Simply want to construct a "recovery and applications disc". Am I on the right track?
I recently asked in a forum how I might build a bootable recovery disc that contained all of my installed programs. A disc that I could use to simply place in the tray, reboot the computer, click "go" and just wait for the disc to do it's thing and then pop out of the tray. Acronis was suggested.
Am I in the right place?
I read the user's guide. The cloning instructions would seem to suggest that "cloning" is used for drive upgrades and replacement. Is it also used for the purpose I've described?
In slightly more detail...
My HP 8510w laptop came packaged with a set of "recovery and applications" discs. Occasionally I find myself simply wanting to reinstall the winxppro OS and starting fresh. My computing needs are relatively simple. Generally any odds/ends files or images that I wish to save at any given time can be stored on a separate burned dvd or even a usb stick.
I only have half a dozen or so installed programs, such as a better version of pdf reader, a screen copy program, google sketchup pro, winrar, vlc media player, etc.
When I reinstall the operating system from the recovery discs the babysitting is a PITA. I have to be near the screen selecting options and answering prompts for an hour. After all of that I must reinstall sketchup, pdfxchange, etc.
Can I use Acronis to build a bootable recovery disc, mirroring everything that is on the drive, that can simply be inserted, started, and unmonitored from that point until completion?
Is it possible to accomplish this easily? Is there a way (like i said, i've read the user's guide and am still very confused), in constructing this disc, to simply insert a dvd-rw, open Acronis, choose "clone my hardrive to bootable media" and then have it do this very basic task?
No questions about partitions or methods or other. Simply produced a bootable disc, that once used to reinstall the OS will replace it PRECISELY as it presently existes. No more. No less.
If I'm not on the right track here, can anyone recommend software that would accomplish this for me?
You've just installed a fresh new operating system on a clean new drive. You've worked most of the day to get your favorite programs and drivers installed and ready for use. Now right at this point, before any corruption has set in, you'd like to take this entirety, complete with the settings you've painstakingly selected for the OS and programs, and cut/paste it onto a disc or USB stick or other that you could, at any future point, no matter what catastrophe, simply reinsert, click go, and replace all.
To be clear, you can do almost this with Acronis. The only difference is that your backup won't be stored on the same media you boot from. This is what I did when I reinstalled Windows 7: one backup with Microsoft + all other apps. Backup is stored on a USB disk. If I want to get back to a "prime" state, I just pop my recovery CD in , boot the computer and restore the backup. It takes 12mn.
Thre is a big advantage to making backups instead of cloning. With cloning you get one image per hdisk. With backups, yu get as many as will fit, allowing you to maintain a history. Consider, if you drive or OS goes wonky but you don't realize it until it get really bad, which is later than you last clonging, then your clone is going to contain the wonk. IF you had a history of backup, you could use an older backup to get a decent system running again.
TErminology as used in the ATI community. Clone, making a copy of what's on one harddisk onto another harddisk. It makes the target disk liek the source disk.
Backup, copying the image that's on a harddisk into a file which can then be recovered (restored) onto the same or another harddisk, making the target a copy of the original. Since a bakcup of an entire didsk is nvere bigger than the bytes in use on a source disk, you can usually fit many backups on a target disk, ready for when you need them. YOu will need a harddisk to store the backups (that's the so-called third media in this thread).
IF you make a disk mode backup of you entire harddisk, you can restore the entire thing and the result will be jsut like the original.
Cloning does the same thing but puts the copy of the original onto the target disk immediately instead of string it in a backupfile.
btw, it is inconceiveable that "there is zero possibility that the Clone I seek to construct might contain a 'wonk'." Harddisks are electro mechanical devices and they eventually go bad (or get tossed first). I.e., if you use a harddisk long enough it will eventaully wonk up/mess/up, start getting weird, permanently corrupt files. The only way to avoid this is to rewrite the laws of physics or to throw your drives away well before they ahve a chance of going bad. They're usually good for a couple of years of regular use but could last much less or much more time.
Also, software is rarely perfect and sometimes create wonks/wierdnesses/corrupt files of its own. These aren't always noticable until the damage done starts corrupting something else. Itunes, nero, and Ati (or any other program that involves drivers) are pretty good examples.
But how much protection you want and how you want to go about it is up to you. If you rely on a single copy 9of your system/data disk, someday you are likely to regret that you didn't have one more copy.
The only difference is that your backup won't be stored on the same media you boot from. Again, i'm sorry for my ignorance, but why is this a hurdle? The recovery disc that came with my laptop can boot the computer and reinstall the operating system and drivers. Is it technically impossible to introduce that same functionality to a single disc by a utility such as Acronis (or any other)?
Technically anything is possible. If the question is whether Acronis can help you do that *out of the box*, then you understood that the answer is "yes, if you have a flash drive big enough to hold your system backup" (note1: probably a 32GB flash drive; note2: technically, you should be able to do that with DVD's, but I do not recommend that path with ATI).
Just to try to put it as simply as possible once more...
This is a very reasonable request. Hopefully you understood how Acronis can/cannot be applied to meet it.
Instead of putting in that original winxppro recovery disc, I'd put in my own version, boot from it, click go, and walk away.
Fire and forget is harder to achieve unless you are ready to delete all existing data on the drive at restore time.
Bob,
The guide you posted is describing the standard method of doing a disk and partition backup and then an Acronis recovery CD... If this is what you need, then we talked passed each other. The only thing is that I advice again using DVDs to store your backup files.
I think you might be making things more complicated than they need to be. And part of the confusion is due to your lack of effort.
Post 8 is describing making a disk backup as I suggested earlier. It captures the entire thing, programs, data files, the while magilla.
IF all you want is to get back to the original condition when the OS was installed or when the machine came formthe manugfacturer and not the data files, etc. then make a backup when the disk in that condition and save it. Or just use the recovery options of the manufactuer -- usually a recover cd -- which essentially rstors the disk image to the original condition.
IF you read the user guide to ati you will know what it can do -- no googling required
http://www.acronis.com/support/documentation/
Btw, dye-based optical media are a poor choice for archival purposes unless you a willing to replace them every few years. Also, note, that if your backup doesn't fit on one optical disk, rstoreing from the opticals is going to be a pita of disk swapping.
I did read the entire user's guide. I'm sorry I wasn't able to distill anything recognizable for my needs.
You may want to peruse Grover's Index http://forum.acronis.com/forum/3426. Lots of how to's for various version of Acronis.
Sorry you thought it was a barb. Not intended as such.
If you've read the User Guides and Grover's guides from the stickies and still are lost, you probably want to back away from doing anything custom and just stick with the plainest vanilla proceedure that ati offers. You can cause damage if you try to customize and aren't sure what you are doing.
Thanks for your help here.