My very 1st time using Acronis True Image to do this.

??

Perhaps someone with a Dell of that vintage may be able to respond. In the meantime, here is what I would suggest.

1. You wont't know for sure until you try, and you can safely try if you get an extra hard disk and perform your test or a real restore to the new disk.
2. Perform a disk option backup. This is a backup which includes all partitions--both hidden and diagnostic--you want everything inside the backup. This backup archive file (*.tib) can be stored on an external or other internal or network drive.
3. Remove the old disk and insert the new new one in its place.

4. Boot from the Rescue CD
5. Perform a disk option restore. That is, you check mark the disk option and all partition will become autochecked.
6. After the restore, shutdown and disconnect the data cables on any other drives attached to this computer.
When you boot for the first time, you want Windows to see only the new replacement drive.
7. Boot up and see what you have.
8. If successful, you should be able to later restore the system partition or data partitions as singles but by your testing,
you have a replacement disk should you have a need or want to perform more testing.

Click on my signature below and look inside the index to item #3A. This includes a guide for backups plus a guide for recovery for the version 9-10-11 vintage.

Thanks Grover, good answers here! And great resources list.

I am not entirely sure that testing with another hard disk is an option here. I will have to see about that. But I doubt it. This is not my system, however I'm one of the few folks authorized and trusted to work on it.

More importantly, when ati2011 restores the 'hidden' partitions, will it get the descriptors correct?
I'm referring to the D7 and DE and 00 and 80 bytes in the partition table. That is something I'd hope Acronis is capable of answering, otherwise it doesn't say much for their advanced support, imho.

If and only *IF* trueimage can deal with those partition values correctly will this imaging work. And if trueimage does deal with it correctly, then I'm more than confident imaging will go smoothly. This is standard dell stuff and nothing uncommon, if not totally "industry" standard. Surely someone has had success or failure with backing up dell systems of just 2 or 3 years old.

Well, even Acronis' lack of response to my initial writing/posting was disheartening. I suppose then when I go to review and recommend an imaging product I will have to consider this. It has got to be embarrassing for a major company to have to rely on knowledgeable users for support.. wow!

Keatah,

As for your lack of respose from support, keep in mind that the official position of Acronis is if you want or qualify for supprt, you need to login to your personal account and fill out a support request. Any posting on the forum may or may not get a response from Acronis and most responses will be from volunteers--such as myself and others.

Acronis does not monitor every posting on the forum. If you write that you have version 2011, this may get some help. If you write that you have version 11 (which means old version 11), their response (if any) will most likely be to refer to try the 2011 trial package. The only version which is subject to fixes or updates is the current versiion and current build which is 2011 build 5519 with a new build expected out in the very very near future.

I would urge that the possibility of an test disk be seriously considered in this instance. Many of us have a rule which basically says
"Never spoil a working drive" unless you have proven that your recovery procedure will enable you to replace."
If you had the extra hard drive, this could be insurance against a possible failure of the existing drive. It could be stored in a safe or whatever. If this is a desktop, consider using a quick insert caddie and this would enable youj to swap drives after then to an immediate restore so you would have two drives up to date. If there really is important data on the hard drive, then the extra drive makes even more sense.

Sorry I can't help you with your Dell issue but the above would enable you to test your situation.

Keatah:

If it's any comfort, I have a pair of 2005 vintage Dell Dimension 8400s; one at the office and one at home. I've been using TrueImage to back them up and restore them since 2006. In that time period they have been running WinXP, then Vista, and now Windows 7, plus a couple of Linux distros. TI has never let me down in all that time and has been a life saver when I've done something stupid to the machines.

Neither of the machines has ever had the Dell special partitions on them** but in principle there shouldn't be any issues if you do. For partitions with unsupported formats like the type D0 and DE partitions, TI will copy them in sector-by-sector mode and will restore the same way. An image of a fully-supported partition type like FAT32 or NTFS will contain only used sectors and thus the backup file will be smaller. Under normal circumstances you would only choose sector-by-sector backup mode if you're making a backup of a damaged disk, hoping to restore it identically to another disk to do forensic file recovery on it later. The normal backup mode of TI is what you would want to use for everyday backups.

Grover's advice about testing the restore capabilities of TI on a spare hard disk is highly recommended. If you don't do a test restore with ANY imaging product then you don't really have a backup solution that you can rely on. You can probably find a 160GB hard disk for under $40 new, so it's a small price to pay for the confidence you can gain from doing a test restore.

Hope this helps...

**When you have imaging software, the Dell Recovery partition is completely unnecessary. An image file of the PC set up the way you like is much, much more useful than a "restore to factory condition" solution.

Yes of course, it makes perfect sense to do a trial run with a spare hard disk. Except that getting inside this particular computer is not a practical option. I had done that when I first got my notebook years ago. I wiped it clean, did a fresh install, with the basics. Then did a image, format, and restore. It worked and not a lot of time would have been lost if it failed. I could easily try again. And from there I built up and image collection as I went along. Each one being bigger and badder! ha!!

I made some test runs with making partitions on my sandbox just like the dell system I need to work with. Trueimage did indeed grab multiple partition types and effectively restore them. So that says it should work just fine. And I think we all have a reasonably high-level of confidence that the working "C" partition will be captured just fine.

As a side note, I experimented around with Easeus Backup 1.1 and it worked fine till I changed the partition descriptor. It did not capture the [DE] designator correctly. In fact, I got a decompression error with that! And was not able to restore. Ati2011 got it just fine and restored it just fine. So that, I think, should be good enough. And at least I can't foresee anything funky with the "C" partition. Standard stuff here.

I'll let you know how it all works out later on!
And thanks to all for the impressive knowledge disseminated here..