Restoring to external hard drive
I've got Acronis 2013.
I have a few spare cloned hard drives that has the operating system on it so I can pop it in the computer and run the computer. Every so often I'll wipe one of my hard drive clones clean, and have it re-cloned from one of my saved Acronis backups.
Problem is right now when I do this, I have to pop the hard drive inside my computer and run it and then do the backup to turn that hard drive into a clone. Well, this ties up my computer for a while every time I do this as I only have the one computer.
I can connect my spare hard drives to my computer via Esata. Is it possible to restore a hard drive from a cloned image via Esata? Or do you have to put the hard drive you want to put the clone on inside the computer to restore the hard drive?
Would be nice if I could wipe clean and install a cloned image on a hard drive externally via Esata. That way I don't have to have my computer tied up every time I want to install a cloned image on a spare hard drive.
Or do you have to put the hard drive you want to put the clone on inside the computer to restore the hard drive?
If the brand is Lenova, there is a good chance the answer could be yes-the target needs to be inside the machne.. Do be VERY cautius that you do not attempt to boot from the new drive while the old drive is still attached. If you do, the system becomes confused and you both disks could be non-bootable without repairs.
Forum member "Xpilot" used a procedure whereby he installed two quick removal trays in his desktop. He did regular full disk backups.
Each month, he would remove the working disk and store it away.
Install a new or different disk, and restore his current most recent backup.
So the net result was he began using the new disk from its current status and his old working disk was protected by being stored awayi.
Each month, he used this procedure and was able to rotate as many disks as he wanted to store away.
This is a laptop. Only one Esata port.
I use this clone hard drive as a backup so I can pop it in the computer anytime I want and be able to use the computer any time and boot.
I still don't understand. Lets say I have a wiped spare hard drive that I want to be able to have a runnable Windows 7 OS on it from one of my updated hard drives that I saved a clone or image from. How do I get that image or clone file on that spare hard drive through the Esata port so that it is bootable as soon as I pop it in the computer after putting the image or clone on it?
It's just annoying everytime I need to restore a spare hard drive to make it bootable after I wipe it clean that I have to pop it inside the computer to do the restore, vs. restoring it via Esata port. As doing it inside my computer ties up my computer for hours on end. Keep in mind this needs to be a bootable drive, which is why I generally have done a clone on it because I use it as a spare bootable drive.
MM,
This is my point. If you have a full disk image back up, you can restore that image or its individual partitions to a drive connected to the eSATA port, and then only need to pop that disk into the laptops main drive bay when you want to make a switch. Keep this in mind... the recovery environment must be able to see the attached disks both target and destination, (chipsets) must be supported.
Cloning from a source disk to an externally connected disk (example eSATA) is possible, but we have found this method to be problematic, unreliable, and sometimes unsafe. Putting the target drive in its intended destination and cloning that way, has produced more reliable, consistent results and is less prone to user error.
Full Disk Image Back Up - If the partitions (disk) you are backing up are bootable, then restoring them to a "new" disk should also mean this drive is bootable as well. Partition(s) will be marked Primary, Active... and so forth. Are our suggestions helping to give you better picture of how to use Acronis effectively?
Thanks MVP Grover!!
MM,
This is my point. If you have a full disk image back up, you can restore that image or its individual partitions to a drive connected to the eSATA port, and then only need to pop that disk into the laptops main drive bay when you want to make a switch. Keep this in mind... the recovery environment must be able to see the attached disks both target and destination, (chipsets) must be supported.Cloning from a source disk to an externally connected disk (example eSATA) is possible, but we have found this method to be problematic, unreliable, and sometimes unsafe. Putting the target drive in its intended destination and cloning that way, has produced more reliable, consistent results and is less prone to user error.
Full Disk Image Back Up - If the partitions (disk) you are backing up are bootable, then restoring them to a "new" disk should also mean this drive is bootable as well. Partition(s) will be marked Primary, Active... and so forth. Are our suggestions helping to give you better picture of how to use Acronis effectively?
Thanks MVP Grover!!
I'll have to look into that other.
I've done restores from an image with the hard drive I'm restoring inside the computer, and the source is via external Esata connected hard drive. Which I found restoring from an image to take a long time and thus tied up the computer. But I guess you are saying you can restore to a hard drive connected externally via Esata? I always restored to a hard drive that was inside computer, which tied up my computer for a long time.
I keep spare hard drives ready to boot. Some of those spares are bootable clones in case of a crash and others are so I can pop it in if I am downloading something I'm not sure is safe. So if a virus were to get downloaded. It doesn't affect anything as it's just a dummy spare drive that I can then do a DOD wipe and reinstall a bare copy of the OS.
Anyways, when I've done a hard drive clone, I have the source hard drive inside the computer and I clone to an external hard drive via Esata. I've done that like 5 times with no problems.
I do keep a spare drive that has a bare copy of the OS installed along with my antivirus installed and Acronis. So every once in a while I pop it in so I can update the OS and my antivirus so I can have an up to date bare copy of the OS.
As one time I did a fresh OS install from CD and it took half the day doing updates. Which one time the updates displayed an error message and I had to start all over. I think it doing so many updates at once had corrupted something.
Do you have a link to instructions on how to restore an image TO an external hard drive via Esata? Which is what I think you are talking about?
i.e. Say I have a saved disk image sitting on my desktop. I connect a blank hard drive via Esata and have that external drive restored from the saved disk image that is sitting on my desktop?
If that is so, then I could "restore" hard drives externally without having to tie up my computer restoring them "internally". Which is how I think Acronis had instructed it to be done.
Yes you can, as long as Acronis sees the target disk connected on the eSATA controller. This should work in windows since the storage controller drivers will be present. The boot environment may be different if the hardware is not supported by the version/build of Acronis or boot CD you are using.
Another option. 2014 will include the latest drivers and chipset support. You can try recovery with a 2014 boot CD for free using the trial option. As far as documentation goes... some if not the best guides (with images) were created by MVP Grover. Please see this section for assistance.
https://forum.acronis.com/forum/3426
While I don't think there is a specific help document for eSATA specifically, recovery is the same regardless of the interface. If the disk is present (and selectable) in the recovery environment, Acronis should be able to recover images/partitions to the disk.