New Computer - Restore to Dissimilar Hardware
I just upgraded to the latest version of True Image Home (2011) with Plus Pack. My primary reason for doing so was to be able to get my new computer up and running quickly. I found Knowledge Base 13671, but still have a pretty basic question. How do I access the backup on the old machine from the new machine? Is this a USB-to-USB or a NIC-to-Nic sort of connection? Do I take the hard drive out of the new machine, put it in an external docking station, and then plug it into the old machine's USB port? (The old machine has room for only one internal hard drive.) Do I do a back-up of the old machine onto an external hard drive and then plug that into the new machine? What is the easiest and best way to do this?
Just be forewarned that you must have the same OS on both machines for this to work. Otherwise you end up with the old OS on the new machine which may not be what you want.
I have selected a machine with the same OS. I installed the Windows PE on it - but didn't pay attention to where those files were stored. Now the Plus Pack asks me to tell it where the Windows PE files are. They are in the "standard" place - wherever that is. Do you guys know where the standard installation directory is for the Windows PE files?
I assume that I need to back up to an external hard drive, then, since I don't have a UB thumb drive bigger than 16 GB.
Are you referring to the WAIK, if so its in C:\Program Files\Windows AIK for WIN 7. Yes use an external hard drive to create your backup. I'd suggest reading this tutorial http://forum.acronis.com/forum/9449 for some help on building the WINPE CD.
A related question to this :
I have True Image Home 11 and want to restore the .tib image I created from my laptop that has just died (windows XP 3) on me to a VMware virtual machine on my new Windows 7 laptop.
I managed to restore successfully onto the virtual machine, but when I logged in to it, had all sorts of problems due to the different hardware I presume, and the VM blue screened on me.
The question is, if I buy True Image Home 2011 with plus pack can that restore files created in version 11 ?
If so, since I am restoring to a virtual machine, do I need the hardware drivers for the host machine to be able to restore to the VM, or something else ??
Many thanks
Paul
Paul,
I have not been in the situation with a virtual machine. I am not familiar about how a virtual environment abstracts the hardware layer.
My guess would be that using the universal restore in a virtual machine would still require the drivers, as if it was a reguler universal restore.
Let's see if users more experienced with that aspect can chime in.
Paul,
Did you configure the VM for XP and select the IDE drive type? Using SCSI on XP can be more difficult because of the drivers. There can also be problems if the wrong HAL is used. Existing drivers installed (especially storage drivers) may cause problems if XP can't switch from them. Depending on the system, you may not even need UR.
You should be able to restore into a VM the same a to a physical machine. Drivers would be installed the same way too (you may not need any, though). Any needed drivers would be those of the VM, not those of the host computer.
TI 2011 supports restoring TI 11 images.
Thanks for that.
The first time I tried, I created a VM using XP Mode in Windows 7, then opened that using VMWare Player. I installed my copy of TI 11 on to it and attempted to restore my backup, but that failed when TI restarted as it got stuck with a black screen and the words "Starting Acronis Loader....".
After searching on the forums here, I tried the following :
I created a blank VM in VMWare, then booted it from the bootable media iso that I downloaded from my account. THis fired up TI and allowed me to restore the laptop image (took about 13 hours, but got there eventually!)
When I logged in to the VM, I then got a bunch of messages saying that XP was searching for drivers, which went on for ever and then just locked up. On rebooting the machine, I just got the blue screen of death whatever way I tried to re-staret (Safe Mode, last known good configuration etc.)
Soooo, I'm hoping that 2011 might solve this problem, or I may just have to re-install all the software from scratch. The other really annoying thing is that TI cannot load the tib image as a drive either, saying that it cannot read the image (or something similar - I will need to re try this to get the messsage) which I presume is the same problem as not being able to restore from withing XP.
I wouldn't recommend restoring into a XP Mode converted VM. That one links to the XP Mode setup. It's just not worth the hassle.
If XP booted up to the login and then went on to start loading drivers, it sounds like it should be past the point of storage drivers causing any problems. Are both running single core/CPU (the source and the VM)?
Do you know what the BSOD code is? It might help to point to the problem.
You could try booting into Safe Mode the first time and see if you could uninstall any drivers not needed and then boot into Normal Mode.
When restoring into the VM the first time it can take a while if you're using an expanding drive. If you know the final drive size needed, you can save time by using a fixed disk size. If you need to restore again, it should be faster (unless you delete the drive and start over).
Back to my original question... All this virtual machine stuff is very interesting, but I have no idea why one would want to do that. (Maybe someone could shed some light on the utility of using VMware.)
I've re-installed the AIK software, but I cannot find any directory that looks like the one in http://forum.acronis.com/forum/9449. I've tried pointing the plus pack application at many different directories (all of the subdirecotries formed under the Windows AIK directory, in fact), and it always says the needed files are not there. I went ahead and prepared a "regular" bootable USB stick using the primary program. What will happen if I simply boot into that "regular" USB stick with my new machine (when it arrives) and restore the system of the old machine onto that machine? Must one use the WindowsPE bootable media to move from one syustem to the next? If so, where in the heck is that ISO directory shown in http://forum.acronis.com/forum/9449? I'm runnning Windows 7 Professionl 64-bit.
Did you follow these steps in the link:
"My Start Menu has a Windows PE Tools Command Prompt entry, but you can also get this command prompt by Start->All Programs->Microsoft Windows AIK->Windows PE Tools Command Prompt. You are at the proper folder and do not have to enter "cd Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools\" as stated in the manual."
"You do have to run the copype.cmd script as shown. You can look at the command script if you want to make sure that it is doing nothing nefarious. "
The images show an ISO built on a 32bit system. You have a 64bit system so you would have to run the copype.cmd script with different parameters:
such as copype.cmd amd64 c:\winpe_x64.
The ISO driectory is created after you run the copype.cmd script.
You can do your restore as well from the USB stick you created. This a Linux based environment and will be different than a WINPE environment, particularly the drivers for the hard drives. WINPE has many more drivers built in to support your drives than the Linux environment.. You will have to test to make sure it sees your hard drives.
No, you don't need the WinPE-based disk to do the restore. Simpler to try first with the regular bootable media, if you end up having driver issue you might need to build WinPE.
We can help you further in that case.
Hi Ronald, sorry for hijacking your thread !
The reason that I was restoring to a VM was that my original machine was XP and my new one is Windows 7.
Mudcrab - thanks for the advice - I will try again.
Should I start a new discussion for my stuff do you reckon , so it doesn't get mixed up with Ronalds ?
I'll check the BSOD code if/when it happens again.
Paul,
It probably would be best to start a new thread and just add a link to this thread for reference.
My original machine - the one I have with all of my programs and such - is actually a 32-bit Windows 7 machine. I want to use 8 GB of ram on my new machine, and thus I want to switch over to the 64-bit version of Windows 7. (The new machine has no OS - I have a license for Windows 7 that can be used on this new machine.) So I have another machine in the office with many of the same programs on it (not all, but most) running 64-bit Windows 7. I had planned on using that machine's back-up to initiate the new machine. There wouldn't be any use for a virtual machine here instead, would there?
The new machine will have a fairly common hard drive (a Western Digital VelociRaptor - WD3000HLFS). The backup drive is an older Western Digital external USB drive. I assume those will cause no problems with the "standard" bootable media...?
It is a good guess it will work, but you will have to wait and test it.
I took the challenge and see where I was mistaken. I did the command line "thing" with AIK, and got both the x86 and amd64 directories created. Now which files do I use (or does it make a difference)? The new machine will be Intel-based and will have a 64-bit Windows 7 OS installed (from the Acronis backup); does that make any difference to the boot-into-Acronis USB stick I am making?
No, it doesn't make any difference. Acronis provides a way to produce a WinPE environment because sometimes this windows-based environment has better driver support, and be customized by advanced users to contain other programs than Acronis.
Thank you all for your most impressive and quick responses!