Backup Software - more acronis questions

Author

more acronis questions

~greg

2006-05-04, 7:12 am

I apologize if any of these questions have been asked before.

I want to use Acronis 9 to clone a drive containing two partitions (C and D),
to a slightly larger internal drive, in an external enclosure, temporarily
connected by USB 2.

I have several external drives, which I will disconnect before the cloning.

But I also have a 2nd internal drive.
And my first question is whether I should disconnect it, too, before the cloning,
because I'd like to think that trueimage would not loose track of the correct
physcial target when it goes down into dos or linux, and then maybe write
to the wrong drive, but I don't know if this is true.

~

When the cloning is done I will disconnect the 2nd drive before
booting back into XP, and my second question is what will happen
if I then reconnect the 2nd drive?

My expectation is that windows will either not recognize the 2nd drive
or complain about there being two 'C' (and 'D') drives. Or else just
silently assign new letters to its partitions.

In any case, can I change the letters, in order to use the 2nd drive,
still on USB, for simple quick copy backups of files for a while?

Finally, when the original drive dies, and it's time to swap in
the clone, I know that people sometimes (-often? -always?)
have problems turning these clones into actual working 'C' drives.

Would my having re-lettered the drive make these problems even worse?

Or, - what are the complete trouble-shooting and solving steps to go through
when trying to get a clone to do it was made for?

(XP sp2, NTFS).

~greg

beenthere

2006-05-04, 1:12 pm

"~greg" <g_m@remove-comcast.net> wrote in message
news:Y8SdnYATUrA-TMTZnZ2dnUVZ_vWdnZ2d@comcast.com...
>
> I apologize if any of these questions have been asked before.
>
>
> I want to use Acronis 9 to clone a drive containing two partitions (C and
> D),
> to a slightly larger internal drive, in an external enclosure, temporarily
> connected by USB 2.
>
snipped
>
I always use the CD you should have created, when you installed
Acronis.
Unplug any internal drives except the OS one.
Do your drive clone. Then switch off.
Plug in the new clone in place of the original OS drive, and it should
boot ( set as master or cable select is your choice).
When I move drives about, I always boot up with just the one
drive connected, to prove it out.

--
bw..OJ

~greg

2006-05-04, 7:12 pm

"beenthere" <Waiting@Home.com> wrote in message news:ekn6g.1470$GZ3.852@newsfe3-win.ntli.net...
>
> "~greg" <g_m@remove-comcast.net> wrote in message news:Y8SdnYATUrA-TMTZnZ2dnUVZ_vWdnZ2d@comcast.com...
> snipped
> I always use the CD you should have created, when you installed
> Acronis.
> Unplug any internal drives except the OS one.
> Do your drive clone. Then switch off.
> Plug in the new clone in place of the original OS drive, and it should
> boot ( set as master or cable select is your choice).
> When I move drives about, I always boot up with just the one
> drive connected, to prove it out.
>
> --
> bw..OJ

~~

Thank you.

I don't have Acronis yet.

All the full backups I've done so far have been with "Norton Ghost".

And as I'm sure you know Norton is expending less and less effort on us peons,
-these little utilities. And so, so far, I have replaced their "speeddisk" with
raxco's "perfectdisk.
And now I'm considering replacing "ghost" with "trueimage".

But I don't have "trueimage" yet.
And so I am not sure what you meant about the CD that I should have created.

These other programs I mentioned do all their set-up in Windows.
And then, only then, and only when absolutely necessary, they do a scheduled
or forced re-boot into DOS in order to do what they can't do from windows.
And DOS sometimes has a different perception of drive letters etc.

The CDs mentioned in connection with these other programs are recovery CDs.
Their basic working does not, I don't think, generally involve CDs.

The pdf documentation I got on-line about "trueimage" does not mention
cloning to a USB external drive at all. It only talks about cloning
from one internal drive to another internal drive. But I know from usenet
that it can clone to an external drive. Only I didn't find any mention of it
cloning to an external drive when there was a 2nd internal drive that
might confuse it when it dropped down to DOS or linux,
- as I assumed it did.

Now, if I understand you correctly, the setting up, and the running of "trueimage",
can all be done from a CD, and from its own operating system (-linux?)

And if this is so, and if this os can identify the proper source and target
drives, and not be confused by any other connected drives,
during the setup, then it should not get confused, either, during the running
from the same os, and therefore I don't see any reason why I should
have to disconnect the 2nd internal drive at all.
Or any of the non-targeted external drive for that matter.

I will do whatever has to be done to get it right, of course.
But it'd be ideal if I could do the set up and running from
a batch file, and without having to disconnect anything.
In particular, the internal drive.
Then I'd do backups more often!
(As I'm sure you'd recommend. ;)

Second choice would be running it from CD,
but without having to disconnect anything.

I hope my question makes more sense now!

My second question had to do with the drive letters.

After I do the clone, and disconnect the external cloned drive,
and then reboot into windows, and then turn on the cloned drive,
and give it new drive letters, and copy files copies to it as simple backups,
--what will happen when I replace the original drive with the cloned drive?
How to redesignate it 'C', etc, and get it to work?

thanks again,

~greg.

chuckie

2006-05-13, 7:11 pm

You might be better sticking with "Ghost", if you want to use USB connected
external drives, I dont think 'Acronis Imager' is very Partial to such
drives !! perhaps some one else may know more on the subject.

Best of Luck

"~greg" <g_m@remove-comcast.net> wrote in message
news:Y8SdnYATUrA-TMTZnZ2dnUVZ_vWdnZ2d@comcast.com...
>
> I apologize if any of these questions have been asked before.
>
>
> I want to use Acronis 9 to clone a drive containing two partitions (C and
> D),
> to a slightly larger internal drive, in an external enclosure, temporarily
> connected by USB 2.
>
> I have several external drives, which I will disconnect before the
> cloning.
>
> But I also have a 2nd internal drive.
> And my first question is whether I should disconnect it, too, before the
> cloning,
> because I'd like to think that trueimage would not loose track of the
> correct
> physcial target when it goes down into dos or linux, and then maybe write
> to the wrong drive, but I don't know if this is true.
>
> ~
>
> When the cloning is done I will disconnect the 2nd drive before
> booting back into XP, and my second question is what will happen
> if I then reconnect the 2nd drive?
>
> My expectation is that windows will either not recognize the 2nd drive
> or complain about there being two 'C' (and 'D') drives. Or else just
> silently assign new letters to its partitions.
>
> In any case, can I change the letters, in order to use the 2nd drive,
> still on USB, for simple quick copy backups of files for a while?
>
> Finally, when the original drive dies, and it's time to swap in
> the clone, I know that people sometimes (-often? -always?)
> have problems turning these clones into actual working 'C' drives.
>
> Would my having re-lettered the drive make these problems even worse?
>
> Or, - what are the complete trouble-shooting and solving steps to go
> through
> when trying to get a clone to do it was made for?
>
> (XP sp2, NTFS).
>
>
>
> ~greg
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Jonno

2006-06-12, 7:12 am

chuckie wrote:
> You might be better sticking with "Ghost", if you want to use USB connected
> external drives, I dont think 'Acronis Imager' is very Partial to such
> drives !! perhaps some one else may know more on the subject.
>
> Best of Luck
>
>
> "~greg" <g_m@remove-comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:Y8SdnYATUrA-TMTZnZ2dnUVZ_vWdnZ2d@comcast.com...
>
>
>
>
Acronis works magnificiently.
I Backed up the Internet yesterday.
My ISP sought to patent is as a vacuum cleaner. Boy did I suck up some
bandwidth.
I had to go and restore it all as it malfunctioned. All using USB and
Acronis.

You cant do better than that...