fusion3194
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How to clone / image a drive with only one partition, would like to use USB external drive to send image to
I am currently trying to design a disaster recovery plan setup. I have a scenario i need to be able to be confidently complete. It is as follows.
A pc that I have not seen before as an Issue (We will presume it is booting up.) I would like to clone the hard drive first before trying to resolve a snap shot of current state. I would like to use acronis to clone the drive. In this situation this machine has only one partition. I could use partition magic to create a new partition and clone the system drive to that partition but that is too risky as if new partition creation fails we have nothing to recover. I would like to have an external drive connected via usb and clone the drive to that external drive that try and resolve the issue with the pc.
Can I reliably do this or will the external USB drive be visible to acronis when it boots it its own routine. Thanks for taking the time to review this question
A pc that I have not seen before as an Issue (We will presume it is booting up.) I would like to clone the hard drive first before trying to resolve a snap shot of current state. I would like to use acronis to clone the drive. In this situation this machine has only one partition. I could use partition magic to create a new partition and clone the system drive to that partition but that is too risky as if new partition creation fails we have nothing to recover. I would like to have an external drive connected via usb and clone the drive to that external drive that try and resolve the issue with the pc.
Can I reliably do this or will the external USB drive be visible to acronis when it boots it its own routine. Thanks for taking the time to review this question
I use Acronis all the time. It does see the USB drive which I have . It is a Lacie drive Wether you boot from PC or boot from CD it does see the the USB drive. There is a recenet newer version that has the support for SATA HDD although the one I used before that worked fine. I Just recently ran into a problem with some new Dell laptops and SATA but the Acronis upgrade worked fine.
>> I would like to clone the hard drive first before trying to resolve a snap shot of current state.
Booting from the Acronis TI 11 recovery boot cd should work as you plan. The Acronis boot cd is linux based. The only thing I would add to what has been stated before, is to recommend that you NOT "clone" the hard drive. Instead create a backup-image-file of the hard drive with Acronis and store it in a folder of the usb drive. It's just as good as an exact image clone, and in fact better because it is a compressed NTFS file (be sure the usb is formatted ntfs). You can put lots of images on the usb2 hard drive for other situations or customers.
Booting from the Acronis TI 11 recovery boot cd should work as you plan. The Acronis boot cd is linux based. The only thing I would add to what has been stated before, is to recommend that you NOT "clone" the hard drive. Instead create a backup-image-file of the hard drive with Acronis and store it in a folder of the usb drive. It's just as good as an exact image clone, and in fact better because it is a compressed NTFS file (be sure the usb is formatted ntfs). You can put lots of images on the usb2 hard drive for other situations or customers.
ASKER
Hi dis1931:, and sliiconman:
Thanks for comments I found both of you suggestions helpful. Can you bear with me while I test the soltuions. I reply to every post just need a bit of time to test the solutions
Re dis1931. Thanks for that I am farimilar with bart PE but was unaware of the window PE. I use ghost a lot so would be a great fit. I too found the ghost boot disk a nightmare to source NIC drivers. Thanks for you commnet
Re. sliiconman: I have always used ghost but boot options are rubbish also ghost 12 is a bloated product will test you soltuion Thanks for comment
Thanks for comments I found both of you suggestions helpful. Can you bear with me while I test the soltuions. I reply to every post just need a bit of time to test the solutions
Re dis1931. Thanks for that I am farimilar with bart PE but was unaware of the window PE. I use ghost a lot so would be a great fit. I too found the ghost boot disk a nightmare to source NIC drivers. Thanks for you commnet
Re. sliiconman: I have always used ghost but boot options are rubbish also ghost 12 is a bloated product will test you soltuion Thanks for comment
ASKER
Hi Expert4XP:
Thanks for suggestion will test this solution. Please bear with me as have a few solutions to test.
Thanks for suggestion will test this solution. Please bear with me as have a few solutions to test.
No problem. Let us know if you need more help! I use to setup ghost for the admins as well for deployment but like you said its just tyoo big. Business Desktop Deployment seems to be the ultimate way to go.
You will like Acronis!
Keep us posted.
/sm
You will like Acronis!
Keep us posted.
/sm
I am still using Ghost 8.0 I believe....works like a charm...Ghost seemed to start making foolish decisions regarding Ghost after that...
ASKER
Hi
Please find some feedback to my post. Quite long thought but when It comes to backup you cannot spend enough time on it. I like to give proper feedback to the users that are good enough to lend me their commnets
Norton Ghost. Revelant for dis1931: and dis1931: (Have a look at the Acronis comment might be a benefit
I agree after ghost 8 I feel the developers lost the key feature of ghost i.e. the disk / partition cloning. There are a million file backup programs out there but there is no subisute of a clone when things go south. I have used it a lot and it has got me out of a lot of bad situations. My issue with ghost now pertains to a particular situation I am trying to get an SOP (standard operating procedure for) That is when you are on site with a new system / pc you have now worked on before. The first step with dealing with that situation is to clone the system partition before any work is carried out. If the *** hits the fan restore the partition or at worst land in a new box and work from there.
Now in this situation, the new machine we have now met before has only one partition we cannot complete a clone as you need another disk or at least another partition. We could do the following
1. Use partition magic and create a second partition on the disk: This is too risky as partition magic can be dangerous and would need a clone of the disk before we do this Catch 22.
2. We could take out the disk pop it into another machine and complete the task. Answer too messy just met the PC and would take too long not to mention having to lug around a spare pc to perform the cloning
3. Use nortons boot media options. Unfortunately ghost 8 only uses floppy disk but lot of pcs now do not ship them as standard.
4. Plug in a USB hard disk and use as the second hard drive to perform the clone. Answer Ghost can crash doing this it does not handle usb devices well at all. Crashes and I have had a lot of situations where it crashes on reboot and hangs leaving the machine constantly booting into the virtual partition. The only way around this is to take the hard drive out the re mark the system partition as active.
In summary love ghost but is cannot make any good of it in this situation
Acronis Feedback
I have been looking at this product as an disaster recovery solution and have been testing it with the above situation. Yes, Yes, Yes. Does what it says on the tin. However only have trial version have not been able to run test recovery but I am sure it will work. The following are some points that I found great from the above situation.
1. Installed the product went straight to cloning section. Was not too impressed as seemed would only clone entire disk not just a partition. Maybe wrong did not spend too much time looking into it as I was too busy building a CD boot media.
2. The power of this product in my scenario comes into its own (Thanks Expert4XP:, and sliiconman: wrote the CD and my question was answered. Nice and clean make clone chose the partition or entire disk you want to clone and off you go. It picked up my USB external drive so it ticks all the boxes. I am looking forward to getting the product as it should resolve some other disaster recovery issues I have. Has anyone used the server product. I will probable raise a question on this at a later date when I get some testing to ask relavent question
With Regard to points sliiconman, Expert4XP made the key points Expert4XP Hit the nail on the head about the boot media. I not going to close question this minute as you may want to add more comment.
Again Thanks for comments wishing you a peacefull day
Best Regards
Please find some feedback to my post. Quite long thought but when It comes to backup you cannot spend enough time on it. I like to give proper feedback to the users that are good enough to lend me their commnets
Norton Ghost. Revelant for dis1931: and dis1931: (Have a look at the Acronis comment might be a benefit
I agree after ghost 8 I feel the developers lost the key feature of ghost i.e. the disk / partition cloning. There are a million file backup programs out there but there is no subisute of a clone when things go south. I have used it a lot and it has got me out of a lot of bad situations. My issue with ghost now pertains to a particular situation I am trying to get an SOP (standard operating procedure for) That is when you are on site with a new system / pc you have now worked on before. The first step with dealing with that situation is to clone the system partition before any work is carried out. If the *** hits the fan restore the partition or at worst land in a new box and work from there.
Now in this situation, the new machine we have now met before has only one partition we cannot complete a clone as you need another disk or at least another partition. We could do the following
1. Use partition magic and create a second partition on the disk: This is too risky as partition magic can be dangerous and would need a clone of the disk before we do this Catch 22.
2. We could take out the disk pop it into another machine and complete the task. Answer too messy just met the PC and would take too long not to mention having to lug around a spare pc to perform the cloning
3. Use nortons boot media options. Unfortunately ghost 8 only uses floppy disk but lot of pcs now do not ship them as standard.
4. Plug in a USB hard disk and use as the second hard drive to perform the clone. Answer Ghost can crash doing this it does not handle usb devices well at all. Crashes and I have had a lot of situations where it crashes on reboot and hangs leaving the machine constantly booting into the virtual partition. The only way around this is to take the hard drive out the re mark the system partition as active.
In summary love ghost but is cannot make any good of it in this situation
Acronis Feedback
I have been looking at this product as an disaster recovery solution and have been testing it with the above situation. Yes, Yes, Yes. Does what it says on the tin. However only have trial version have not been able to run test recovery but I am sure it will work. The following are some points that I found great from the above situation.
1. Installed the product went straight to cloning section. Was not too impressed as seemed would only clone entire disk not just a partition. Maybe wrong did not spend too much time looking into it as I was too busy building a CD boot media.
2. The power of this product in my scenario comes into its own (Thanks Expert4XP:, and sliiconman: wrote the CD and my question was answered. Nice and clean make clone chose the partition or entire disk you want to clone and off you go. It picked up my USB external drive so it ticks all the boxes. I am looking forward to getting the product as it should resolve some other disaster recovery issues I have. Has anyone used the server product. I will probable raise a question on this at a later date when I get some testing to ask relavent question
With Regard to points sliiconman, Expert4XP made the key points Expert4XP Hit the nail on the head about the boot media. I not going to close question this minute as you may want to add more comment.
Again Thanks for comments wishing you a peacefull day
Best Regards
I have used the server product and it works very well. I use it for some of the servers that I may need to a bare metal restore from. Like Citrix servers etc.
ASKER
Re:sliiconman:
"I have used the server product and it works very well. I use it for some of the servers that I may need to a bare metal restore from. Like Citrix servers etc"
Thats good to know sliiconman: I have just about made up my mind to go with acronis. I will set up a few labs to test the scenarios I want to deal with but looking at the boot media and tech sheets it ticks all the boxes
"I have used the server product and it works very well. I use it for some of the servers that I may need to a bare metal restore from. Like Citrix servers etc"
Thats good to know sliiconman: I have just about made up my mind to go with acronis. I will set up a few labs to test the scenarios I want to deal with but looking at the boot media and tech sheets it ticks all the boxes
>> Nice and clean make clone chose the partition or entire disk you want to clone and off you go.
I'd like to emphasize again that you should make backup-image of your hard drive, not full clone (unless you are planning to replace your original drive).
I have an external usb2 hard drive with folders from different pc's. Each folder has several backup image files in it. Very convenient because I can go back several dates if I want to restore file/folder from 3 months or 6 months ago.
I'd like to emphasize again that you should make backup-image of your hard drive, not full clone (unless you are planning to replace your original drive).
I have an external usb2 hard drive with folders from different pc's. Each folder has several backup image files in it. Very convenient because I can go back several dates if I want to restore file/folder from 3 months or 6 months ago.
I would just like to add that you can easily use the Ghost floppy to create a bootable CD, and event better, gain access to the rest of the CD for additional utilities.
I have a number of these in use on a regular basis, including the ones from Ghost Suite 2.01 licensed for all of our machines.
I hope this helps !
I have a number of these in use on a regular basis, including the ones from Ghost Suite 2.01 licensed for all of our machines.
I hope this helps !
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It seems like Acronis is what you want and by all means if it works for you....then that is great.
ASKER
Re:Dis1931
Thanks for comment I will look at that solution will take a bit of time too test very interested in perusing all suggestions. Thanks for update will post results thanks again
Thanks for comment I will look at that solution will take a bit of time too test very interested in perusing all suggestions. Thanks for update will post results thanks again
ASKER
Apologies all for the time to reslove this open question I would hate to be seen as a time waster. I did notify I was going to test but due to some personal cirsumtance was not on line for a while. Thanks for suggestions and consise feedback
Best Regards
Bryan (again apologies for time in closing question
Best Regards
Bryan (again apologies for time in closing question
I have never used Acronis...I use Ghost for this purpose. As for booting...I usually boot from a bootable CD at this point. Ghost has a boot disk creator for floppy disks but it is painful to find drivers and if you hvae multiple different NICS you need multipl disks. BartPE is an option to boot from. It is a CD that boots up to a mini version of Windows and you can copy ghost.exe or acronis executable to the CD and run it from the CD. It will recognize the USB drive as well as the internal drive and you can image away.
With that being said BartPE seems like an abandoned project...It was based from Microsoft's Windows PE version 1...meant for OEM installations. However, Microsoft has released Windows PE version 2 that is freely available to everyone and no license restrictive. I believe PE comes as part of WAIK http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c7d4bc6d-15f3-4284-9123-679830d629f2&DisplayLang=en
The documentation also helps you make a usb drive bootable. So you could boot from a usb thumb drive or even from the external drive that you will image to. So you don't need a CD. However, some of this USB booting depends on the age of your equipment as it isn't supported on older hardware.
Thanks,
dis1931