Splitting a backup of two drives in two
I have a TIH 2014 backup (one TIB file) for my C and S drives. It's very large and I'd really only like to keep the backup of the (smaller) C drive. Is there a way to create a backup of the C drive only from my existing TIB file? Although I still do have TIH 2014 installed, I do not have a spare computer on which to restore the whole thing and then create a new backup file of only the C drive.
Steve, the only "spare" drive I have available is a 1 TB external USB harddrive. The .tib file that I would like to "split" is slightly larger than 1 TB and is currently sitting on my internal data drive. Could you please advise as to specific steps I could take to accomplish this? Thank you.
Eliezer, what is the size of your C: drive within the .TIB file?
Assuming that your C: drive is smaller than your external 1TB USB drive, then you can try following the steps shown in the ATIH 2014 User Guide: How to recover more than one partition at once and select only the partitions from the C: drive in your TIB file to be restored / recovered to your external drive.
Thank you, Steve!
The C drive within the backup file is much smaller than 1 TB. What confused me about the page to which you linked is all the discussion about partition size. Do I really need to deal with all that? I simply want to end up with a .TIB file on my external drive containing data for only the C drive. Also, I do not want to affect my internal harddrives at all. (Doesn't "restore" imply that?...) In short, will following those steps really accomplish what I want to do?...
Eliezer, there should be no risk to your internal hard drives provided you make the correct selections for where to restore the C: drive partition to on your external USB drive.
If you are worried, then the alternative method is a little more involved, as this would require that you boot from your Acronis Rescue Media (on CD or USB stick) to perform the restore, at which time you could disconnect or remove your internal drive(s) for absolute protection / safety.
In terms of sizes, you should be able to just restore the partitions at the same size they were saved.
You are only using the external USB drive as a temporary staging point, so that you can then make a new backup image of only the restored C: drive data from that drive as a separate .TIB file. Once the backup is made, you can then delete or format the restored data on the USB drive.
In terms of sizes, you should be able to just restore the partitions at the same size they were saved.
Will the partitions default to the original size? If not, how will I know what the C's partition size was?
Also, would using "Disk mode" also be ok in this scenario?
Thank you very much for your highly helpful and prompt assistance!!!
Eliezer
When you select the partition to be restored in the ATIH GUI panel, this should show you the size of the original partition as recorded in the backup file.
You can try switching to Disk mode in the ATIH GUI but be careful that this does not want to restore all of the disks contained in your backup file, i.e. your C: and S: disks as you said the backup included both of these.
If you are only wanting to restore / recover user data from the backup, such as your Documents etc, then you could do this by taking the option to Recover files in the GUI for the same backup instead of restoring the whole disk or partitions.
How does this (attached screenshot) look? My external drive has nothing that I want to keep on it currently.
Eliezer, the screenshot looks OK, the warning message is simply informing you that the the partition format of the restored disk will not be changed, i.e. that it was backed up as a MBR disk and will be restored as the same.
The image also shows that the original Samsung 840 EVO SSD was 232.9GB in size but you are restoring to a disk of 931.5GB size where the end result will be that only 232.9GB of disk space will be used, the remainder of the external USB drive will be left as unallocated by virtue of restoring the original disk 'as is'.
The last point from the image is that you will also restore the System Reserved and two unnamed partitions which are most likely to be Windows Recovery partitions. The System Reserved partition is where the boot configuration data is normally stored on a Windows 7 & above OS unless you have an EFI boot system, in which case you would have an EFI System Partition shown.
So the result of my screenshot operation will be:
- that my 1 TB external drive will be completely "filled" with 230 GB?
- I don't think there's anywhere near that amount of actual data on the C drive. So am just creating a bloated resulting restoration?
- Do I at least end up with a .TIB file that I can move elsewhere or is it a whole "disk" instead of just a .TIB file?
In short, would I instead be better off doing a recovery of just the C partition to the external drive - and that would give me the .TIB file I'm looking for?
Eliezer, the end result will be that your 1TB external drive will contain the restore data and partitions from your Samsung 840 EVO SSD in the same sizes as were on that original drive. The remainder of the disk space on the 1TB drive will show as being unallocated.
This is the equivalent of restoring the backup file to another Samsung 250GB drive.
You would then need to make a new backup of the restored drive in order to create a new .TIB file that just holds your Samsung drive data & partitions.
If you just recover only the C: partition without the System Reserved partition, then you will have an incomplete backup image that could not be used to recover your system. The additional Windows Recovery (unnamed partitions) can normally be deleted as these are created by Windows when upgrading to new build versions.
I'm so sorry, but I'm still not clear.
My goal is to end up with:
- a .TIB file
- as small as possible
- that can could be used to recover my system
What is the best way to accomplish that?... :-|
Eliezer, this is what I have been trying to show you how to do.
As I stated in my first post, you cannot split an existing backup .TIB file. so the only way to try to achieve what you are wanting to do is to restore the backup image to another physical drive then create a new backup .TIB file of that restored drive. To make this usable to to recover your system, then you need to include all the required partitions that Windows will need to be bootable.
Hey, you did say exactly that!
You would then need to make a new backup of the restored drive in order to create a new .TIB file that just holds your Samsung drive data & partitions.
:-)
Thank you so much for your patience and help!
Eliezer