online and searched a bit, and discovered that if I want to have the "triple happiness", I must go though the pain of reformatting my whole hard drive and create three partitions, creating partitions is a pain, but it's not the topic to talk about here.
I have a HUGE problem with reformatting my laptop's hard drive, first of all, this laptop is not "mine", it's given me when I got admitted to my college (free laptop), by means of putting quote marks around mine is because I can do whatever I want with the laptop, but I do not have the full ownership to this laptop, my university has it, and if I do something that broke this laptop, I will be punished severely . (but I will have the full ownership of the laptop when I graduate)
So I decided to use Acronis and create a backup bootable image of my current windows 7, but I do not know how, I only know that other people had been using Norton Ghost and create Ghost Images of the system, which is a snapshot of the system, I do not know how to do the similar thing with Acronis, I want the image to be able to install into one of my partitions I created during the triple boot installation, can this be done?
Pat, he uses 2010, not 2011. Also -side note- existing laptop may already have 3 or even 4 primary partitions, (system reserved, windows, recovery, and.. and what not?) so both osx and ubuntu have to use logical ones.
Also important, read the user guide so that you know what you are doing. You can find the guide for ati2010 here:
thank you for the reply guys.
the laptop already had two partitions when I got it, one is the windows partition, and the other one is the recovery partition, which is the replacement of recovery CDs used by OEMs.
I need to back up the recovery partition also, if I erase the hard drive as a whole, I erase the recovery partition too.
I think there might be a hidden system partition too, so three partitions altogether. In any event if you do a disk mode backup, you'll get them all.
Fuyao,
You can run C:\Windows\System32\compmgmt.msc, that will launch a console. Double click on storage, disk management. You will see any partition currently on your disk, included hidden ones.
yes i saw it
I am aware there is a hidden partition on my laptop, currently there are two partitions, one is the normal partition with Windows installed on it, and the other one is a the hidden partition, which is a recovery partition that can be activated by pressing the blue ThinkVantage button on my laptop. My laptop is a Lenovo Thinkpad T410i by the way.
I also read the user manual, it gives a pretty detailed explanation of the software, I learned a lot from it.
Before I went on here and created this thread, I tested backup, I don't know if i'm doing it right, i got two backups, one is 66.84GB, and another one is 3.8GB, the enormous one is a full system backup, and the 3 gig one is a system state backup, which one is the right choice in my situation? My HD is around 284 GB so no worries there, I deleted these two backups already, it's was only a test.
Also I tried "Create Bootable rescue Media", I tested on a virtual machine, the emulated BIOS said "Operating System cannot be found, rebooting system now", I kind of expected this message because I heard that it will work only on the same hardware it was created from, Virtual machine softwares is like a brand new computer, so it won't work, am i right?
Fuyao, the backup you need is the disk and partition backup, including *all* partitions (no need to select sector-by-sector).
Try the recovery CD on your target computer, there is no danger for the computer. To answer your question, the CD could work on the virtual machine as it is machine independent.
oh wow, the size of this backup astonishes me, it's 85.99GB!!
but whatever, I guess following whatever you said could work.
so just to make sure, if I'm in the process on installing the triple boot, after I installed Hackintosh, which is required to be installed first, then Windows, then Ubuntu, when I am installing Windows, I can just pop in the rescue CD I created with Acronis and install Windows on the second partition, right?
My HDD will have four partitions, 30 GB for Ubuntu and Hackintosh, and the recovery partition, and the rest of HD goes to Windows.
also, in the future, in the event of a major HDD disaster, I can use Acronis on Windows to back up this four partitions again, and put everything back into a reformatted HD and continue using the triple boot, right? will the bootloader settings be messed up? Because after this, my bootloader will no longer be Windows's MBR, it will either be ubuntu's GRUB or Hackintosh's Chameleon bootloader, and, according to info i found from the net, my HDD will become a hybrid of two different type of data storage, I need to sync the HDD etc. I didn't get into that yet, it will be a topic I post in another forum.
Well, you would be able to restore a Windows partition to whater partition you have, but if you had a hidden windows partition (system reserved, recovery or other), you need to be careful. Restore any additional partition that was an active partition, if any.
Also, if you change your partition layout or introduce new OS after your backed up with ATI, you will have to fix the boot (with a 3rd party boot manager), but you seem to have this covered.
Did you check that the format of your partitions are effectively supported by ATI?
If yes, all what you need to do is a whole disk disk and partition backup from the recovery CD. The code in the MBR will be included in the backup.
and in the CD, I choose the first option: boot into Acronis something something to recover Windows, am I right? The second option is for booting into Windows that had already been installed into the PC, yes?
I'm getting it now
I currently hadn't split the partition into that many yet, I need to get all my question answered because I will not have internet or an OS to go to in case if I mess something up.
including the type of partitions for addtional infomation
Hackintosh partition will be the Journaled OSX partition, or whatever Mac calls it, because Hackintosh is OSX, after all.
Windows will be NTFS
Ubuntu will be ex3 (or ex4), with swap space partition.
You will have to try ATI from the CD with the hackintosh partition: http://www.hackint0sh.org/f145/969.htm
If a complete disk backup doesn't work because of that partition, you can create a normal disk and partition backup for the other partitions, and then create a separate sector-by-sector partition for the hackintosh one.
I will try it, but I don't know how can acronis start in OSX, it's a Windows application isn't it?
another thing is, I realized today that I don't have to backup the recovery partition from my laptop, because using acronis to do everything that you said is like creating a recovery CD. Do I still need the ThinkVantage recovery partition backed up?
You will have to do the backup from the recovery CD.
You could try to do without the recovery partition, but you should back it up: just don't restore. This way, if you are not happy with the results you can go back to where you were before your changes.
I created two seperate backups, one is Windows, and the other one is the recovery partition. It's actually two seperate back ups of the two partitions I currently have on my HDD, am I doing it right? The Windows partition is what's on my C drive only, doesn't contain the recovery partition, and the back up of the recovery partition is just the partition itself.
Windows backup size: around 78GB
ThinkVantage recovery partition backup: 10GB
the next step would be putting these two backups on my USB disk that is 320GB large, and reformatting my whole HDD and erase the recovery partition and start the installation of the triple boot. am i all set to do that? do I need to do anything else?
also thank you for guiding me though the process, of course I will have many more people in the future guiding me with the triple boot installation process, but for the help of using the acronis to back up my windows system, I should say thank you to you, Pat.
this is a very powerful backup software once i know how to use it.
Ideally, you would have one backup of your entire disk, with all partitions (C:\ and the recovery partition). This backup will include the MBR+track0 and that would be everything you would need to go back to your current system.
If you included the MBR+track0 in at least one of the backups (either the C:\ or the recovery partition one), and if these 2 partitions are the only ones of your disk, you are fine.
If not, redo either a whole backup or the recovery one with the MBR+Track0.
Finally make sure you have an Acronis recovery CD that works: boot on it, try to restore one file from the backup, for example..
If you move or copy the backups, validate them after the operation before deleting the original backups.