Clone doesn't complete
I tried several times today to clone my discs and it went through all the steps okay. After the cloning was complete the pc rebooted and upon entering windows explorer in xp the destination disc was not present. I went to windows management console and the disc was present but there was no assigned drive letter just an unalocated designation. I uninstalled 2012 and reinstalled true image 11 and it cloned perfectly. I am wondering what the problem is. Anyone have an answers? Thanks Alan
I assume that, sinc eyou can eneter explorere, then you are booitng windows successfully. So the disk you are restoring is not a system disk, correct?
Make sure you are restoring the tib to the correct hdisk and partition (don't use drive letters-- go by any other identifying characteristics of the drive. Since starting the restore under windows is going to boot yu into linux, you might as wel do the restore form the ati bootCD and jsut go directly into linux without bothering with the boot manager on the system disk.
Hi Grover:
With my desktop system, I use SATA drives connected to a hot-swappable SATA bay and I make a clone of my system drive about once a month. Then I put that clone on a shelf. I usually maintain to three clones in a round-robin fashion but at the moment I only have two.
Three or four times each year, I use the newly-generated clone to run on. I call it my "poor man's Mirror" because it has the effect of reducing overall wear-and-tear on the system hard drive(s). This can be a hassle because I do have some software that maintains hard-drive authorizations which require additional human intervention when I get ready to run on a new clone, but it doubles or triples the life-expectancy of my system drive so I am willing to tolerate it.
With your comments above and the knowledge base item regarding laptop cloning with True Image Boot, I suspect that the cloning operation must be performed in the direction of
external (usb) -->internal (sata)
...and that the other way around does not work because the boot sector, MBR, (whatever) can't be written correctly to a USB connected hard drive. I don't know if USB 3.0 drives suffer from the same issue, but without testing, it would be safest to assume that they do.
If my logic is correct, then this presents a problem for my backup scenario for my Asus laptop. Routine cloning would not be possible without opening up the laptop and swapping hard drives each time I want to take a clone. This would be an unbelievable annoyance.
My laptop only supports one SATA drive...that is the internal drive. Any additional drive must be connected via USB. That laptop supports SATA drives via a single USB 3.0 port on the side of the laptop.
I currently use ATIH 2010 on my desktop system and do not run Acronis on the laptop. I am considering the purchase of a 3-PC license of ATIH-2012. But even if I do install Acronis on the laptop for full and incremental backups, I still think that periodic cloning is the most reliable backup method (and the fastest recovery method) for my personal computers. Therefore, I still need to find a way to make reliable clones of my laptop hard drive's partitions, including the boot drive.
Background: The laptop is currently only a mono-boot i7 system that runs Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit. I use the developer version of SQL Server 2008 plus a handful of Cubase and other DAW software applications. Eventually (when hard drive prices fall and capacities rise again), I plan to replace the hard drive with a larger capacity drive and I'll install a Linux partition.
Going Forward: For now and the future I am willing to produce "broken" clones for this laptop and put them on the shelf, but only if I can determine that the partition content is correct and as long as I can establish a manual procedure for fixing the MBR or boot sector in the event that I am forced to use a clone to recover from a bad system drive.
Any thoughts on this?
Thanks!
Bif,
We have very similar setups. My desktop has two quick swap bays and these can easily be used to place a blank disk in the boot/target bay and a source disk in a non-boot bay. This setup makes the clone procedure very easy should I want to do clones and this would be done when booted from the TI bootable media CD.
Or, I can place the system source disk in a docking station (esata or usb) and then clone from the docking station to the quick swap system bay. This also works very well again using the TI CD.
My preference is not to use the clone procedure due to its safety risk plus I find the backup/restore method works just as well or better but it is slightly slower.
My procedure is make and retain regular full disk backups and these backup files (30-35GB) are stored on a variety of internal and external disks. So, if I have a system disk failure, I put in a new blank disk in the boot bay and restore a backup file onto the new disk and within a short time, I am back in business and as current as of the last backup.
Or, if I simply have issues with some software, I will restore only the drive C with the most recent (usually the night before and early this morning) and I have a working system.
Basically, you could say we do the same except you use cloning and I use backups/restores of the most current backups.
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Again, we both have the same problem with our Asus laptops. For me, pulling out and replacing the hard drive requires the laptop to be almost completely dis-assembled. The keyboard and back must be removed for access. This in-accessibility (for me) means that the only time I am going take things apart is if the disk needs true replacement.
My replacement plans for the laptop is to use the same backup and restore procedure.
Regularly, I perform full disk backups of the Asus disk (with some file exclusions) and store these backups on a couple external disks--usually via a Thermaltake us3 docking station. When times comes where a replacement disk is needed, I will "bite the bullet" with all the hassle and install a new disk inside the laptop. Then I will restore the backup from the usb3 external to the new blank disk located inside the laptop.
My Asus laptop disk (750GB) is split into 2 partitions and I also store some duplicate backups on the data partition. So, if I need to quickly restore the system partition, I can do so knowing that I have duplicate backups on external disks if needed.
If I were you, I would take the additional extra precautions of performing disk option backups of the Asus so that if your blind clone does not boot, you have a safety valve with the disk option backup. A restore of backup would or should produce a bootable Asus. I have had success in restoring the Asus disk from a backup file.
I have 2012 installed on the desktop but 2011 (with internet security) installed on the laptop.
Don't forget, the use of the TI CD means that installation is not required in order to do backup or restores or clones.
Hi again Grover.
I do not understand how cloning carries "added risk" as you mentioned. To me, rebuilding a drive from various bits and pieces (a blank drive plus full backups plus incremental backups, and then the invariable fixing of the MBR) is always riskier than a straight and pure copy. Making it useful is also much more time consuming.
I rebuilt a single partition (about 400 GB) one time with TIH 2010. It required a full backup and a couple of incrementals and it still required hours to complete. That's a lot of time for not even a half-terabyte.
On the other hand, it takes a couple hours to clone my ENTIRE 2.0 TB drive, which I do just before I go to bed or before I leave the house to run errands. Recovery is very fast. Swap hard drives and boot from the latest clone. If any partitions need to be forward-recovered, then I can do that with my fulls and incrementals. Or just grab the most recently updated files from a later full+incremental series.
Since my last post was made, I have been reading some other threads in this forum and it sounds like there are some very very serious problems with ATIH 2012, particularly with the messy driver install/de-install methodology and also with the recognition of USB drive partitions.
I make heavy use of SDHC cards. I also plug cameras and my droid smartphone directly to the computer. All of these things need a drive letter and proper visibility or they are not very useful to me. All of my USB storage devices must be able to work both in the laptop and the desktop systems without breaking proper drive letter access for ALL typical devices, USB or otherwise.
It seems every year when I review the current version of Acronis True Image, I find one or more severe deal-killers. And so I wait for a stable, non-bluescreen, no-hassle version to come from Acronis. And every year I go back to using an older version.
Now I am nearing the end of my patience. I am planning to upgrade my workstation hardware later this year and also to purchase a NAS for additional storage. If ATIH 2012 cannot be fixed in time for my plans, then I must seriously consider a transition to one of the many backup/restore/clone alternatives in the market.
Color me frustrated.
Hi Bif,
My comments relating is risk is derived from the postings on the forum. Probably, the biggest risk is a user mistake of selecting the wrong drives. However, there are postings of both software and hardware and electrical malfunctions which render both drives non-bootable. In the backup/restore mode, the original is not involved--so the risk is lessor. For some restores via usb1 or 2, many have been horribly slow. The eSata and USH3 have improved the speeds dramatically--but there can be no denying that cloning is faster. My point with your ASUS is that I think a disk image backup is a prudent expenditure of time as your cloning results are unknown. For those using the cloning process for regular disk replacements, having a "fall back" plan of backups for emergency use could be a wise investment of time and space.
Yes, there have been many posts regarding usb issues with 2012. Hopefully, the next build will solve many of these issues but who knows when the next update will be. These USB problems do not effect all but those that are affected are very unhappy and who could blame them. My comments are my own as I am not employed by Acronis.
Thanks, Grover. I agree that a combination of both backups (cloning + full/incremental) is the best scenario.
I was seriously thinking about upgrading to ATIH 2012 today (Saturday) but now I think I shall wait. In the meantime, I have begun light research into Acronis alternatives. I have been an Acronis customer since 2005 and I would rather not consider another backup program. But this slowness in response and customer service, and now the multiple versions with sometimes catastrophic errors makes me realize that my loyalty may end up costing me dearly.
I just want a solution that works, doesn't break my system, and does not require me to sign up for an online storage subscription.
My workstation system currently has 1+ TB of data supporting 2 boots, applications, and data. Most of the data is in the form of sound sample libraries for my musical endeavors, so that part is huge. I also have an iTunes library that is approaching 50 GB and a fast-growing photo and video library since I recently purchased a DSLR camera that also shoots video.
I only install Acronis on the first boot because the 2nd is for the music stuff and I don't want any software kicking off (not even backups, antivirus, or defrags) during recording. So any bad errors would likely be restricted to the first boot, but that would potentially impact all of my office, web, photo, video, and database work.
For me Acronis only has a few months to get it right. I am thinking about buying that NAS in the next 6-8 weeks and it will require a backup strategy. Around the same time, the new Ivy Bridge processors will become available and later this year Windows 8 will go live.
I have decisions to make and stuff to do. I hope Acronis can fix their software before I need to implement my plans.