Acronis Clone

On Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:12:32 -0700, Bob Hatch
wrote:

I've been getting ready to do a clone of my C: drive using Acronis. I
just looked at the steps and the help file documentation talks about
"Moving" the files and allows for three methods.

I don't want files moved, I just want a clone of the disk in the drawer
just in case my C: drive crashes. Does Acronis Clone "Move" or "Copy"
the files?

If you use the Clone function you must have a blank drive plugged into
the PC. Acronis will then simply copy the selected drive in its
entirety to the new blank drive, creating an exact clone copy.

The normal Acronis function is to copy a drive to a ".tib file" on
another drive, either in a compressed format or uncompressed. You can
store this tib file anywhere. When you want to Restore a drive, or
files, you simply show the tib file to Acronis and it puts the image
on the selected drive.

The Clone function removes the need for the tedious TIB file part and
two loadings of Acronis to Recover the tib file. Seems a welcome
addition to the program.

Both approaches achieve exactly the same aim, but Clone does not need
a sometimes huge TIB file to be made or deleted.

wrote:
On Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:12:32 -0700, Bob Hatch
wrote:

I've been getting ready to do a clone of my C: drive using Acronis. I
just looked at the steps and the help file documentation talks about
"Moving" the files and allows for three methods.

I don't want files moved, I just want a clone of the disk in the drawer
just in case my C: drive crashes. Does Acronis Clone "Move" or "Copy"
the files?

If you use the Clone function you must have a blank drive plugged into
the PC. Acronis will then simply copy the selected drive in its
entirety to the new blank drive, creating an exact clone copy.

The normal Acronis function is to copy a drive to a ".tib file" on
another drive, either in a compressed format or uncompressed. You can
store this tib file anywhere. When you want to Restore a drive, or
files, you simply show the tib file to Acronis and it puts the image
on the selected drive.

The Clone function removes the need for the tedious TIB file part and
two loadings of Acronis to Recover the tib file. Seems a welcome
addition to the program.

Both approaches achieve exactly the same aim, but Clone does not need
a sometimes huge TIB file to be made or deleted.

That's what I want. When I had XP I was using Copy/Wipe and it did a
really good job, but I've been told, haven't tested it yet, that
Copy/Wipe will not work with Vista or Windows 7. I'm going to test
Copy/Wipe with Windows 7 doing a Sector by Sector copy and see how that
works.

Too many toys! :-)

--
"To announce that there must be no criticism
of the President, or that we are to stand by
the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic
and servile, but is morally treasonable to the
American public."
Theodore Roosevelt
http://www.bobhatch.com
http://www.tdsrvresort.com

On 12/10/09, Bob Hatch posted:
Gene E. Bloch wrote:
On 12/10/09, Bob Hatch posted:
SC Tom wrote:

"Bob Hatch" wrote in message
...
I've been getting ready to do a clone of my C: drive using Acronis. I
just looked at the steps and the help file documentation talks about
"Moving" the files and allows for three methods.

I don't want files moved, I just want a clone of the disk in the drawer
just in case my C: drive crashes. Does Acronis Clone "Move" or "Copy"
the files?


-- "To announce that there must be no criticism
of the President, or that we are to stand by
the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic
and servile, but is morally treasonable to the
American public."
Theodore Roosevelt
http://www.bobhatch.com
http://www.tdsrvresort.com

The way I do it is boot from the Acronis boot disk, then do a backup to
my external drive. That creates an image of the drive I pick. To restore
it, boot from the same CD and do a restore. I have restored crashed Vista
and XP disks in this manner with no trouble whatsoever.

I want to "Clone" not image or backup.

"CLONE"!

Then obtain a cloning program. "CLONING".

Casper is one, and EASEUS Disk copy is another.

Acronis is not one.

Shees.

One of the options on the Acronis True Image 2010 Tools and Utilities menu
page is "Clone". Acronis made the menu, not me. My confusion is in the set up
of the clone process it makes reference to "moving" the files. Maybe the
answer is not here. :-)

OK, my bad...

I no longer have Acronis installed, so I couldn't look at the menus -
and I trusted my memory (shudder).

I only used it to make images.

I suspect that they meant copy, not move, but it might worry me too :-)

Still: the two programs I mentioned will clone a single partition or a
whole drive. I think Acronis only does the whole drive, which is why I
misremembered that it does nothing: it does nothing that I wanted at
the time...

Reminder: Casper and EASEUS Disk Copy. The second one is free, but
Casper can do an incremental clone.

Casper: http://www.fssdev.com/shop/default.aspx#
EASEUS: http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/

I've used both quite happily (and am still using Casper), but I haven't
restored from either one, so I'm running on faith.

The image software I now use is Macrium Reflect, also not free, but
they have a free version that won't do incremental BUs.

--
Gene Bloch 650.366.4267 lettersatblochg.com

On 12/10/09, MJMIII posted:
"Bob Hatch" wrote in message
...
MJMIII wrote:
"Bob Hatch" wrote in message
...
SC Tom wrote:

"Bob Hatch" wrote in message
...
I've been getting ready to do a clone of my C: drive using Acronis. I
just looked at the steps and the help file documentation talks about
"Moving" the files and allows for three methods.

I don't want files moved, I just want a clone of the disk in the drawer
just in case my C: drive crashes. Does Acronis Clone "Move" or "Copy"
the files?


-- "To announce that there must be no criticism
of the President, or that we are to stand by
the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic
and servile, but is morally treasonable to the
American public."
Theodore Roosevelt
http://www.bobhatch.com
http://www.tdsrvresort.com

The way I do it is boot from the Acronis boot disk, then do a backup to
my external drive. That creates an image of the drive I pick. To restore
it, boot from the same CD and do a restore. I have restored crashed
Vista and XP disks in this manner with no trouble whatsoever.

I want to "Clone" not image or backup.

"CLONE"!

From what you're describing I believe having Acronis "image" your drive
is the same as making a "CLONE CLONE CLONE" of your drive.

Maybe, but in the Acronis menu pages, on the Tools and Utilites page
"Clone" is the number one option under "Utilites:"

I don't want an image that has to be restored. I want a disk that I can
open the case, unplug the old and plug the new one in and boot the
computer. 3 minutes max.

Now I understand, but you can create an image on an external drive and if
your drive goes tits-up you just boot from the disk you create, have a cup of
coffee and you're all set.

Not so. The image is a compressed file (or set of files) in Acronis's
proprietary format.

You must use Acronis to restore an image to a drive, and you must use
Acronis to mount an image as a virtual drive.

--
Gene Bloch 650.366.4267 lettersatblochg.com

On 12/10/09, SC Tom posted:
"Bob Hatch" wrote in message
...
MJMIII wrote:
"Bob Hatch" wrote in message
...
SC Tom wrote:

"Bob Hatch" wrote in message
...
I've been getting ready to do a clone of my C: drive using Acronis. I
just looked at the steps and the help file documentation talks about
"Moving" the files and allows for three methods.

I don't want files moved, I just want a clone of the disk in the drawer
just in case my C: drive crashes. Does Acronis Clone "Move" or "Copy"
the files?


-- "To announce that there must be no criticism
of the President, or that we are to stand by
the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic
and servile, but is morally treasonable to the
American public."
Theodore Roosevelt
http://www.bobhatch.com
http://www.tdsrvresort.com

The way I do it is boot from the Acronis boot disk, then do a backup to
my external drive. That creates an image of the drive I pick. To restore
it, boot from the same CD and do a restore. I have restored crashed
Vista and XP disks in this manner with no trouble whatsoever.

I want to "Clone" not image or backup.

"CLONE"!

From what you're describing I believe having Acronis "image" your drive
is the same as making a "CLONE CLONE CLONE" of your drive.

Maybe, but in the Acronis menu pages, on the Tools and Utilites page
"Clone" is the number one option under "Utilites:"

I don't want an image that has to be restored. I want a disk that I can
open the case, unplug the old and plug the new one in and boot the
computer. 3 minutes max.

-- "To announce that there must be no criticism
of the President, or that we are to stand by
the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic
and servile, but is morally treasonable to the
American public."
Theodore Roosevelt
http://www.bobhatch.com
http://www.tdsrvresort.com

Whoops, premature button-ation. . .
If cloning isn't working for you, you can always create the image, then write
it to the new drive. Then you'll have a clone of your current drive.

See my reply to MJMIII's post (I say this only because I'm a little
unsure if you agree with him or with me).

What I should have added to that post is that with Acronis, you can
create a bootable rescue CD which does enable you to restore the image
to a new drive.

That's also true of Macrium that I use, but EASEUS and Casper that I
mentioned in this thread do create drives that you can just drop in, in
place of the old drive.

--
Gene Bloch 650.366.4267 lettersatblochg.com

On 12/10/09, Bob Hatch posted:
wrote:
On Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:12:32 -0700, Bob Hatch
wrote:

I've been getting ready to do a clone of my C: drive using Acronis. I just
looked at the steps and the help file documentation talks about "Moving"
the files and allows for three methods.

I don't want files moved, I just want a clone of the disk in the drawer
just in case my C: drive crashes. Does Acronis Clone "Move" or "Copy" the
files?

If you use the Clone function you must have a blank drive plugged into
the PC. Acronis will then simply copy the selected drive in its
entirety to the new blank drive, creating an exact clone copy.

The normal Acronis function is to copy a drive to a ".tib file" on
another drive, either in a compressed format or uncompressed. You can
store this tib file anywhere. When you want to Restore a drive, or
files, you simply show the tib file to Acronis and it puts the image
on the selected drive.

The Clone function removes the need for the tedious TIB file part and
two loadings of Acronis to Recover the tib file. Seems a welcome
addition to the program.

Both approaches achieve exactly the same aim, but Clone does not need
a sometimes huge TIB file to be made or deleted.

That's what I want. When I had XP I was using Copy/Wipe and it did a really
good job, but I've been told, haven't tested it yet, that Copy/Wipe will not
work with Vista or Windows 7. I'm going to test Copy/Wipe with Windows 7
doing a Sector by Sector copy and see how that works.

Too many toys! :-)

That's because it's the Christmas season.

What I do these days (but not often enough) is use both Macrium and
Casper, on separate drives. So I have two backups, one a clone and one
an image. I like the redundancy.

BYW, both Macrium and Acronis allow you to see some old and new
versions of a file, depending on how you mount the image as a virtual
drive. I haven't found a way to view two versions simultaneously,
though. I mount starting with one of the several .tib or .mrimg files,
and the virtual drive I see is the one corresponding to the state of
the drive when that particular incremental BU was made.

The clones won't do this: they end up as a snapshot of exactly one
state of the source drive.

--
Gene Bloch 650.366.4267 lettersatblochg.com

"Bob Hatch" wrote in message ...

That's what I want. When I had XP I was using Copy/Wipe and it did a really good job, but I've been told, haven't tested it yet,
that Copy/Wipe will not work with Vista or Windows 7. I'm going to test Copy/Wipe with Windows 7 doing a Sector by Sector copy and
see how that works.


If you're talking about Terabyte's CopyWipe program it should work for a
raw sector copy (clone). The only time you would have a problem is if
the BIOS did not recognise the the full size of the drive, or if you booted
the source drive with the clone attached. In which case Windows7 would
assign a new disk signature to the drive, making the boot config data on
the clone invalid to boot itself.

"Gene E. Bloch" wrote in message
...
On 12/10/09, SC Tom posted:
"Bob Hatch" wrote in message
...
MJMIII wrote:
"Bob Hatch" wrote in message
...
SC Tom wrote:

"Bob Hatch" wrote in message
...
I've been getting ready to do a clone of my C: drive using Acronis.
I just looked at the steps and the help file documentation talks
about "Moving" the files and allows for three methods.

I don't want files moved, I just want a clone of the disk in the
drawer just in case my C: drive crashes. Does Acronis Clone "Move"
or "Copy" the files?


-- "To announce that there must be no criticism
of the President, or that we are to stand by
the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic
and servile, but is morally treasonable to the
American public."
Theodore Roosevelt
http://www.bobhatch.com
http://www.tdsrvresort.com

The way I do it is boot from the Acronis boot disk, then do a backup
to my external drive. That creates an image of the drive I pick. To
restore it, boot from the same CD and do a restore. I have restored
crashed Vista and XP disks in this manner with no trouble whatsoever.

I want to "Clone" not image or backup.

"CLONE"!

From what you're describing I believe having Acronis "image" your
drive is the same as making a "CLONE CLONE CLONE" of your drive.

Maybe, but in the Acronis menu pages, on the Tools and Utilites page
"Clone" is the number one option under "Utilites:"

I don't want an image that has to be restored. I want a disk that I can
open the case, unplug the old and plug the new one in and boot the
computer. 3 minutes max.

-- "To announce that there must be no criticism
of the President, or that we are to stand by
the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic
and servile, but is morally treasonable to the
American public."
Theodore Roosevelt
http://www.bobhatch.com
http://www.tdsrvresort.com

Whoops, premature button-ation. . .
If cloning isn't working for you, you can always create the image, then
write it to the new drive. Then you'll have a clone of your current
drive.

See my reply to MJMIII's post (I say this only because I'm a little unsure
if you agree with him or with me).

What I should have added to that post is that with Acronis, you can create
a bootable rescue CD which does enable you to restore the image to a new
drive.

That's also true of Macrium that I use, but EASEUS and Casper that I
mentioned in this thread do create drives that you can just drop in, in
place of the old drive.

--
Gene Bloch 650.366.4267 lettersatblochg.com


That's what I did with my notebook's Vista drive- using the Acronis boot
disk, I made an image of it to my USB drive, took the old (Vista) drive out,
put a brand new drive in, and wrote the image to it. Then I upgraded it to
Windows 7. I figured if anything went terribly wrong, I could put the cloned
Vista drive back in until I could find out what went wrong. Since the
upgrade went well, I just put the old drive on a shelf in case I need it,
but I do make regular images to my external drive. I have used images to
replace 2 crashed drives (1 Vista and 1 XP), and find it a great way of
getting back up and running. I think it's the easiest and fastest way to
restore- it took about 45 minutes to do the Vista drive and about an hour
for the XP one (lots more data) and I was up and running.
I like using the Acronis boot CD rather than doing it from within Windows-
it takes less time to create an image that way (on my systems, anyway).
I agree with you that you need Acronis (or whatever image program that was
used) to restore that image to a new drive before the drive is stand-alone.
But I think that's also what MJMIII was saying when he mentioned "have a cup
of coffee." (Maybe not.)
I've never used it mount an image, although I can see where that might be
very useful to restore certain files that were maybe infected and wiped.
--
SC Tom

"Gene E. Bloch" wrote in message
...
On 12/10/09, MJMIII posted:
"Bob Hatch" wrote in message
...
MJMIII wrote:

Now I understand, but you can create an image on an external drive and if
your drive goes tits-up you just boot from the disk you create, have a
cup of coffee and you're all set.

Not so. The image is a compressed file (or set of files) in Acronis's
proprietary format.

You must use Acronis to restore an image to a drive, and you must use
Acronis to mount an image as a virtual drive.

--
Gene Bloch 650.366.4267 lettersatblochg.com

I should've said "boot to the Acronis boot disk you created."
--


"Don't pick a fight with an old man.
If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you."

"Bob Hatch" wrote in message
...
Speaking in silver wrote:
"Bob Hatch" wrote
Speaking in silver wrote:
"Bob Hatch" wrote
I've been getting ready to do a clone of my C: drive using Acronis. I
just looked at the steps and the help file documentation talks about
"Moving" the files and allows for three methods.

I don't want files moved, I just want a clone of the disk in the
drawer just in case my C: drive crashes. Does Acronis Clone "Move" or
"Copy" the files?

If you mean "Acronis True Image Home 2010",
here is the user guide:

http://de1.download.acronis.com/sl/g...erGuide.en.pdf
Simplified instructions can also be found he
http://acronis-true-image-home3.soft...rmer.com/wiki/

If still confused, please let us know the details, and which method
you're planning to use.

Let me repeat:
"I've been getting ready to do a "clone" of my C: drive using Acronis",
and yes I'm using True Image 2010.

Continuing my repeat of the original post:
"I just looked at the steps and the help file documentation talks about
"Moving" the files and allows for three methods."

I want to "Clone" the drive, not image it. "CLONE"!

Sorry if I'm missing something, I'm just trying to help here. In the
manual I linked above, Chapter 20.3.1. (Page 166), "Clone mode" is
explained: After selecting Clone Mode, a window will pop up asking you to
choose Automatic (Recommended) or Manual Mode. In the automatic mode,
"All the partitions from your source hard disk will be COPIED to the
target disk in a few simple steps and your new hard disk will be made
bootable".

Then the problem appears to be in the wording on the Manual Mode setup.
There it mentions "Moved". I want to use Manual because I don't want all
the partitions moved. One partition I don't want moved is the Dell Restore
Partition.

It's useless now.

--
"To announce that there must be no criticism
of the President, or that we are to stand by
the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic
and servile, but is morally treasonable to the
American public."
Theodore Roosevelt
http://www.bobhatch.com
http://www.tdsrvresort.com

The problem is in the wording. In translating into English someone has used
the word "moved" instead of the word "cloned". Nothing gets moved from the
source hard disk.

On 12/10/09, MJMIII posted:
"Gene E. Bloch" wrote in message
...
On 12/10/09, MJMIII posted:
"Bob Hatch" wrote in message
...
MJMIII wrote:

Now I understand, but you can create an image on an external drive and if
your drive goes tits-up you just boot from the disk you create, have a cup
of coffee and you're all set.

Not so. The image is a compressed file (or set of files) in Acronis's
proprietary format.

You must use Acronis to restore an image to a drive, and you must use
Acronis to mount an image as a virtual drive.

-- Gene Bloch 650.366.4267 lettersatblochg.com

I should've said "boot to the Acronis boot disk you created."

Yeah, sometimes in the heat of the moment one (anyone) leaves out a
word or phrase :-)

We're on the same page and the OP is now fully informed (or not?).

--
Gene Bloch 650.366.4267 lettersatblochg.com

"Gene E. Bloch" wrote in message
...
On 12/10/09, MJMIII posted:
"Gene E. Bloch" wrote in message
...
On 12/10/09, MJMIII posted:
"Bob Hatch" wrote in message
...
MJMIII wrote:

Now I understand, but you can create an image on an external drive and
if your drive goes tits-up you just boot from the disk you create, have
a cup of coffee and you're all set.

Not so. The image is a compressed file (or set of files) in Acronis's
proprietary format.

You must use Acronis to restore an image to a drive, and you must use
Acronis to mount an image as a virtual drive.

-- Gene Bloch 650.366.4267 lettersatblochg.com

I should've said "boot to the Acronis boot disk you created."

Yeah, sometimes in the heat of the moment one (anyone) leaves out a word
or phrase :-)

We're on the same page and the OP is now fully informed (or not?).

He might not be satisfied, but he's informed.
--


"Don't pick a fight with an old man.
If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you."

MJMIII wrote:
"Gene E. Bloch" wrote in message
...
On 12/10/09, MJMIII posted:
"Gene E. Bloch" wrote in message
...
On 12/10/09, MJMIII posted:
"Bob Hatch" wrote in message
...
MJMIII wrote:

Now I understand, but you can create an image on an external drive
and if your drive goes tits-up you just boot from the disk you
create, have a cup of coffee and you're all set.

Not so. The image is a compressed file (or set of files) in
Acronis's proprietary format.

You must use Acronis to restore an image to a drive, and you must
use Acronis to mount an image as a virtual drive.

-- Gene Bloch 650.366.4267 lettersatblochg.com

I should've said "boot to the Acronis boot disk you created."

Yeah, sometimes in the heat of the moment one (anyone) leaves out a
word or phrase :-)

We're on the same page and the OP is now fully informed (or not?).

He might not be satisfied, but he's informed.

I got the information I needed, and thanks to all.

This would have gone better face to face. :-)

--
"To announce that there must be no criticism
of the President, or that we are to stand by
the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic
and servile, but is morally treasonable to the
American public."
Theodore Roosevelt
http://www.bobhatch.com
http://www.tdsrvresort.com

"Bob Hatch" wrote in message
...
MJMIII wrote:
"Gene E. Bloch" wrote in message
...
On 12/10/09, MJMIII posted:
"Gene E. Bloch" wrote in message
...
On 12/10/09, MJMIII posted:
"Bob Hatch" wrote in message
...
MJMIII wrote:

Now I understand, but you can create an image on an external drive
and if your drive goes tits-up you just boot from the disk you
create, have a cup of coffee and you're all set.

Not so. The image is a compressed file (or set of files) in Acronis's
proprietary format.

You must use Acronis to restore an image to a drive, and you must use
Acronis to mount an image as a virtual drive.

-- Gene Bloch 650.366.4267 lettersatblochg.com

I should've said "boot to the Acronis boot disk you created."

Yeah, sometimes in the heat of the moment one (anyone) leaves out a word
or phrase :-)

We're on the same page and the OP is now fully informed (or not?).

He might not be satisfied, but he's informed.

I got the information I needed, and thanks to all.

This would have gone better face to face. :-)

Agreed and good luck.
--


"Don't pick a fight with an old man.
If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you."

On 12/12/09, MJMIII posted:
"Bob Hatch" wrote in message
...
MJMIII wrote:
"Gene E. Bloch" wrote in message
...
On 12/10/09, MJMIII posted:
"Gene E. Bloch" wrote in message
...
On 12/10/09, MJMIII posted:
"Bob Hatch" wrote in message
...
MJMIII wrote:

Now I understand, but you can create an image on an external drive and
if your drive goes tits-up you just boot from the disk you create,
have a cup of coffee and you're all set.

Not so. The image is a compressed file (or set of files) in Acronis's
proprietary format.

You must use Acronis to restore an image to a drive, and you must use
Acronis to mount an image as a virtual drive.

-- Gene Bloch 650.366.4267 lettersatblochg.com

I should've said "boot to the Acronis boot disk you created."

Yeah, sometimes in the heat of the moment one (anyone) leaves out a word
or phrase :-)

We're on the same page and the OP is now fully informed (or not?).

He might not be satisfied, but he's informed.

I got the information I needed, and thanks to all.

This would have gone better face to face. :-)

Agreed and good luck.

Same from me...

--
Gene Bloch 650.366.4267 lettersatblochg.com