need: doing test, assuming HD crashed, want to restore to new HD via external drive
Compared to most posters in these forums I'm a rank amateur- so bear with me.
I purchased ATI 11 Home 3-4 years ago. I've got it on an older Dell with XP.
The manual explains how to clone a drive but it doesn't explain exactly what to do if your drive crashes and you want to restore an image to a new drive- from the external USB drive where I do my image backups.
So, wanting to experiment, I'm going to pretend my drive crashed.
I'd first install a new drive. I've done this years ago but forgot the process. I don't think I'd have trouble putting the drive in the machine- but then I don't know what will happen. Will the BIOS be able to recognize the drive and automatically "install" it? New drives, I think, don't need formatting. (?)
Then of course it will have no OS. I should think I then bootup with the Acronis CD and it will run OK without an installed OS? Will it see the external USB drive?
If it will see the external drive, I presume it would then be able to restore an image?
I have no doubt I can figure this out if I spend enough time at it but I have other obligations so any hints will be appreciated.
Also, I realize this version is way out of date but after reading all the problmes in the ATIH 2012 forum I'm in no hurry to update.
Joe
Compared to most posters in these forums I'm a rank amateur- so bear with me.
I purchased ATI 11 Home 3-4 years ago. I've got it on an older Dell with XP.
The manual explains how to clone a drive but it doesn't explain exactly what to do if your drive crashes and you want to restore an image to a new drive- from the external USB drive where I do my image backups.
You don't want to clone. You want to create a disk and partition backup (an image backup) of all the partitions on your disk that contains the OS. ATI will possibly show you more partitions than what windows explorer shows up. This is because lots of OEM like Dell set up all sorts of hidden partitions, and Microsoft installation DVD can create some as well: system reserved, OEM, Diagnostics, Recovery, etc.
All these partitions have to be in the backup to recover your system.
So, wanting to experiment, I'm going to pretend my drive crashed.
I'd first install a new drive. I've done this years ago but forgot the process. I don't think I'd have trouble putting the drive in the machine- but then I don't know what will happen. Will the BIOS be able to recognize the drive and automatically "install" it? New drives, I think, don't need formatting. (?)
No need to preformat your new disk.
Then of course it will have no OS. I should think I then bootup with the Acronis CD and it will run OK without an installed OS? Will it see the external USB drive?
You should test this before you need it. This is a very important step for any backup software.
If it will see the external drive, I presume it would then be able to restore an image?
Yes. The imaging/restore process is the most reliable process in ATI. It doesn't mean it works all the time. The primary source of failure is when the user has not tested the recovery CD and his doesn't work properly on his system. The second most common issue is when the user didn't have the right partitions in the backup and/or doesn't restore the necessary partitions (making sure the backup contains all partitions alleviates these risks). The third type of issues is when the backup file got corrupted somehow (regular validation of the backups with ATI helps prevent this).