Cloning a system with only an 80GB hdd. Is it possiable. Can I clone & transfer the image to another system for storage.

I think it would be smarter to make a full disk backup rather than a clone (consult the user guide if you are not familiar with the diff). With a backup you can store it anywhere you want and use the rest of the drive for whatever you want, which also means you can store it wherever you can store a file (provided it not too big to fit). If you clone, the entire disk will be dedicated to that one disk image.

entire disk ? entire hard drive or just a single partition ? If that were the case am I better off using my 2Terabyte hdd and using the 1TB to back up.. would it all fit. I'll read through the guide tonight.

Thanks for your reply.

Stacey,

Are you using a SSD? If yes, let us know. You might have to align your disk.

A disk and partition backup contains all the information you need (at the sector level) to restore your drive, should you have to replace your drive entirely.
The key is to do a disk and partition backup that contains ALL the partitions of your system disk, and to create a recovery CD that you have actually tried out by booting the computer on it and browsing to your backup.
You can exclude from your backup *folder* that contains only user data. But do not exclude any user partition, hidden partitions, recovery partitions, etc. IIf you exclude *folders* from your disk and partition backup, remember to create another backup for these folders (maybe a file backup), because when you *restore* a disk and partition backup, the data in the underlying partitions will be erased by the recovery.
If you have backup a 80GB disk, and you use normal compression, your backup will be smaller than 80GB because ATI backs up only the sectors where there is data known to the filesystem.

No, It's not a solid state drive. Just a normal 80GB hard drive. It's partitioned into 3: C:/ 22.23GB(System Files) D:/ 30.01GB (Documents And Settings) & E:/ 22.28GB (BackUp). I created the back up in hopes I can clone the entire system so if something was to go wrong I could recovery my system from E:/ (BackUp) partition, I know if the hard drive was to fail I'd loose it. But I plan to transfer the image to my desktop as I have 3 hard drives.

Seagate 80GB System files & Documents And Settings
Western Digital 1TB Personal files
Western Digital 2TB Awaiting back up of the Seagate and WD 1TB.

So hopefully I can clone my Seagate and WD 1TB to the WD 2TB and have enough space to fit my dads 80GB & maybe my mums 80GB hard drive clones. If that's possible.

I'll take a read through Acronis Html Help but further input would be appreciated. Can I test the results using virtual machine software ? Just hoping I get it right first time and never have to manually re-install and restore again. =) hey I've done it over 300 times :L

Thanks

Let's clear some terminology out of the way. For us here, a clone is a disk. A backup is a disk and partition backup in a TIB file. I think you call that clone. That makes sense because you actually can restore or duplicate your drive by restoring that TIB files onto another disk. I will call this backup, or TIB file.

There should be no problem creating a backup either from the Acronis Bootable Recovery Media (that you can create from ATI), or from ATI running in windows.
In Windows, click on create a disk and partition backup, click on the blue link in the top right corner and swith to disk mode. Select the disk you want to backup. ATI will probably propose your 2TB disk as the default destination. Click on that destination, choose browse and use the left navigation panel to navigate to another place, or to change the default name of the TIB you will create.
For your desktop, I suggest you use ATI for the 80GB system disk and create a disk and partion backup. For your 1TB you can use a disk and partition backup or a file backup, or you can simply use a file replicator backup software (like SyncToy, Karen's replicator, SyncBack, GoodSync, etc.). This works well if many of your files are already compressed files and don't change a lot like MP3, MP4/AVI, JPEG, VOB, etc. I personally use the last option to create a mirror/backup of my personal files with Syncback. It is fast and reliable: the files are not stuffed in a big proprietary container. Your choice.
For the 80GB system disk, leave the default version chain backup as the backup scheme. You can change it later when you get familiar with the program. In backup options, go to the advanced tab, unfold the validation section, click on validate after backup, click on the monthly blue schedule, click on do not schedule. You can change the validation options later as well.
Finally schedule your backup.

Do I need "Volume Shadow Copy" enabled I have it disabled in services and some other's disabled following a guide from blackviper. I used the tweaked column in the 32bit windows xp pro section.

Sorry but I'm still trying to wrap my head around disk cloning and acronis true image software. I'm reading from the Html help file and other such sources on disk cloning in general thanks for your reply. I'll post back when we're on the same page cause I'm not fully understanding.

I think I need to use a disk clone for my desktop which has 3 hard drives. 2 in which are occupied and the 2TB which is unoccupied acting as the destination path for my back ups which I'm hoping to accomplish soon but now I wish to add my family's laptops to that hard drive to (If possiable), Since they only have a single 80GB hard drive. I don't live with my dad and he's not clued up with computers and neither is my mum but I know enough to be able to restore them but nothing on how to back up or recover.

The laptop has only an 80GB hard drive partitioned into 3 the first partition is C:/ which just holds my operating system and installed application, the D drive holds my documents and settings I changed the default destination path from C to D drive to match a manufactures install. It had Vista installed initially but that was taken off and the hidden recovery partition wiped off (Not from me) so I spent like a week trying to figure out how I change the install paths.

Generally my main goal is too:
Backup/clone/secure the whole contents of both laptops so they can be restored to normal. Both laptops only has single hard drives so I'm not sure theirs enough space to store the back up on the laptops themselves.. I know its not an effective method but If I can transfer the copies over to my desktop and store them than that would be great but I wish to store a copy on the laptops themselves so they can restore with out to much of my involvement and the hassle of transferring files.

Then I need to backup/clone mine. I like to map out and customize the views of all my images, files and folders it takes weeks and at least 4,000 according to the registry are stored at present. How do I secure those so I no longer have to re-customize all my file views when restoring from ATI ? I think exporting the registry doesn't work since it doesn't physically restore my files view and position tbh I'm not sure what it does but it's never worked for me.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\shell
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\shellNoRoam

So If I were to just back up my Personal files from E:/ those file positions and everything else won't be restored. If I clone both disks 80GB & 1TB to the 2TB would that secure and restore my customized file layouts ?

Thanks

It's quite important as I've happily restored my computer and all the file views in the past from scratch but now it's to much to manage and that was before anyone had mentioned recovery software to me. I had heard of Norton Ghost but was reluctant to use since I think most of my computer problems stemmed from their crap anti-virus to begin with. Pure Hell =)

I will continue to read through the Acronis help html file to better understand how to use acronis to it's full potential thanks.

If you do a full backup, you can restore to any size disk on which the image will fit. The image will have everything that was on the original disk except for only placemarkers for the pagefile and hibernation file since win recreates those as needed so never a need to back them up. So the backup will ahve the registry files in their entirety.

Clone vs backup using ATI vocabulary.

Backup is when you copy the content and store it in a file that ATI can subsequently then restore to the same or another location. You can store as many backups as will fit on the disk. E.g., if you backup an entiere drive that has 10GB is use, even if the disk has another 90GB of capapcity that isn't in isue (has no files on it) then the backup will be only about 10GB and you could store about ten of them on a 200GB disk.

Clone is when you take the image of one disk and immediately copy it onto another disk. The entire target disk is used up for the cloning operation. You get one clone image on the target drive. You don't have to do a resotre operation but you can't store up a bunch of backups, you get only the one image.

Also, Consult the user guide for more info.

I see, So i can only clone one disk to one drive and that clone will occupy the whole drive without being able to add any further files ? Then presumably I can mount and browse the drive or boot from it...

So if I use the disk and partition backup in a TIB file will that give the same result but enable me to store multiple files and boot restore from that image like a system restore ? thanks for the replies I'll continue to read the user guides :worship:

After cloning you can do whatever you want with the clone; it should behave just like the original drive.

If you make a backup, you can have as many backups as will fit on the disk you store them on. Restore a disk image from a backup file gets you the whole disk, partitions, boot sector, everything but you have more flexibility as which paritition goes where (although you can ignore that if you want too usually). Basically if youe restore a backup of a disk, the result is that you have the smae thing you would have had with cloning, except that you could have more than one backup.

Stacey Parish wrote:

I see, So i can only clone one disk to one drive and that clone will occupy the whole drive without being able to add any further files ? Then presumably I can mount and browse the drive or boot from it...

So if I use the disk and partition backup in a TIB file will that give the same result but enable me to store multiple files and boot restore from that image like a system restore ? thanks for the replies I'll continue to read the user guides :worship:

so if I clone my 80GB seagate I can than manually add my WD 1TB drive contents into a partition on that drive ? Will it restore my file layouts ?

With the two laptop would I create a drive and partition backup and store it on the 2TB drive

Bump~

:)

Stacey,

Can you clarify your question?