--
"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."
Someone recommended acronis to me in this group.
I checked the acronis web site and found no answer.
I set my C:/ 152 gig SATA to
C:/ 30 gigs SYSTEM
E:/ 122 gigs PROGRAMS
Not real sure what started eating away at things, had to revert to an
earlier date cause of cascading failures.
Figured out how to use acronis to restore. But at the last moment I
noticed what it said, and killed power, hopefully to limit damage. Don't
know if it did. Only lost data from the main drive C:/ & E:/
Can't recall exactly what it said, but it sounded like it said 'found
more than expected, if you continue I will erase all your data'
I've been backing up every week for months, just the C:/ 30 gig driveto
an acronis hidden partition.
Finally got things up, it restored the C: partition. The E: partitionwas
gone. I can't really say if acronis did it or not. The instant power off
with that message most likely killed the C:/ cause I couldn't reboot to
the C: drive, until I used the restore CD. But I couldn't find my acronis
CD right off, so I deleted the C: and the E: [looked like it was
unformatted] and went to re-installing the OS again.
Does anyone know what acronis intended to do with that message I received
?
I really don't want to do this every time M$ screws up my OS. I've come
to believe it has more to do with the auto updates, since that's the ONLY
thing that's been installing itself for months to my machine.
I don't know the answer to question as I've never run into that message
with Acronis (I use it weekly at least sometimes more). Just a few points
to share for future reference:
1) When restoring with Acronis, the target partition has to be the same
size or larger than the one that the image was made from. You cannot shoe
horn a larger image into a smaller space. If desired, you can resize
partitions after the restore takes place.
the hidden partition [Acronis] is 58.95 GB. The C:\ system is a bit under or
over 30 GB.
There's always been around 18 GB free on C:\
I suspect this is what happened in your case: Acronis could not fit theC:
image into the allotted C: space. It was telling you that continuing with
the restore would have repercussions with the existing E: partition.
which is why I just killed power. It wasn't an error I was expecting because
I've been making sure the C:\ stays small with as much spare space as
possible. The Acronis partition is located on Drive D:\ a completely
physically separate 220 GB IDE drive.
And now after actually using it [Acronis for what it's intended, glad it
didn't take 6 hours to restore, about 1 hour more like it.] I can see what's
happening with it.
I suspect the weekly updates, are only making changes that have changed
since the previous backup. And there's a complete 30 gig image in that
partition also.
But still with changes, it's under 30 gigs. Or it should be. the restore
shows 18.3 GB free. Which is about what it was before the failures.
In the future, create your smaller partition. Then create a full image of
that resized partition. Thus eliminating the concern regarding partition
size.
I think that's how Acronis works with the 1st time use.
2) A restore overwrites everything on a partition. If you powered off
during a restore, it's impossible to say how much had been restored - boot
sector, partition info, etc. Even if the boot sector data had been
transferred, there are no guarantees that the partition info was included
or that the partial Windows restoration would be able to complete the boot
process. If you had allowed the restore to finish, E: would still have been
toast but Windows should have booted without a problem.
Why do you say E:\ would have been bad ? That pretty much kills any
pre-planning to partition a large drive my way with a 30 GB C:\ system and
the 122 GB E:\ programs partition.
I went and got a USB 300 GB after it crapped out last time. Don't waste your
money on the Maxtor one touch.
It saves your data, but it's more trouble than it's worth. I keep it turned
off until I need it.
I tried leaving the 2 options backup and synch in the OFF stage, but every
10 minutes it starts blinking the annoying bright white light on the front
[I have it facing the back of the room now] telling you to hit the 1 touch
button. When it's off. The daily settings mean nothing. every 10 minutes
like clockwork on or off. You'd think something that has a preprogrammed
daily backup would wait 24 hours and do a silent backup... NOT!
HINT: I know Acronis has that nice little "incremental" function. However,
based on bad experiences with other incremental backup software (not
Acronis), I shy away from using it in any backup or imaging program.
Well I think I can say you shouldn't worry about it with Acronis 9. It
restored C:\ once I found the Acronis backup / restore CD it created for
this purpose.
Whether it killed E: or not I can't say, which is why I'm asking here.
Instead, I do a "full image" of each partition each and every time. Reason:
Incremental images consist of a base image plus x number of additions. More
parts means more potential for things to go wrong. On the other hand and my
personal feeling is that one part (a full image) increases the likelihood
of a trouble free restore.
Probably right, but I don't think it has the option to auto delete itself
week after week, and create a new copy.
And not really a good idea when you figure I have Acronis on auto pilot for
the backups.. every Sunday
The backup I used was the one from 2-3 weeks back not this past Sunday, as
the machine was flaking on me as early as last Sunday meaning a restore from
Sunday might just do nothing.
My reasoning for this and I found it's what Acronis planned, was to have
Acronis replace the system restore in XP pro. I turned off system restore
months ago also.
The system restore is a good idea, but it fails miserably in it's
implementation. I always wound up with dupe folders renamed folder-1,
folder-2. etc. And some program is supposed to know it's data is now located
in folder-1 ? Screwed more than it fixed.
I spent a lot of time reading how to backup, and the incremental as is seems
to work fine. Just wish it hadn't popped up that 'I'm going to destroy all
your data' message. Next time, I'll get it right, or at least closer to
right.
Need to see if I can actually delete last Sundays backup so I don't use it
in the future.
