bootable clone on seperate hdd

If the BIOS can change the order it sees the drives then it should work. However, immediately after creating the clone the two "identical" drives should not be active together in the machine on the first successful boot since Windows can get confused in such a situation and use bits and pieces from both drives. Conventional wisdom says to physically disable the old drive until the first successful boot is done and then it can be re-enabled. The disk is a clone so it will boot by itself, it does not need the TI CD or anything else.

I don't do clones but the rough rule of thumb for an image is about 1GB/min on a typical machine which would translate into about 2hrs or so.

Now, I"m going to give you a different perspective.

Why tie up a big disk with a single backup of your main HD? If you image you can store a history of about 7 images on the second 1TB drive using Full images. Incrementals would give you even more history to roll back to and cut down on imaging time. TI can only clone whole drives not partitions whereas an image will work at the partition level.

Do you really expect to have to be using the clone that much that restore time is an issue?

To speed up OS/Apps imaging time only store the OS and installed apps on C. Keep all data files on a second partition. If you have large games such as Flight Simulator etc consider installing them to a second partition since they rarely ever change so they don't need to be included with every C drive image.

Basically I wanted an extremely simple way of restoring the system moreso than the data.  with a bootable clone disk I can reboot my system complete in about 30 seconds by simply loading the alternate disk... with nothing to restore and no further time to be spent.  So my restore time is 30 seconds..  Ok so you might argue that I am spending say 2 hours a month making a clone.  I would likely only run it once a month as I rarely install apps or make changes to my system.  But I would argue I can run the clone and go watch TV as I have tons of time away from the computer when it could run so truly I waste no time making the clone and only 30 seconds to restore my system.  Also my C: drive has 109GB on it right this moment but that is because I have an extra copy of pictures and movies taking up 73 gigs.. so I really only have about 40Gb to clone so I guess I would be down to more like 40 minutes.

My data (pictures, misc files, movies, etc..) are stored on a file server that has a mirrored drive that runs 24/7 and does an automatic mirror on a daily basis.  I already have 1TB of storage there.   So to answer your question of why tie up a big disk.  Simple storage is cheap so I don't feel like I am tieing it up.  I really have no need for a 1TB drive on my computer.  I only bought them because they were within my budget when I was building a new computer.

Actually I have 4 drives not 3 but I didn't have plans for the 73GB drive.  I was thinking of dedicating the 73GB drive as my "windows" drive so to speak actually it is a replacement of my previous system drive that failed.  Hence why I am looking at a backup scenario so I don't have to reinstall windows where I have to sit at the computer to do it vs a backup where I can be away from the computer while the backup completes and I can make better use of my time.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Steve:

Seekforever's advice is worth reconsidering. One factor that you have overlooked is that software, not hardware, is the usual cause of operating system failure. These failures can be caused by viruses, installation of bad drivers, or Windows Updates gone amok. Sometimes these software issues go undiscovered for days or weeks. When you do discover a problem then you need to rely on your backup solution in order to recover from the problem.

If you have a collection of images going back several weeks or even months then your chances of finding one that is free of the problem are greatly increased. If you only have one clone, and the clone contains the problem then you are up the proverbial creek.

Hi Kolo,

Sometimes I am not clear in my responses.  I am not overlooking what seekforever was saying.  He brings up very good points for software failure as you have mentioned.  And I agree that software failure is much more commonplace than hardware failure but that sort of depends on the user.  I myself have only dealt with software failure once in the past 11 or so years and hardware failure once in the past 11 or so years.  Actually I count them both as a rarity.

Count me lucky I suppose or maybe I am doing something right, but I have never had windows updates gone amok, never had a bad driver that I couldnt fix inside of a few minutes, and only once have I had a virus that literally wiped out my computer and I had to reformat and reinstall.  Every bad driver I have ever had I knew within minutes of installing it so there is little chance it would get cloned and I have never had a problem rolling back the driver.  I have had numerous viruses or even malware and each time I literally knew within a few minutes something wasn't right so I can't imagine those getting cloned either. 

I wasn't indicating that I had no intentions of using the image feature.  But maybe I don't fully understand how the image works. 

Can an image be a complete backup of every last bit of data on a drive?  Lets say I did have a hardware failure of a drive.   Can I literally buy a new hard drive and restore the image from the day before to the new drive and restart my computer and it will be identical to the way it was the day before?

Honestly it sounds to me like using both is the way to go provided I can find ways to do it without using large amounts of time.

Steve Weichel wrote:

...Can an image be a complete backup of every last bit of data on a drive?  Lets say I did have a hardware failure of a drive.   Can I literally buy a new hard drive and restore the image from the day before to the new drive and restart my computer and it will be identical to the way it was the day before?

That's exactly correct. You can think of an image as being similar to a clone, except that there is an intermediate file involved.

So, for example, a clone copies the contents of hard disk A to hard disk B directly. An image copies the contents of hard disk A to a file that you can store anywhere you like. Later, you restore the image from the file to hard disk B. The end result is the same.

Imaging adds additional versatility, as mentioned in some of the above posts, since many images can be stored on a single disk, but you can only have one clone on a disk. Plus, with imaging you can make frequent incremental images to keep updated, but you cannot make an incremental clone.

Kolo,

new to acronis. i bought new hd and all i want to do is take ALL info from old hd and put on new hd. I have 3 partitions (dell laptop) C, Recovery (dell thing) and Data.  I have used the acronis migrate easy 7 to make partitions in new drive, but apparently (or I missed it) it doesn't copy data.  I really am not interested at this time to do fancy backups, imaging etc.

When I go to true image home, - utilities, clone.  all it wants to do is make partitions.  don't seem to be interested in moving data.

Guess I just don't get the language...

Can you help me with simple copy hd to copy hd (with vista in c and all hidden files...)

thank you

tim

Tim:

When you clone, TI should copy the partitions and their contents to the new HDD. Didn't this happen? Cloning may be difficult to do on a laptop because it requires that you connect two disks, old and new, to the laptop simultaneously. Can this be done on your laptop?

Which version of TI home are you using? If TI Home 2009, the user guide is here. Look at chapter 13 on page 105 for instructions on how to clone.

If you cannot connect two disks to your laptop simultaneously, do you have an external USB hard disk? If so, try the imaging method instead. Create a full-disk image of your existing hard disk (a "My Computer" backup) to the external USB disk. Include all of the existing partitions in this image. The result will be a large file stored on the external USB disk. Backing up is described in Chapter 5 of the User Guide.

Then shut down your laptop, remove the old disk, and install a new, blank disk in its place. Boot the laptop from the Acronis recovery CD and restore the image from the external USB disk to the new internal HDD.

When you start the restore wizard, select only one of the partitions first. If you do it this way then you will be able to choose a new size for the partition (if that's what you want; you can leave it at the existing size). Continue selecting and resizing the partitions and then finish the restore. If you're using TI Home 2009, as a last step restore MBR and Track 0 to the disk. Restoring is described in Chapter 6.

Reboot into Windows to check the results.

OK, I am close...  However, I put the backup on the NEW hd that is connected via usb.  I was going to mount all the partitions while it was in usb, then put into comp.

What you say is that I should have put backup on old hd and put new hd into comp.

Can I copy the .tib to the old and then swap drives and do what you said above?

Should I leave the .tib on the new drive or delete it?

What about mounting?

How do I make a acronis cd? (I have original vista disk), could I just use that for boot?

Couldn't find where to make boot cd in acronis

BTW, THANX for your help

Tim

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Side note Mark,

If I had 2 usb externals and a 3rd comp (which I do), could I just copy paste all data from a to b?

If so, would it copy mbr and all windows start stuff? Can you copy hidden files, like if I did it in a dos window in xp comp and did a copy a:\b:\.something something directory structure...

I thought this would be easy!  Found an article on robocopy but couldn't make that work last night til 2am! I finally got it to copy, but looked like just windows and not all the other stuff.

Anyway, what about the 2 usb drive method. would that work?

Thank you,

Tim

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Tim:

When you made the .tib file, was it a "My Computer" backup that included all of the partitions as opposed to a "My Data" backup that just copies files? You need the former to be able to restore an operating system partition to a new disk. You can't just copy files from a to b. The MBR and the partition structure also need to be in place, and that's what a TrueImage restore will do. For data partitions, you CAN copy from a to b, but not for the OS partition.

If you have a "My Computer" backup, known as an image, of the disk contained in a .tib file, then copy that file to one of your external USB disks.

To make an Acronis bootable CD, start TrueImage and use the Bootable Media Builder application to make one. It is imperative that you test boot your laptop with this CD to verify that it can see all of the disks that will be involved in the restore process; your laptop's internal disk and any external USB disk attached. If you can, then you're good to go.

Boot the laptop from the Acronis boot CD with the new hard disk installed and the external disk containing the .tib file attached. Restore from the external to the internal.

I put in recovery disk, new blank hd and all i get is a NTLDR is missing

t

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That error message comes from a hard disk. It sounds like your recovery CD is not booting - check the boot order in the BIOS. If you recently created the recovery CD, check it in another PC to be sure that it will boot the PC.

ok, i do a f12 and get a boot from cd.

BUT then, on the restore wizard, the whole system locks up where it says specify restore settings of partion c. it has "new location" underlined, but is not changeable, and nothing else is changeable.  I get beeps. Ohh, wait, something just came up. It is the backup disk info.  took it a few minutes to come up! Thought it was dead.

It appears to be working now.  First partition will be about 2 hours.

I'll B Back!

T

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I must say that this program MAY be necessary to do a disk copy, BUT sure is confusing. AND with so many features, ... All I wanted to do was swap out a 120g for a 320g from a almost new dell lapper.  there really ought to be a EASY way to connect the 2 and say DUPEME!  Leave all these features for those chores where it is needed.

Thank you for your help, I have 1 hr and 47 minutes until the first partition is backed up.  By the way, couldn't find the place to move the partition size in this area... will have to do that later with disk director. (when i get all the data transfered).

Later,

T

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