Acronis True Image works like magic!

[Derek Scuteri]

I read a post here a few months ago that someone used
Acronis True Image to "clone" their C drive to a larger
capacity drive with success. Well after several months
of trying to upgrade my C drive to a larger capacity with
the tools that XP Home provides, I was not making any
progress and went out and bought Acronis True Image
version 8. Installed the software, swapped in my new
drive to copy/clone to, and maybe within an hour or so
I was booting up my PC with an 80 GB C drive (from
6 GB). It was magic! I couldn't believe it! No errors
during boot. User friendly interface. Quite reasonable
in price. Based on my experience I would recommend
Acronis True Image for backup/restore software.

-- Derek Scuteri

 

[dean]

How many CDs are need to 'image' or 'clone' an 80 GB HD? (As the question
probably reveals I've never 'cloned' before).
Thanks,
Dean

 

[bxf]

How many CDs are need to 'image' or 'clone' an 80 GB HD? (As the question
probably reveals I've never 'cloned' before).

Why would you want to clone an 80 GB drive to CDs? At worst, you could
use DVDs, but more likely you would go to another drive, internal or
external. Or, depending on your objectives and if you are imaging just
some partition(s) rather than the entire drive, you could go to another
partition on the same drive.

 

[Derek Scuteri]

I cloned disk (6 GB) to disk (80 GB).

-- Derek Scuteri

 

[Galen]

In Derek Scuteri <[email protected]> had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

I read a post here a few months ago that someone used
Acronis True Image to "clone" their C drive to a larger
capacity drive with success. Well after several months
of trying to upgrade my C drive to a larger capacity with
the tools that XP Home provides, I was not making any
progress and went out and bought Acronis True Image
version 8. Installed the software, swapped in my new
drive to copy/clone to, and maybe within an hour or so
I was booting up my PC with an 80 GB C drive (from
6 GB). It was magic! I couldn't believe it! No errors
during boot. User friendly interface. Quite reasonable
in price. Based on my experience I would recommend
Acronis True Image for backup/restore software.

-- Derek Scuteri

I use it on a daily basis to make incremintal backups. It is then used
weekly to make a full HDD backup to a clone, and monthly to make a backup
spanning multiple DVDs.

It replaced my Norton Ghost 2k3 which was their last good version in my
opinion. I've also got a copy of Image for Windows which seems to work well.

Galen
--

"Chance has put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem, and
its solution is its own reward."

Sherlock Holmes

 

[Timothy Daniels]

I read a post here a few months ago that someone used
Acronis True Image to "clone" their C drive to a larger
capacity drive with success. Well after several months
of trying to upgrade my C drive to a larger capacity with
the tools that XP Home provides, I was not making any
progress and went out and bought Acronis True Image
version 8. Installed the software, swapped in my new
drive to copy/clone to, and maybe within an hour or so
I was booting up my PC with an 80 GB C drive (from
6 GB). It was magic! I couldn't believe it! No errors
during boot. User friendly interface. Quite reasonable
in price. Based on my experience I would recommend
Acronis True Image for backup/restore software.

For pure cloning as you did (i.e. not an incremental
backup nor creation of an "image" file), you could
have done it for free with the free trial version of
Casper XP available form Future Systems Solutions
at: http://www.fssdev.com/products/casperxp/ .
Casper XP (like Ghost) can take a single partition
from an HD containing several partitions and clone
it to an HD that already contains several partitions.
This allows the storage of several clones on a single
backup HD. True Image, on the other hand, clones
the ENTIRE source HD to the ENTIRETY of the
destination HD - fine if you're just upgrading to a
larger HD, but lousy for storage of more than one
bootable image (i.e. a clone) on a single HD. And
unlike Ghost 9.0, Casper XP doesn't use Microsoft's
.NET Framework.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Kinoby]

I fully agree with you, Derek Scuteri. It's excellent program in fact!

For pure cloning as you did (i.e. not an incremental
backup nor creation of an "image" file), you could
have done it for free with the free trial version of
Casper XP available form Future Systems Solutions
at: http://www.fssdev.com/products/casperxp/ .
Casper XP (like Ghost) can take a single partition
from an HD containing several partitions and clone
it to an HD that already contains several partitions.
This allows the storage of several clones on a single
backup HD. True Image, on the other hand, clones
the ENTIRE source HD to the ENTIRETY of the
destination HD - fine if you're just upgrading to a
larger HD, but lousy for storage of more than one
bootable image (i.e. a clone) on a single HD. And
unlike Ghost 9.0, Casper XP doesn't use Microsoft's
.NET Framework.

You are wrong. As I understood, you have mixed up "Backup/Restore
partition (disk)" and "transferring file system to a new disk". This
program can do both 1st and 2nd things.
Study more about acronis backup software before making such posts with
misinformation! ;-)
You may do it here:
http://us1.download.acronis.com/pdf/trueimage8.0_ug.en.pdf
Read pages 19-38.

 

[Kinoby]

I fully agree with you, Derek Scuteri. It's excellent program in fact!

For pure cloning as you did (i.e. not an incremental
backup nor creation of an "image" file), you could
have done it for free with the free trial version of
Casper XP available form Future Systems Solutions
at: http://www.fssdev.com/products/casperxp/ .
Casper XP (like Ghost) can take a single partition
from an HD containing several partitions and clone
it to an HD that already contains several partitions.
This allows the storage of several clones on a single
backup HD. True Image, on the other hand, clones
the ENTIRE source HD to the ENTIRETY of the
destination HD - fine if you're just upgrading to a
larger HD, but lousy for storage of more than one
bootable image (i.e. a clone) on a single HD. And
unlike Ghost 9.0, Casper XP doesn't use Microsoft's
.NET Framework.

You are wrong, Timothy Daniels. As I understood, you have mixed up
"Backup/Restore
partition (disk)" and "transferring file system to a new disk". This
program can do both 1st and 2nd things.
Study more about acronis backup software before making such posts with
misinformation! ;-)
You may do it here:
http://us1.download.acronis.com/pdf/trueimage8.0_ug.en.pdf
Read pages 19-38.

 

[Zilbandy]

True Image, on the other hand, clones

Not at all true. I do complete 'backups' using True Image every third
day. I backup these complete backups to an external 250gb USB drive.
My C drive contains about 11gb of data and TrueImage creates a file
around 7.5gb on the external drive for each full backup. I can, and
have, restored complete images from these backups and when done, the
new images boots perfectly. Also, If I want just to grab a few files
from a previous backup, I can mount a backup image as drive letter on
free space on my main harddrive and use Windows Explorer to browse or
copy files from the backup image. I don't even know what new features
are available with TrueImage version 8 as I am using, and am very
satisfied with, version 7.

 

[Zilbandy]

Kinoby, oops, I'm sorry. I meant to post my previous reply to Timothy
but old age caught up to me and I posted it under your name.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Not at all true. I do complete 'backups' using True Image
every third day. I backup these complete backups to an
external 250gb USB drive. My C drive contains about
11gb of data and TrueImage creates a file around 7.5gb
on the external drive for each full backup. I can, and have,
restored complete images from these backups and when
done, the new images boots perfectly...

What you are doing is making an IMAGE FILE which
is stored on external media just like any other file.
Then you are taking the contents of such a file and
"restoring" it (which may involve expanding it if it was
compressed while making the image file) to a HD.

I was talking about making a CLONE - an exact byte-
for-byte copy of the OS's partition onto another HD,
including the partition's boot sector, such that it can
be booted directly from where it resides on the
backup HD with no "restoration" step necessary.

In short, a clone can be booted directly, an image file
must first be "restored". You've been making image
files, not clones.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Timothy Daniels]

You are wrong. As I understood, you have mixed up
"Backup/Restore partition (disk)" and "transferring
file system to a new disk". This program can do both
1st and 2nd things. Study more about acronis backup
software before making such posts with misinformation! ;-)
You may do it here:
http://us1.download.acronis.com/pdf/trueimage8.0_ug.en.pdf
Read pages 19-38.

You haven't read that manual carefully. Pages 19-37 pertain
to image files. Starting on page 38 is the section on
transferring a system, i.e. making clones. You will see that
a cloning must be of an entire HD's contents to the entirety
of another HD. You cannot select which partition to clone,
and you cannot designate its destination on the 2nd HD.
You must transfer ALL of it. This is great for moving up to a
larger HD, but it severely limits you if you want to put multiple
clones, i.e. BOOTABLE copies of your OS, on the 2nd HD.
To do that using True Image, you must make an image file
and store it somewhere. Then you must "restore" it to the
destination HD. In that case, True Image is True Pain.

On the other hand, Casper XP will let you select just the OS
partition (or a particular OS partition among many) from one
HD and clone it as, say, the 3rd partition on a HD that already
contains a couple other clones. The result will be 3 clones on
the 2nd HD, each of them immediately and directly bootable
without any "restoration" step. A few other utilities allow this,
too, by the way. Ghost 9.0 is one of them.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Derek Scuteri]

I'm sure in time Acronis will also add newer features
to True Image that will allow more flexability in its use.

-- Derek Scuteri