How complete is Restore?
Using True Image 11 Home with XP Home SP3. Acronis build no. 8101.
I recently made a COMPLETE BACKUP of my hard drive onto an external drive. Yesterday my hard drive crashed and I just purchased a new drive.
Will the RESTORE Function of Acronis restore the entire old drive, INCLUDING THE OPERATING SYSTEM? Can I just boot using the original disk (or the boot disk I had made), load Acronis, and restore everything including the OS?
Any assistance would be appreciated. Thank you.
Thank you for your quick response.
I am not sure what you mean by a "disk and partition backup".
I have only a single partition .... the C: drive.
I did a "Complete Backup" but NOT with a sector-by-sector approach. Is this sufficient to restore all programs, apps, and the OS?
Is this what you refer to as a "disk and partition backup"?
Morton,
By the sounds of it you have made a complete disk image, in which case everything is there the OS and all your programs.
One thing to watch out for, if you make scheduled images, when you restore the image TI11 will know you haven't made an image, it will therefore attempt to make one, make sure you have disconnected the drive that has your image on as otherwise it could be overwritten. If you made you images manually you have no need to worry.
Yes. It looks like you did a disk and partition image. You don't need the sector by sector option to be turned on.
If I understand correctly, I can merely replace the old drive with a new one with even a greater capacity, boot the computer with the original Acronis disk (or the boot disk I created from the original), and restore my entire drive to original condition by using Acronis "Restore" .
Does this accomplish any formatting, etc. of the new drive?
You understand correctly. You don't need any formatting or preparation prior to the restore. You should test your recovery CD to prove that you can boot with it on your computer, see all you current disks as they should be seen and browse to your backup. YOu should even restore a couple of files from your backup. You'd better do it now before you actually need to a real restore...
Thank you to Pat and Colin. It all sounds too easy (I'm not complaining, however).
You mention a "recovery cd". What is that?
I have the original Acronis CD and the complete backup located on an external hard drive.
When I made the complete backup, I backed up my C: Drive to the external drive which was my E: Drive.
When I boot and select RESTORE from the Acronis disk, which is now in what WAS the D: Drive, will the external drive still be referred to as E:? In other words, how does the recovery program know which drive letter is which? How do I locate the backup on the external drive?
Am I reading too much into this?
Good questions.
You can use the installation CD as the recovery CD. The version of ATI that runs from the CD is a Linux-based version. As long as it does what you need on your computer, you can use this one. If you had some problems booting, seeing your disks or accessing your backup, you have other options, not needed at this point.
Since this is a Linux-based version, the drive letters are typically not the same as in Windows. That doesn't matter. Do not try to correct this. Just check that the source drive (the one containing your backup) is accessible, and that your target drive is also available for you to restore to, regardless of the drive letter you see.
You can safely start the restore wizard to try it out and learn about the steps. Just don't proceed at the very last step.
An ideal backup is a backup that contains *all* the partitions that you have on the disk containing the system drive. Some partitions are hidden from Windows explorer. To make sure you included them, choose operations, edit backup settings. In the window that opens, click on the blue link in the upper right "swith to disk mode", verify that the disk has a checkmark. This will make sure all the partitions are included.
To locate the backup from the recovery CD, click on browse for backup. You can then right click on the backup and choose to validate or recover. Try to validate. If a message says it doesn't find volume 1 or whatever, simply browse to the first backup file in the chain and retry.
Let us know how it goes.
While in the process of removing the old hard drive which was no longer working, I discovered that the ribbon connector going to the motherboard was cracked. I replaced the cable and tried to boot the computer.
Miracle of miracles! I just saved myself the cost of a new drive.
Apparently the cracked connector must have come loose due to vibration of some sort. One part of the connector was intact while the other, smaller portion, was sitting up at an angle from the motherboard connector. Replacing the ribbon cable solved my problem.
Thank you to all who tried to help. Much was learned from our discussions.