If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#1
|
|||
|
|||
Restoring an image backup to a brand new HD?
I'm a little confused about this seemingly basic issue, in this case
involving the use of Acronis True Image and its backup images, but it could be more general, too. Is it possible to restore an image backup of your system to a *completely brand new hard drive* that has never been used or initialized? Let me explain further: Suppose your main hard drive dies, and that you also have another HD that only contains some Acronis True Image backups of your system stored on it, AND that you also have an Acronis True Image Boot CD handy. So you replace the bad drive with a brand new drive (which naturally is unbootable if you just tried to boot up on it). However, using your Acronis boot CD, you can use that to boot up into the boot CD, and then presumably select a backup image you'd like to restore from the other HD. BUT will the restore operation work for a brand new virgin hard drive that has never been used before (i.e. make the brand new hard drive bootable into windows, etc)? I'm guessing it will, but that's only an assumption on my part. I know the operation works well on a normal HD, but have never tried it out on a brand new hard drive, and am wondering if there is some limitation there I'm not aware of (like you can't restore an image to a virgin hard drive that has never been initialized or whatever). |
Ads |
#2
|
|||
|
|||
Restoring an image backup to a brand new HD?
From: "Bill in Co"
I'm a little confused about this seemingly basic issue, in this case involving the use of Acronis True Image and its backup images, but it could be more general, too. Is it possible to restore an image backup of your system to a *completely brand new hard drive* that has never been used or initialized? Let me explain further: Suppose your main hard drive dies, and that you also have another HD that only contains some Acronis True Image backups of your system stored on it, AND that you also have an Acronis True Image Boot CD handy. So you replace the bad drive with a brand new drive (which naturally is unbootable if you just tried to boot up on it). However, using your Acronis boot CD, you can use that to boot up into the boot CD, and then presumably select a backup image you'd like to restore from the other HD. BUT will the restore operation work for a brand new virgin hard drive that has never been used before (i.e. make the brand new hard drive bootable into windows, etc)? I'm guessing it will, but that's only an assumption on my part. I know the operation works well on a normal HD, but have never tried it out on a brand new hard drive, and am wondering if there is some limitation there I'm not aware of (like you can't restore an image to a virgin hard drive that has never been initialized or whatever). Yes. That's the whole idea of an "image". In fact you can have a 80GB hard disk with 10GB free and image it. The install a 250GB bare hard disk and restore the image and now have the same OS on that 250GB hard disk with 180GB free. -- Dave Multi-AV Scanning Tool - http://multi-av.thespykiller.co.uk http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp |
#3
|
|||
|
|||
Restoring an image backup to a brand new HD?
On 3/20/2012 7:20 PM, Bill in Co wrote:
I'm a little confused about this seemingly basic issue, in this case involving the use of Acronis True Image and its backup images, but it could be more general, too. Is it possible to restore an image backup of your system to a *completely brand new hard drive* that has never been used or initialized? Let me explain further: Suppose your main hard drive dies, and that you also have another HD that only contains some Acronis True Image backups of your system stored on it, AND that you also have an Acronis True Image Boot CD handy. So you replace the bad drive with a brand new drive (which naturally is unbootable if you just tried to boot up on it). However, using your Acronis boot CD, you can use that to boot up into the boot CD, and then presumably select a backup image you'd like to restore from the other HD. BUT will the restore operation work for a brand new virgin hard drive that has never been used before (i.e. make the brand new hard drive bootable into windows, etc)? I'm guessing it will, but that's only an assumption on my part. I know the operation works well on a normal HD, but have never tried it out on a brand new hard drive, and am wondering if there is some limitation there I'm not aware of (like you can't restore an image to a virgin hard drive that has never been initialized or whatever). If you backup just the partition, no! Although you should be able to fix it with a XP install CD (not a recovery disc in most cases). With Acronis True Image you need to backup the whole drive (MBR, Boot, System, etc) except any partition (if you have more) that you don't care about. NOTE ABOUT ACRONIS: It will fail to restore (only) with some USB drives. All other functions will work perfectly. So you would know until to try to restore. So go through the motions and at the point to pick the backup to restore and it can find the USB drive, you are good. So you don't have to do the actual restore to find out if your USB drive will work or not. Sometimes it will work with some one day and the next day, no. Having said all of the above, it still can fail for veriest reasons. Because of this, I throw in a spare drive and test it out to make sure everything is ok when I test to see if the restores are ok. Most people don't bother and learn the hard way like I used to. -- Bill Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v3.0 Centrino Core2 Duo T7400 2.16 GHz - 1.5GB - Windows 8 CP |
#4
|
|||
|
|||
Restoring an image backup to a brand new HD?
BillW50 wrote:
On 3/20/2012 7:20 PM, Bill in Co wrote: I'm a little confused about this seemingly basic issue, in this case involving the use of Acronis True Image and its backup images, but it could be more general, too. Is it possible to restore an image backup of your system to a *completely brand new hard drive* that has never been used or initialized? Let me explain further: Suppose your main hard drive dies, and that you also have another HD that only contains some Acronis True Image backups of your system stored on it, AND that you also have an Acronis True Image Boot CD handy. So you replace the bad drive with a brand new drive (which naturally is unbootable if you just tried to boot up on it). However, using your Acronis boot CD, you can use that to boot up into the boot CD, and then presumably select a backup image you'd like to restore from the other HD. BUT will the restore operation work for a brand new virgin hard drive that has never been used before (i.e. make the brand new hard drive bootable into windows, etc)? I'm guessing it will, but that's only an assumption on my part. I know the operation works well on a normal HD, but have never tried it out on a brand new hard drive, and am wondering if there is some limitation there I'm not aware of (like you can't restore an image to a virgin hard drive that has never been initialized or whatever). If you backup just the partition, no! Although you should be able to fix it with a XP install CD (not a recovery disc in most cases). With Acronis True Image you need to backup the whole drive (MBR, Boot, System, etc) except any partition (if you have more) that you don't care about. Well, when I create an image backup in Acronis, I just select C: as the partition, and it seems to backup everything related to that. (It seems to know about MBR and Track 0, as I mention below): When I use Acronis to restore, I select C: in the checkbox, and just below that, it puts a dotted box around the MBR and Track 0, which I assume implies it's restoring those too. NOTE ABOUT ACRONIS: It will fail to restore (only) with some USB drives. All other functions will work perfectly. So you would know until to try to restore. So go through the motions and at the point to pick the backup to restore and it can find the USB drive, you are good. So you don't have to do the actual restore to find out if your USB drive will work or not. Sometimes it will work with some one day and the next day, no. Having said all of the above, it still can fail for veriest reasons. Because of this, I throw in a spare drive and test it out to make sure everything is ok when I test to see if the restores are ok. Most people don't bother and learn the hard way like I used to. I have successfully used Acronis True Image Home (version 11) to back up my system with both USB external and SATA internal and external drives and so far, without issues (fortunately) in the restorations, which I have done a lot of. |
#5
|
|||
|
|||
Restoring an image backup to a brand new HD?
David H. Lipman wrote:
From: "Bill in Co" I'm a little confused about this seemingly basic issue, in this case involving the use of Acronis True Image and its backup images, but it could be more general, too. Is it possible to restore an image backup of your system to a *completely brand new hard drive* that has never been used or initialized? Let me explain further: Suppose your main hard drive dies, and that you also have another HD that only contains some Acronis True Image backups of your system stored on it, AND that you also have an Acronis True Image Boot CD handy. So you replace the bad drive with a brand new drive (which naturally is unbootable if you just tried to boot up on it). However, using your Acronis boot CD, you can use that to boot up into the boot CD, and then presumably select a backup image you'd like to restore from the other HD. BUT will the restore operation work for a brand new virgin hard drive that has never been used before (i.e. make the brand new hard drive bootable into windows, etc)? I'm guessing it will, but that's only an assumption on my part. I know the operation works well on a normal HD, but have never tried it out on a brand new hard drive, and am wondering if there is some limitation there I'm not aware of (like you can't restore an image to a virgin hard drive that has never been initialized or whatever). Yes. That's the whole idea of an "image". In fact you can have a 80GB hard disk with 10GB free and image it. The install a 250GB bare hard disk and restore the image and now have the same OS on that 250GB hard disk with 180GB free. I knew it worked well on a functional hard drive, but I didn't know if it would work ok on a brand new, unformatted and unitialized, hard drive. From what you're saying it does, and it takes care of all of that automatically. Which is good to know. So from that point of view, you don't really ever need a disk CLONE, assuming you have some image backups, a bootable CD with ATI on it, AND a brand new hard drive handy. I guess the only disadvantage of this emergency backup method (i.e., for a completely ruined defective main hard drive) is that it relies on having a bootable ATI restore CD handy, and a good reliable image backup on another drive, AND on having a brand new hard drive handy - instead of just replacing the drive with a CLONE. |
#6
|
|||
|
|||
Restoring an image backup to a brand new HD?
On 3/20/2012 7:54 PM, Bill in Co wrote:
BillW50 wrote: On 3/20/2012 7:20 PM, Bill in Co wrote: I'm a little confused about this seemingly basic issue, in this case involving the use of Acronis True Image and its backup images, but it could be more general, too. Is it possible to restore an image backup of your system to a *completely brand new hard drive* that has never been used or initialized? Let me explain further: Suppose your main hard drive dies, and that you also have another HD that only contains some Acronis True Image backups of your system stored on it, AND that you also have an Acronis True Image Boot CD handy. So you replace the bad drive with a brand new drive (which naturally is unbootable if you just tried to boot up on it). However, using your Acronis boot CD, you can use that to boot up into the boot CD, and then presumably select a backup image you'd like to restore from the other HD. BUT will the restore operation work for a brand new virgin hard drive that has never been used before (i.e. make the brand new hard drive bootable into windows, etc)? I'm guessing it will, but that's only an assumption on my part. I know the operation works well on a normal HD, but have never tried it out on a brand new hard drive, and am wondering if there is some limitation there I'm not aware of (like you can't restore an image to a virgin hard drive that has never been initialized or whatever). If you backup just the partition, no! Although you should be able to fix it with a XP install CD (not a recovery disc in most cases). With Acronis True Image you need to backup the whole drive (MBR, Boot, System, etc) except any partition (if you have more) that you don't care about. Well, when I create an image backup in Acronis, I just select C: as the partition, and it seems to backup everything related to that. (It seems to know about MBR and Track 0, as I mention below): When I use Acronis to restore, I select C: in the checkbox, and just below that, it puts a dotted box around the MBR and Track 0, which I assume implies it's restoring those too. NOTE ABOUT ACRONIS: It will fail to restore (only) with some USB drives. All other functions will work perfectly. So you would know until to try to restore. So go through the motions and at the point to pick the backup to restore and it can find the USB drive, you are good. So you don't have to do the actual restore to find out if your USB drive will work or not. Sometimes it will work with some one day and the next day, no. Having said all of the above, it still can fail for veriest reasons. Because of this, I throw in a spare drive and test it out to make sure everything is ok when I test to see if the restores are ok. Most people don't bother and learn the hard way like I used to. I have successfully used Acronis True Image Home (version 11) to back up my system with both USB external and SATA internal and external drives and so far, without issues (fortunately) in the restorations, which I have done a lot of. I have Acronis True Image 2009, 2011, and the free WD and Seagate versions. And these all have problems with some USB drives. But if it passes this test and everything you have stated, it sounds like you are good to go. ;-) -- Bill Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v3.0 Centrino Core2 Duo T7400 2.16 GHz - 1.5GB - Windows 8 CP |
#7
|
|||
|
|||
Restoring an image backup to a brand new HD?
From: "Bill in Co"
David H. Lipman wrote: From: "Bill in Co" I'm a little confused about this seemingly basic issue, in this case involving the use of Acronis True Image and its backup images, but it could be more general, too. Is it possible to restore an image backup of your system to a *completely brand new hard drive* that has never been used or initialized? Let me explain further: Suppose your main hard drive dies, and that you also have another HD that only contains some Acronis True Image backups of your system stored on it, AND that you also have an Acronis True Image Boot CD handy. So you replace the bad drive with a brand new drive (which naturally is unbootable if you just tried to boot up on it). However, using your Acronis boot CD, you can use that to boot up into the boot CD, and then presumably select a backup image you'd like to restore from the other HD. BUT will the restore operation work for a brand new virgin hard drive that has never been used before (i.e. make the brand new hard drive bootable into windows, etc)? I'm guessing it will, but that's only an assumption on my part. I know the operation works well on a normal HD, but have never tried it out on a brand new hard drive, and am wondering if there is some limitation there I'm not aware of (like you can't restore an image to a virgin hard drive that has never been initialized or whatever). Yes. That's the whole idea of an "image". In fact you can have a 80GB hard disk with 10GB free and image it. The install a 250GB bare hard disk and restore the image and now have the same OS on that 250GB hard disk with 180GB free. I knew it worked well on a functional hard drive, but I didn't know if it would work ok on a brand new, unformatted and unitialized, hard drive. From what you're saying it does, and it takes care of all of that automatically. Which is good to know. So from that point of view, you don't really ever need a disk CLONE, assuming you have some image backups, a bootable CD with ATI on it, AND a brand new hard drive handy. I guess the only disadvantage of this emergency backup method (i.e., for a completely ruined defective main hard drive) is that it relies on having a bootable ATI restore CD handy, and a good reliable image backup on another drive, AND on having a brand new hard drive handy - instead of just replacing the drive with a CLONE. A clone is disk to disk. An image is the disk made to a disk file. I can clone a drive goingf from disk to disk but I can also clone a drive going from disk to image and then from image to disk. -- Dave Multi-AV Scanning Tool - http://multi-av.thespykiller.co.uk http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp |
#8
|
|||
|
|||
Restoring an image backup to a brand new HD?
On 3/20/2012 8:06 PM, David H. Lipman wrote:
From: "Bill in Co" David H. Lipman wrote: From: "Bill in Co" I'm a little confused about this seemingly basic issue, in this case involving the use of Acronis True Image and its backup images, but it could be more general, too. Is it possible to restore an image backup of your system to a *completely brand new hard drive* that has never been used or initialized? Let me explain further: Suppose your main hard drive dies, and that you also have another HD that only contains some Acronis True Image backups of your system stored on it, AND that you also have an Acronis True Image Boot CD handy. So you replace the bad drive with a brand new drive (which naturally is unbootable if you just tried to boot up on it). However, using your Acronis boot CD, you can use that to boot up into the boot CD, and then presumably select a backup image you'd like to restore from the other HD. BUT will the restore operation work for a brand new virgin hard drive that has never been used before (i.e. make the brand new hard drive bootable into windows, etc)? I'm guessing it will, but that's only an assumption on my part. I know the operation works well on a normal HD, but have never tried it out on a brand new hard drive, and am wondering if there is some limitation there I'm not aware of (like you can't restore an image to a virgin hard drive that has never been initialized or whatever). Yes. That's the whole idea of an "image". In fact you can have a 80GB hard disk with 10GB free and image it. The install a 250GB bare hard disk and restore the image and now have the same OS on that 250GB hard disk with 180GB free. I knew it worked well on a functional hard drive, but I didn't know if it would work ok on a brand new, unformatted and unitialized, hard drive. From what you're saying it does, and it takes care of all of that automatically. Which is good to know. So from that point of view, you don't really ever need a disk CLONE, assuming you have some image backups, a bootable CD with ATI on it, AND a brand new hard drive handy. I guess the only disadvantage of this emergency backup method (i.e., for a completely ruined defective main hard drive) is that it relies on having a bootable ATI restore CD handy, and a good reliable image backup on another drive, AND on having a brand new hard drive handy - instead of just replacing the drive with a CLONE. A clone is disk to disk. An image is the disk made to a disk file. I can clone a drive goingf from disk to disk but I can also clone a drive going from disk to image and then from image to disk. True, but the latter takes twice as long. Plus in the time you can do a backup image, you could be testing the clone to see if everything is ok. -- Bill Gateway M465e ('06 era) - Thunderbird v3.0 Centrino Core2 Duo T7400 2.16 GHz - 1.5GB - Windows 8 CP |
#9
|
|||
|
|||
Restoring an image backup to a brand new HD?
From: "BillW50"
On 3/20/2012 8:06 PM, David H. Lipman wrote: From: "Bill in Co" David H. Lipman wrote: From: "Bill in Co" I'm a little confused about this seemingly basic issue, in this case involving the use of Acronis True Image and its backup images, but it could be more general, too. Is it possible to restore an image backup of your system to a *completely brand new hard drive* that has never been used or initialized? Let me explain further: Suppose your main hard drive dies, and that you also have another HD that only contains some Acronis True Image backups of your system stored on it, AND that you also have an Acronis True Image Boot CD handy. So you replace the bad drive with a brand new drive (which naturally is unbootable if you just tried to boot up on it). However, using your Acronis boot CD, you can use that to boot up into the boot CD, and then presumably select a backup image you'd like to restore from the other HD. BUT will the restore operation work for a brand new virgin hard drive that has never been used before (i.e. make the brand new hard drive bootable into windows, etc)? I'm guessing it will, but that's only an assumption on my part. I know the operation works well on a normal HD, but have never tried it out on a brand new hard drive, and am wondering if there is some limitation there I'm not aware of (like you can't restore an image to a virgin hard drive that has never been initialized or whatever). Yes. That's the whole idea of an "image". In fact you can have a 80GB hard disk with 10GB free and image it. The install a 250GB bare hard disk and restore the image and now have the same OS on that 250GB hard disk with 180GB free. I knew it worked well on a functional hard drive, but I didn't know if it would work ok on a brand new, unformatted and unitialized, hard drive. From what you're saying it does, and it takes care of all of that automatically. Which is good to know. So from that point of view, you don't really ever need a disk CLONE, assuming you have some image backups, a bootable CD with ATI on it, AND a brand new hard drive handy. I guess the only disadvantage of this emergency backup method (i.e., for a completely ruined defective main hard drive) is that it relies on having a bootable ATI restore CD handy, and a good reliable image backup on another drive, AND on having a brand new hard drive handy - instead of just replacing the drive with a CLONE. A clone is disk to disk. An image is the disk made to a disk file. I can clone a drive goingf from disk to disk but I can also clone a drive going from disk to image and then from image to disk. True, but the latter takes twice as long. Plus in the time you can do a backup image, you could be testing the clone to see if everything is ok. Yes, it takes longer but there are advantages. For example you can't clone an 80GB drive with 40GB free to a 60GB drive but you can image that 80GB drive with 40GB free and then restore that image to a 60GB drive. Then there is the concept of image distribution. Software can use multicast IP to restore one image to multiple computers at the same time. Then there is the concept of a failing drive. It is better to get an iumage than a clone because you want to get that image down and onece you have it you can use it over and over. You might get one cahnce from the failing drive. Make a mistake that causes you to repeat the process and if that drive fails, you are too late. Then there is the concept of disater recovery. You have that image for the recovery. -- Dave Multi-AV Scanning Tool - http://multi-av.thespykiller.co.uk http://www.pctipp.ch/downloads/dl/35905.asp |
#10
|
|||
|
|||
Restoring an image backup to a brand new HD?
David H. Lipman wrote:
From: "Bill in Co" David H. Lipman wrote: From: "Bill in Co" I'm a little confused about this seemingly basic issue, in this case involving the use of Acronis True Image and its backup images, but it could be more general, too. Is it possible to restore an image backup of your system to a *completely brand new hard drive* that has never been used or initialized? Let me explain further: Suppose your main hard drive dies, and that you also have another HD that only contains some Acronis True Image backups of your system stored on it, AND that you also have an Acronis True Image Boot CD handy. So you replace the bad drive with a brand new drive (which naturally is unbootable if you just tried to boot up on it). However, using your Acronis boot CD, you can use that to boot up into the boot CD, and then presumably select a backup image you'd like to restore from the other HD. BUT will the restore operation work for a brand new virgin hard drive that has never been used before (i.e. make the brand new hard drive bootable into windows, etc)? I'm guessing it will, but that's only an assumption on my part. I know the operation works well on a normal HD, but have never tried it out on a brand new hard drive, and am wondering if there is some limitation there I'm not aware of (like you can't restore an image to a virgin hard drive that has never been initialized or whatever). Yes. That's the whole idea of an "image". In fact you can have a 80GB hard disk with 10GB free and image it. The install a 250GB bare hard disk and restore the image and now have the same OS on that 250GB hard disk with 180GB free. I knew it worked well on a functional hard drive, but I didn't know if it would work ok on a brand new, unformatted and unitialized, hard drive. From what you're saying it does, and it takes care of all of that automatically. Which is good to know. So from that point of view, you don't really ever need a disk CLONE, assuming you have some image backups, a bootable CD with ATI on it, AND a brand new hard drive handy. I guess the only disadvantage of this emergency backup method (i.e., for a completely ruined defective main hard drive) is that it relies on having a bootable ATI restore CD handy, and a good reliable image backup on another drive, AND on having a brand new hard drive handy - instead of just replacing the drive with a CLONE. A clone is disk to disk. An image is the disk made to a disk file. I can clone a drive goingf from disk to disk but I can also clone a drive going from disk to image and then from image to disk. Let's suppose you have a disk with 4 partitions on it. AFAIK, you can either clone the disk (the entire disk), or choose which partitions to image, but not image the whole disk in one image, and one simple operation, unless I'm missing something. |
#11
|
|||
|
|||
Restoring an image backup to a brand new HD?
On Tue, 20 Mar 2012 20:59:32 -0600, "Bill in Co"
wrote: Let's suppose you have a disk with 4 partitions on it. AFAIK, you can either clone the disk (the entire disk), or choose which partitions to image, but not image the whole disk in one image, and one simple operation, unless I'm missing something. Yes, you're missing something. When you choose to create an image, you can select one partition, multiple partitions, all partitions, or the entire disk. |
#12
|
|||
|
|||
Restoring an image backup to a brand new HD?
Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 20 Mar 2012 20:59:32 -0600, "Bill in Co" wrote: Let's suppose you have a disk with 4 partitions on it. AFAIK, you can either clone the disk (the entire disk), or choose which partitions to image, but not image the whole disk in one image, and one simple operation, unless I'm missing something. Yes, you're missing something. When you choose to create an image, you can select one partition, multiple partitions, all partitions, or the entire disk. Some irrelevant trivia. (This is for CHS compliant hard drives, rather than a layout for an SSD. A good SSD layout, doesn't use multiples of 63.) MBR GRUB Boot Stage First Partition Starts Sector 0 Sector 1..62 Sector 63... etc. If you back up an operating system partition, that misses the MBR, which has an initial element used for booting. There is 440 bytes of code in there. For WinXP (this group), it can be put back with "fixmbr c:" from the recovery console. There might be other things hiding in sector 1 to 62, so you have to be careful about those as well. If some OS needs something from there, then again, failure to back that up, may require a "repair" procedure to put it back. I understand one of the two versions of GRUB for Linux, puts something in there. A tool like "dd", for either Windows or Linux, can surgically back up chunks like that, if you need it done. Some OSes, have geometry or offset information stored in the OS partition. The result of moving the partition, like offsetting it a different amount on the new hard drive, may be a failure to boot. So while you can fool around at the single partition level, you need a good understanding if any other dependencies. ******* Some partitioning or cloning software, is pretty clever. Let us say WinXP is on the third partition on the disk. In boot.ini, is an ARC, a specification of where the OS is located. If the partition is restored into a different numbered partition on the new disk, then boot.ini needs to be repaired. I've experienced a case, where the partitioning tool knows it needs to match the partition number, to avoid grief. But, in the process of meeting that requirement, it swaps position. It puts the third partition, in the second partition table slot, and the second partition, in the third partition table slot. Normally, most people expect the physical order of the disk (partition 1,2,3,4) to be stored in order in the table as well (slot 1,2,3,4). I got a rude surprise, when that was no longer true. Fortunately, after recognizing why the stupid tool did it that way, I was able to undo it with PTEDIT32 and some editing of boot.ini. I put the entries back in order, as well as changing the ARC in the boot.ini, and all was "linear" again. The reason "linear" is important, is being able to easily identify which partition is which, and not delete or format the wrong one. ******* So, if you didn't want any "rotten" experiences, there are certain reasons for cloning an entire disk, from sector 0 to n. If the new disk is larger than the old disk, no problem, you can simply expand the fourth partition to use the slack space at the end. I always put my "big file storage" area down the end, and if the disk is cloned to a bigger drive (160, 250, 500 is the progression so far), it just means the junk storage area down near the end gets bigger. Which suits me fine (as a junk collector). Paul |
#13
|
|||
|
|||
Restoring an image backup to a brand new HD?
Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 20 Mar 2012 20:59:32 -0600, "Bill in Co" wrote: Let's suppose you have a disk with 4 partitions on it. AFAIK, you can either clone the disk (the entire disk), or choose which partitions to image, but not image the whole disk in one image, and one simple operation, unless I'm missing something. Yes, you're missing something. When you choose to create an image, you can select one partition, multiple partitions, all partitions, or the entire disk. OK, I looked again at Acronis True Image, and the only way I see to do that is by individually selecting each partition in its own separate checkbox. There was no "entire disk" image selection, per se (unlike for cloning), but selecting ALL the partitions would presumably be doing that (i.e imaging the entire disk stucture). (MBR and Track0 are not listed as selections, so I guess that's automatically taken care of when you backup C |
#14
|
|||
|
|||
Restoring an image backup to a brand new HD?
Paul wrote:
Char Jackson wrote: On Tue, 20 Mar 2012 20:59:32 -0600, "Bill in Co" wrote: Let's suppose you have a disk with 4 partitions on it. AFAIK, you can either clone the disk (the entire disk), or choose which partitions to image, but not image the whole disk in one image, and one simple operation, unless I'm missing something. Yes, you're missing something. When you choose to create an image, you can select one partition, multiple partitions, all partitions, or the entire disk. Some irrelevant trivia. (This is for CHS compliant hard drives, rather than a layout for an SSD. A good SSD layout, doesn't use multiples of 63.) MBR GRUB Boot Stage First Partition Starts Sector 0 Sector 1..62 Sector 63... etc. If you back up an operating system partition, that misses the MBR, which has an initial element used for booting. There is 440 bytes of code in there. For WinXP (this group), it can be put back with "fixmbr c:" from the recovery console. There might be other things hiding in sector 1 to 62, so you have to be careful about those as well. If some OS needs something from there, then again, failure to back that up, may require a "repair" procedure to put it back. I understand one of the two versions of GRUB for Linux, puts something in there. A tool like "dd", for either Windows or Linux, can surgically back up chunks like that, if you need it done. Some OSes, have geometry or offset information stored in the OS partition. The result of moving the partition, like offsetting it a different amount on the new hard drive, may be a failure to boot. So while you can fool around at the single partition level, you need a good understanding if any other dependencies. So this is what is worrying me. This at least suggests the possibility that restoring an image backup of your system to a brand new hard drive may not result in a bootable drive (assuming you simply selected C: as the partition to backup, which is what the choice available is in ATI (Acronis True Image). (i.e. there is no option shown to backup MBR and Track0, explicitly. HOWEVER, when you open ATI and choose to restore the C: backup image, ATI puts a dotted line box around the MBR and Track0 display line, implying it will also restore those. I want to avoid having to use fixmbr, etc (and the Recovery Console) here. snip |
#15
|
|||
|
|||
Restoring an image backup to a brand new HD?
On Tue, 20 Mar 2012 21:57:26 -0600, "Bill in Co"
wrote: Char Jackson wrote: On Tue, 20 Mar 2012 20:59:32 -0600, "Bill in Co" wrote: Let's suppose you have a disk with 4 partitions on it. AFAIK, you can either clone the disk (the entire disk), or choose which partitions to image, but not image the whole disk in one image, and one simple operation, unless I'm missing something. Yes, you're missing something. When you choose to create an image, you can select one partition, multiple partitions, all partitions, or the entire disk. OK, I looked again at Acronis True Image, and the only way I see to do that is by individually selecting each partition in its own separate checkbox. There was no "entire disk" image selection, per se (unlike for cloning), but selecting ALL the partitions would presumably be doing that (i.e imaging the entire disk stucture). (MBR and Track0 are not listed as selections, so I guess that's automatically taken care of when you backup C Look closer when you open ATI. The Backup section defaults to "partition mode", which is what you described above, but you can also switch to "disk mode". In my experience, using anything from the partition mode will result in a restored system that needs to be repaired before it'll boot. Using disk mode (on the system drive) will result in a restored system that's essentially a clone of the backed up drive, bootable as expected. |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|