Acronis Question

[nntp.aioe.org]

Hi, I have read a lot about Acronis on these forums and i'm thinking about
buying it, so I was wondering if it is possible to back up with acronis to
an external 250GB usb drive, then do a reinstall Vista, then load acronis
and run the backup from external drive back to what it was with all my
programs.
all replies welcome.
Thanks Brian.

 

[JimR]

Hi, I have read a lot about Acronis on these forums and i'm thinking about
buying it, so I was wondering if it is possible to back up with acronis to
an external 250GB usb drive, then do a reinstall Vista, then load acronis
and run the backup from external drive back to what it was with all my
programs.
all replies welcome.
Thanks Brian.

If you mean backing up a complete image of your system ( operating system,
installed programs, and data files) to an external drive, then restoring it,
yes, and there is no need to first reinstall Vista.

 

[Annie R J Brion]

Hi, I have read a lot about Acronis on these forums and i'm thinking about
buying it, so I was wondering if it is possible to back up with acronis to
an external 250GB usb drive, then do a reinstall Vista, then load acronis
and run the backup from external drive back to what it was with all my
programs.
all replies welcome.

You create a recovery disk with Acronis that you boot from so you can
recover with out having to install an OS first.

And yes you can use a USB drive.

HTH

 

[Richard]

You create a recovery disk with Acronis that you boot from so you can
recover with out having to install an OS first.

And yes you can use a USB drive.

IMO it's best to use BartPE & the acronis plugin to reinsall.
Using the acronis boot disk it takes 2 hours to restore my machine, but with
bartPE it takes 25 minutes.

 

[XS11E]

Hi, I have read a lot about Acronis on these forums and i'm
thinking about buying it, so I was wondering if it is possible to
back up with acronis to an external 250GB usb drive, then do a
reinstall Vista, then load acronis and run the backup from
external drive back to what it was with all my programs.
all replies welcome.

Yes, but why? I don't understand what you're trying to do?

Point one: The Acronis CD is bootable and will run w/o being installed
so you can simply boot on it and do create your image to your external
USB drive IF Acronis will recognize it, I'm not sure about that.

Point two: When you restore the image from the external drive you'll
have exactly what you had when the image was created so why reinstall?
Remember, the Acronis CD is bootable and will do your restore or if you
installed Acronis and created a restore CD* that one will do your
restore.

*Creating a restore CD is a good idea after installing Acronis and
doing an update. That way, the restore CD will include any updates.

 

[Annie R J Brion]

IMO it's best to use BartPE & the acronis plugin to reinsall.
Using the acronis boot disk it takes 2 hours to restore my machine, but
with bartPE it takes 25 minutes.

Do you by any chance have to use safe mode on the recovery disk?

I restored my desktop the other day and it took over 6 hours to restore.
Having the latest build has fixed the problem that forced me to use safe
mode.

My other desktop and notebooks take under an hour each to recover when
not using safe node.

Safe mode accessed the HDDs differently thus more slowly. Just a theory
I have.

 

[Richard]

Do you by any chance have to use safe mode on the recovery disk?

I restored my desktop the other day and it took over 6 hours to restore.
Having the latest build has fixed the problem that forced me to use safe
mode.

My other desktop and notebooks take under an hour each to recover when not
using safe node.

Safe mode accessed the HDDs differently thus more slowly. Just a theory I
have.

No I use normal mode..in safe it doesn't recognise my usb disk.
I am restoring about 30gb of data, my image file is 21gb.
I don't use the acronis recovery disk now, BartPE is much better.

 

[Annie R J Brion]

No I use normal mode..in safe it doesn't recognise my usb disk.
I am restoring about 30gb of data, my image file is 21gb.
I don't use the acronis recovery disk now, BartPE is much better.

What version of TI do you use as I did not think version 10 had a BartPE
plug in.

 

[Michael Solomon]

Hi, I have read a lot about Acronis on these forums and i'm thinking about
buying it, so I was wondering if it is possible to back up with acronis to
an external 250GB usb drive, then do a reinstall Vista, then load acronis
and run the backup from external drive back to what it was with all my
programs.
all replies welcome.
Thanks Brian.

Just to clarify a bit, while Acronis can certainly be used as backup
software and allows the restore of individual files from an image file as
well as allowing incremental additions to an image file, Acronis True Image
is imaging software. That is why you don't need to first install the OS
because in a full restore scenario which you seem to be describing, the
image contains everything, the OS and all your files. An image is a
snapshot of your system at the given point in time the image was created.

As to the bootable CD. If you purchase Acronis True Image at retail, the CD
is bootable. If you purchase if from Acronis, you usually buy a
downloadable file though I think you can purchase the retail CD. However,
with the downloadable file, they offer the option of CD that contains the
file you downloaded, understand, this is the file and the True Image setup
disk. It just holds the executable from which True Image can be installed
and is an added protection against losing the downloaded file. But this CD,
a $12.95 option, I believe, is not to be confused with the install CD you
would get in a retail package.

 

[Michael Solomon]

No I use normal mode..in safe it doesn't recognise my usb disk.
I am restoring about 30gb of data, my image file is 21gb.
I don't use the acronis recovery disk now, BartPE is much better.

I restore from a separate partition on my hard drive and that restore only
takes me about 25 minutes using only the Acronis Emergency Boot Disk that
you can create in True Image. I do seem to recall it taking a little longer
when I restore from my USB 2.0 drive but it didn't take 2 hours. I haven't
tried from my external eSATA II 3Gb drive. Nonetheless, I'm surprised, even
with BartPE that you don't experience some slowdown though that would be in
comparison to restoring from a separate partition on your hard drive.

 

[Michael Solomon]

Hi, I have read a lot about Acronis on these forums and i'm thinking about
buying it, so I was wondering if it is possible to back up with acronis to
an external 250GB usb drive, then do a reinstall Vista, then load acronis
and run the backup from external drive back to what it was with all my
programs.
all replies welcome.
Thanks Brian.

I failed to mention, if you purchase the downloadable file from Acronis as
opposed to a retail package, then you do receive a bootable CD, even if you
purchase the CD that contains the file I mentioned. However, Acronis True
Image and Disk Director for that matter, have a utility that can create an
emergency boot disk and gives you all the same functions as the retail boot
disk.

 

[Richard Urban]

It takes TrueImage about 5 minutes to restore my system partition after I
muck it up (using the recovery CD). Don't know why it should take you hours.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

 

[XS11E]

IMO it's best to use BartPE & the acronis plugin to reinsall.
Using the acronis boot disk it takes 2 hours to restore my
machine, but with bartPE it takes 25 minutes.

How long does it take to build the BartPE CD?

 

[Telstar]

I failed to mention, if you purchase the downloadable file from Acronis as
opposed to a retail package, then you do receive a bootable CD, even if
you purchase the CD that contains the file I mentioned. However, Acronis
True Image and Disk Director for that matter, have a utility that can
create an emergency boot disk and gives you all the same functions as the
retail boot disk.

It took a lot of lines in the previous two posts, but this is correct.
There is absolutely no difference between the box and download, except you
do create (as you should anyway) the bootable recovery CD explicitly (on
installation it asks to do this). As mentioned earlier in this thread, this
CD should be updated (done again) when the system is changed!

 

[Michael Solomon]

It took a lot of lines in the previous two posts, but this is correct.
There is absolutely no difference between the box and download, except you
do create (as you should anyway) the bootable recovery CD explicitly (on
installation it asks to do this). As mentioned earlier in this thread,
this CD should be updated (done again) when the system is changed!

And my comment should have ready, you DON'T receive a bootable CD if you
purchase the downloadable file!

 

[AJR]

Regarding "...Seagate's version of Acronis..." - is this "almost like
Hertz"?

And "...I was wondering if it is possible to back up with acronis to an
external 250GB usb drive, then do a reinstall Vista, then load acronis and
run the backup..." -a full Acronis backup and restore would preclude the
need to reinstall the OS

 

[Michael Solomon]

Regarding "...Seagate's version of Acronis..." - is this "almost like
Hertz"?

And "...I was wondering if it is possible to back up with acronis to an
external 250GB usb drive, then do a reinstall Vista, then load acronis
and run the backup..." -a full Acronis backup and restore would preclude
the need to reinstall the OS

Seagate was using an OEM version of Acronis True Image in its free Disk Wiz
and Max Blast tools included with some of its drives.

 

[XS11E]

Seagate was using an OEM version of Acronis True Image in its free
Disk Wiz and Max Blast tools included with some of its drives.

It's free and it works very nicely but it's lacking features and one
that's important to me is that it will deal only with partitions, it
will not allow backing up or restoring individual files.

Basically, it seems to me that it's Acronis 7.x rather than the current
Acronis 10.x

 

[GeraldF]

Yes, but why? I don't understand what you're trying to do?

Sounds like he wants to save his present setup and
reinstall vista to try something else, like new hardware
or software. Might be better for him to create a Virtual
PC with Vista.

 

[Michael Solomon]

It's free and it works very nicely but it's lacking features and one
that's important to me is that it will deal only with partitions, it
will not allow backing up or restoring individual files.

Basically, it seems to me that it's Acronis 7.x rather than the current
Acronis 10.x

This is probably why we don't hear much about it. I haven't used it in that
configuration. I've only used the commercial product but it would seem
they'd only allow its use under those conditions, strictly for the basic
tools. While those tools are pretty good its hardly all that Acronis offers
in the full package.