Problem Cloning Netbook SATA Hard Drive Using Acronis True Image & Norton Ghost

Thanks for the reply Punky!

The problem isn't taking images - I can do that successfully in Windows with Acronis.  The problem is restoring the images.

I need to be able to boot into an environment that can see the netbook's SATA hard drives.  I would prefer to boot from a USB memory stick.  Splitting the drive into 3 partitions would be possible (XP, Ubuntu and recovery partition).  Booting from CD is a distant third as it requires a bulky external CD rom and PSU.

I have been googling and found a couple of other options - R-tools make drive image and Terabyte make Image for Windows.  Both sound like they might work, but I am not sure about the image recovery...

Regards,

Dave

Use Acronis to create rescue boot disk, insert that boot disk and select boot order to boot from usb external DVD/CD .... that will map the drive for you to restore image to system.

Thanks again Punky!

I have used Acronis to create a bootable flash drive and I can get into acronis.  The problem is that it reports that there are no drives on the computer.  I presume that booting from a CD will give the same result?  I don't have access to one to try it out at the moment, but the errors that I get (see below) suggest that the recovery environment cannot talk to the SATA drives.

I have tried setting the controller to compatibility in the bios rather than AHIC.  I also had another machine a while ago that exhibited the same problem with SATA drives - I never got round to solving that one...

If I press F11 while booting and delete the 'quiet' command, the verbose load show that every time the program tries to communicate with a SATA channel it gets no response.  This leads to about a five minute load by the time it has tried a couple of times and reported either errors or time outs.

Regards,

Dave

Did you install Acronis on Toshiba Netbook 100 and created image as well as the rescue boot disk on same system? If you make rescue boot disk from other machine and it will not work.

Thanks again!

Yes, the rescue disk was created on the netbook.  

Do you know if Acronis uses linux for it's rescue environment?  I am about to start a new question on linux, as I have downloaded Slax and managed to boot into it and KDE.  The thing is, it takes ages as you keep on getting errors from SATA1 etc, similar to what I seen when booting into Acronis.  When you eventually get into KDE, you can see the USB drive that you boot from, but the HD is not available.

I am getting the impression that Linux cannot work with the storage controller.  Seems to be a standard one though (Intel 82801G or ICH7M/MDH - not sure which as there  are 2 enteries in Windows Device Manager).

Regards,

Dave

Update:

Acronis confirm that there is something wrong with their retail version of True Image.  They did give me a link to download an iso of a fixed version, but that doesn't work either!

Does anyone know of a disk cloner that works with the Intel 82801G or ICH7M/MDH chipset (not sure which as there  are 2 enteries in Windows Device Manager)?  I tried the one by R-Tools as I have some software for recovering files from them and it's excellent, but that one doesn't work either.

In fact, given that they all seem to use linux, I am wondering if it's something to do with linux.  If I boot from a USB drive with SLAX on it, that can't see the drives etiher...

Dave

You should not worry about that. If you created image with Acronis from windows, and also use the rescue boot-disk created by Acronis, you might try disable AHCI and set IDE mode .... it should see the drive when you try restore.

Other than that is to remove the drive out of system and hookup on other system, then clone the image. Put back the drive, you might run repair install.

Thanks Punky,

I already tried the compatibilty mode, but Acronis wont boot in that mode.  About half way through while initialising the disk communication it gets stuck in a loop of timeouts and wont go any further.  It will boot in AHCI but it can't see any drives.

As for taking the drive out, that is unfortunately more trouble than it's worth.  The netbook only has a case slot for memory upgrades - the whole case would have to come off.

To be honest, I have kind of had it with Acronis anyway.  I had created an image of my desktop with it, but with this problem I have found that the image will be useless if I need it as my desktop also has SATA drives.  Acronis say that they have fixed the problem, but the 'fix' is not present on their latest download version and the patched ISO that they supp[ly with the 'fix' on it doesn't work.

I might not need imaging software often, but I do need it to be reliable...

Regards,

Dave