TI 11 image onto memory stick
I first used my TI11 10 months ago and put the image onto my desktop, i know this was silly now but it was all new to me.
I now want to use it for the first time but i am unable to put it onto a 8gb usb memory stick.
The image is about 5gb so it should fit easily but it wont.
The memory stick is ok as it will accept anything else onto it but not the image.
The stick is formatted as Fat or Fat32 and i have read that those formats will only accept up to 4gb but i have also seen somewhere on the Acronis Knowledge base that you cannot use ntfs on a stick so can someone please advise what i might be doing wrong.
Sorry if this is a little vague as it is my first post.
Thanks in advance
Are you saying that you have a 5GB image on your desktop and now want to copy it to your FAT32 stick? If so, then you can't do it because of the 4GB maximum filesize.
You should be able to create a new image and write it to the stick though assuming TI sees it OK. In this case, TI will automatically split the image at 4GB.
You can try formatting the stick NTFS and see what happens if you are really stuck. Make sure you validate the image with the TI rescue CD so you know you can see it when doing a restore.
Thanks for the advice, i have thought about an external drive but wanted to keep just my TI 11 image on its own on a stick.
I have read that if the stick is reformatted to ntfs then it will take almost anything but as i said i have read somewhere on the Acronis site that you must not use ntfs.
The reason i want to use the original image is that it contains just the new pc contents and no addl files and programms that i have accumalated over the past 10 months.
I know the image is ok as i did validate it when i backed up the image.
Peter
I don't know why the comment about not using NTFS but there are some peculiarities with sticks and how they are seen depending on their size. TI certainly can read NTFS files.
There is/was a recommendation elsewhere about not using NTFS on sticks because it is frequently doing R/W cycles because of the nature of the NTFS filesystem. This will shorten the lifetime of the sticks because they have a limited number of cycles. Just how much of a concern it is these days, I don't know.
My point about validating the image was to ensure that it could be read on an NTFS stick by the rescue CD. Two issues, one is there is the concern you mentioned about possibly not being able to use NTFS on the stick. The second is that you likely validated in Windows. When you restore the image, TI will load its Linux rescue environment to do the restore. This is not Windows and uses different drivers. A weak link in the process is that sometimes the Linux drivers aren't a good match to some hardware so it is imperative that you know that you can at least see and validate the image with the TI CD environment. The absolute best test is to do an actual restore to a spare HD.
One workaround would be to borrow, if you do not want to buy, an external drive, make a new Image and store it on the external. Also put that 5Gb Image on the external and restore it to your system. You now have the system with no additional programs - in its virgin state.
Next plug in the memory stick, boot with the True Image CD and remake an Image using the memory stick as the destination. BTW, if that system can boot from usb flash drives, you can make that memory stick bootable and also have it hold the Image at the same time it is being made into the bootable True Image device.
Lastly, restore the Image you made .... the one that has all your stuff.
The usb stick with fat32 shoudl be fine for new backups just not the one you made. The issue is fat32 can not handle a single file over 2 gig (or is it 4?) but can handly many such files. When you define the backup task drill into backup options and set archive log splitting and have split as some number fat32 can handle such 1gig. Now do your backup. What will physicall occur is acronis will try to build the 5gig output file however after writing the 1st gig it will close that file and open up a newfile with the same name and a '2' suffix after that next gig it will repeat with files 3, 4 and 5. when your all done you have a set of files which acronis will treat as one unit but are physlically chunked into 1gig units. when you go to restore just point acronis at the 1st file, it knows how to walk the chain as if the entire set were a single 5gig file.
Some good advice in the replies and thank you . I will try some of them when i get a little more time and if successful (or not) i will let you know.
Thanks again
Peter
All worked fine as per the above help.
I made sure the archive log splitting was set to auto plugged in the memory stick (8GB) and away it went.
Verified the file and restored and all went very well.
Thanks for all the advice
Peter