Newbie questions
I am trying out the trial version of TI 2010 and have a couple of questions. So far I have done three backups, two validations, created a boot disk and validated through it. They seem to have all gone without a problem .
I have done one recovery which also seemed to go well except for one aspect I did not expect. The sourve drive was my C: drive, I did a disk image backup of the full disk (system reserved and main partition. The size of the data on the source disk was 39 gb. The backup completed successfully.
I then did a recovery of this backup to a blank disk. The recovery also completed successfully , but the size of the used space on the recovery disk is (according to 'Properties') is 21.3 GB.
Why wouldn't the recovery use as much space as the original?
Also, is a full disk image of your system disk enough to create a disk that could be swapped in if your original system disk tanked? According to the help files it would seem so, but I have read some posts that suggest that this is not always the case.
Thanks for the help.
Joe.
What is a Disk Signature?
I did do a full disk image.
It's the unique ID value given to a drive. If it's different than what System Restore expects, the partition has moved, or sectors are not restored to the original locations, Windows will delete the files.
There is a Recover disk signature checkbox option in TI when setting up the restore (in the What to recover step). There's more information in Section 11.1.4 of the manual.
Was System Restore enabled when you created the backup image?
I did not recover the disk signature, I would not have wanted to as this was just a test. Why would the disk signature affect storage size on the recovered drive?
I did have system restore turned on on the C: (system) drive. The configuration for the C: drive says that system restore is using 7g of space. Does that not get put into the backup image? Even so that leaves 3g unaccounted for.
I already said why not restoring the Disk Signature could affect the used space on the recovered drive. Unless you're checking before booting into Windows, it's not going to be accurate. (I assume TI still restores the data even though it will be deleted. However I haven't tested it.) For example, restore the partition from the TI CD and then look at how much space is used on the partition while still in TI (before rebooting).
Normally, you don't want the Disk Signature to change. You said you restored to a blank disk. That disk would have a different Disk Signature.
You could do another test restore and select the option to keep the signature and see if the results are different (don't do any partition resizing). I assume you already know not to boot with both drives connected.
I tried the restore while selecting the option to keep the signature. I restored the image to an external USB drive. I got a messsage that the backup completed successfully, but also got several warnings about failure to read certain sectors, and a notice that my system needed to restart. When I restored without the disk signature retention I only got a 'completed successfully message.
I disconnected the external drive and rebooted. Windows would not start. The black screen instructed me to boot from my windows installation disk and do an installation repair. The windows installation disk booted but never displayed anything more than a blank desktop. Fortunately I had made a system restore disk that made a successful repair of the windows installation.
I read in the manual that the disk signatures of all drives are compared at boot.
"During Windows booting, its loader checks the disk signatures of all the connected drives, and if it finds two identical disk signatures, the loader changes the signature of the second disk, which would be the clone disk"
I am assuming that the boot identity was confused by retaining the boot disk signature on a second disk, even if that disk was not connected to the computer (?).
In any case I did not examine the size of the recovered image after all this. I deleted both partitions on this external disk and re-partitioned as a simple volume.
In a real restore scenario, you don't normally do this type of restore in Windows. It should be done from the TI CD. Also, you wouldn't normally boot with both drives connected as Windows will change one of them and/or get confused.
If you want to restore to the exernal drive and then test it, you would need to do the restore using the TI CD, remove the drive from the external enclosure and install in in place of the original drive (the original drive is disconnected or removed), then boot and see if it works.
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For just checking the used space on the partition after the restore, do the restore normally (don't make TI keep the Disk Signature).