True Image 9 won't restore from CD

[mydeadpresidents]

Running TI9 on windows XP with two partitions. OS has been freshly
installed and no other backup applications have ever been installed.

From XP desktop, I have successfully created an image of drive C

(active partition holding OS). I stored this image on drive D. This
image restores just fine without a hitch. This was a full partition
backup using normal compression and all default settings.

I would like to have a backup of my active parition stored on media in
case of a hard drive failure. From XP desktop I was able to burn an
image of my C partition spanning it over 4 CDs. No problems. Size was
correct. All default settings used including normal compression.

I rebooted and using my rescue disk I went to restore pre-OS boot. I
inserted disk one, but then was prompted for last disk in series, disk
4. I put in disk 4, located the last part of the image and clicked
proceed. In less than a minute, I got a pop up saying restore was
successful. This was supposed to be a full partition restoration and
during the restore the active partition was actually deleted and was
supposed to be recreated. However, it appears that the unallocated
space was never re-partitioned. Naturally, upon reboot nothing
happened because there was no partition. So, I rebooted using the
rescue disk and restored my active partition using the image on
parition D as a source. Everything back to normal just fine. I used
the exact same procedure, settings and prefrences each time, but when I
try to restore from CD it fails and when I restore from a different
partition (same hard drive) it works.

I repeated the procedure with 4 new CDs but the results were exactly
the same.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong? Would it help to create the image
pre-os boot using the rescue disk? I checked the Acronis FAQ and
searched usenet for a while, but if there's a solution out there I
wasn't finding it. I like the product and would like to keep using it,
but I just don't know where to go from here.

FYI: I did not use the "Acronis Startup Recovery Manager" feature at
any time.

Thanks if you can help. I'm stumped.

 

[Will Dormann]

I repeated the procedure with 4 new CDs but the results were exactly
the same.

I don't have an answer to your question, but rather than spanning over 4
CD's, do you have access to a DVD burner?

Following these instructions, you can burn your images onto a single
bootable DVD and not have to worry about spanning. (Though spanning
multiple CDs *should* work fine... not sure what the problem is in your
case)

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=48186



-WD

 

[Rus]

I'll soon be trialing Acronis TI. I've studied the user forums at Acronis.
Those forums are full of complaints about corrupt images stored on optical
media. You are not alone.

Did you burn those 4 CD's using Acronis? If you did, that could be a
problem, I think.

Acronis says it has to use 3rd party packet writers to do a direct burn to
optical media. Nero calls its packet writer InCD. I think Roxio calls
theirs Direct To Disc.

Either way, packet writing to CD and DVD is just prone to error. There
aren't sufficient data integrity checks in the writing scheme. Some people
may get it to work, but, it's just pure luck. Even "Mount Ranier" capable
drives produce too many errors when packet writing a disc no matter what
software we may use.

I've used PowerQuest DriveImage (PQDI) for years to back up to CD and DVD
with absolute success time after time after time. I'll use Acronis in the
same way as I've used PQDI so that I'll have the best chance for success with
Acronis.

I always use the boot CD method (or boot floppy method) to create the images.
I just don't trust any imager to be able to create images of OS hard drive
sectors while the OS is active. M$ Windows is just too powerful at locking
down OS sytem files and the sectors in which they reside. If I boot the
computer to a floppy or boot to a CD, I know the hard drive is totally under
control and I know that the image software has complete and unrestricted
access to each and every sector on the drive.

After that boot, I use the software to create images and I have the software
break the images into appropriately sized chunks so I can later burn them to
disc. Then, I use conventional mastering software to create a CD or DVD in a
standard ISO9660 format. Using Nero, I can burn a CD/DVD and have it run a
"data verification" after the burn is complete. When I burn the disc, I burn
it "disc at once" (DAO) and I "close the disc" so that the Table of Contents
(TOC) and the data on the CD are just as simplified and standardized as
possible.

When I restore, I will again boot to CD or floppy and restore in that mode
from the DVD's.

This method has worked perfectly for me for years using other imaging
software. So, to give my Acronis trial the best odds for success, that's
what I'm going to do.

If it fails even when doing it that way ... I'll move on to something else.

//rus//


(e-mail address removed) wrote in @g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

 

[mydeadpresidents]

I agree DVDs are certainly a better way to go, but in this case I need
to use CDs. Drive Image 2000 never had a problem doing this. Maybe
I'll go back to that.

 

[mydeadpresidents]

Thanks for the response Russ,

I'll soon be trialing Acronis TI. I've studied the user forums at Acronis.
Those forums are full of complaints about corrupt images stored on optical
media. You are not alone.

That's too bad because I heard good things about TI9. What good is
backup software if it can't burn to media? How much more of a primary
function can you get for an Imager? For a different PC I burned to DVD
and that seemed to work fine, but now I guess I'd better go back and
test it to make sure.

Did you burn those 4 CD's using Acronis? If you did, that could be a
problem, I think.

Yes, the OS was newly installed and updated and everything was done
with TI9. TI9 reocognized the image and even told me it had restored
successfully when it was obvious that nothing had really happened. (It
only looked at 1 of the 4 CDs and for less than a minute before telling
me ti twas finished).

Acronis says it has to use 3rd party packet writers to do a direct burn to
optical media. Nero calls its packet writer InCD. I think Roxio calls
theirs Direct To Disc.

Either way, packet writing to CD and DVD is just prone to error. There
aren't sufficient data integrity checks in the writing scheme. Some people
may get it to work, but, it's just pure luck. Even "Mount Ranier" capable
drives produce too many errors when packet writing a disc no matter what
software we may use.

I've used PowerQuest DriveImage (PQDI) for years to back up to CD and DVD
with absolute success time after time after time. I'll use Acronis in the
same way as I've used PQDI so that I'll have the best chance for success with
Acronis.

You took the words out of my mouth... Untill recently I was using Drive
Image 2002 to backup the PC to CD. I've never had a problem. The only
reason I stopped using DI is because I was have permissions issues.
Again, how stupid is it that Imaging software can't write reliably to
CDs? I guess I'll go back to DI2002.

I always use the boot CD method (or boot floppy method) to create the images.
I just don't trust any imager to be able to create images of OS hard drive
sectors while the OS is active.
M$ Windows is just too powerful at locking
down OS sytem files and the sectors in which they reside. If I boot the
computer to a floppy or boot to a CD, I know the hard drive is totally under
control and I know that the image software has complete and unrestricted
access to each and every sector on the drive.

That's a good point. I raised it in usenet when I was shopping around
for a new Imager after DI but everyone kept assuring me it wasn't an
issue. After today, I'm going to run TI pre-os. However, for the
issue at hand I don't really think this is the problem. TI9 isn't even
bothering to create the parition from the unallocated space and to hear
it from TI9 everything is working fine.

After that boot, I use the software to create images and I have the software
break the images into appropriately sized chunks so I can later burn them to
disc. Then, I use conventional mastering software to create a CD or DVD in a
standard ISO9660 format. Using Nero, I can burn a CD/DVD and have it run a
"data verification" after the burn is complete. When I burn the disc, I burn
it "disc at once" (DAO) and I "close the disc" so that the Table of Contents

(>TOC) and the data on the CD are just as simplified and standardized
as

possible.

Good advice and it crossed my mind to do this too, but again, that's a
long way to go every time I want to back up data.

When I restore, I will again boot to CD or floppy and restore in that mode
from the DVD's.

This method has worked perfectly for me for years using other imaging
software. So, to give my Acronis trial the best odds for success, that's
what I'm going to do.

Well, if you're right about TI writing to media then I wouldn't
recommend you buying it. Another thing I like about DI2002 was that
you could just tell it to restart and restore the active partition.
With TI9 you have to go through all the prompts and selections as if
you are about to restore the image and then when TI finds out it's an
active partition you have reboot anyway and go through alll the prompts
again. No big deal for me but I'm building this PC for somebody else
and that just makes things twice as complicated. I made them a rescue
CD too, but then they'll have to change the bios to launch that which
is just more hassle. TI9 does have a automated partitioning backup
system in which it creates some kind of hidden partition for backup
use. Maybe that would work more smoothly but I haven't played too much
with it. I'd rather be able to see my backup image and be able to
directly manipulate it. Sadly, I find TI9 lacking compared to the
simply more antiquated DI2002. M$ bought out power quest. Hopefully
they took the best of it and put it into Ghost. Mabye I'll give that a
try.

If it fails even when doing it that way ... I'll move on to something else.

Agreed, but you just shouldn't have to do all that. Thanks for your
time Rus.

 

[Neil Maxwell]

I always use the boot CD method (or boot floppy method) to create the images.
I just don't trust any imager to be able to create images of OS hard drive
sectors while the OS is active. M$ Windows is just too powerful at locking
down OS sytem files and the sectors in which they reside. If I boot the
computer to a floppy or boot to a CD, I know the hard drive is totally under
control and I know that the image software has complete and unrestricted
access to each and every sector on the drive.

I can understand your hesitation, but I've restored over a dozen
images that were created under WinXP by TI7 or TI8 on a wide variety
of PCs. I've never seen any difference between these and restoring
images created from the boot CD, which I've done several dozen times.

It's the only way to make automated backups, which is my goal. It's
far simpler to let it run under Windows.

 

[Rus]

(e-mail address removed) wrote in @g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Thanks for the response Russ,

You are most welcome. I just try to give people benefit from my mistakes. I
jumped in on the packet writing wave when it began. Experts in UseNet tried
to warn me. I blew them off. A couple of years later I cried the blues when
I couldn't retrieve some file that I really, really wanted from some packet
written CD's. I've learned my lesson.

I guess I'll go back to DI2002.

The Acronis boot CD is cool. That's what drew me in--Linux boot--without all
the work involved in making Knoppix utilize my chosen tools. I made some
images to hard drive with the Acronis boot CD. I stopped the trial because
of all the people reporting problems with opticals.

But that Acronis trial left me with an overwhelming desire to have a boot CD
with tools that offered something more than a 16-bit DOS environment and some
RAM limit that was too small to be useful.

Then I discovered Bart. Bart's PE builder. Wow.

Have you tried using BartPE with DI2002 and PQPM8? You use your Windows XP
installer disc to create a disc like the Windows PE (Pre-installation
environment.)

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

Boots from CD to a 32-bit Windows environment. People all over the world
help to build plug-ins for it so you can add tools. FireFox with JAVA and
Flash are easy to plugin so that you can even Google a problem while CD
booted.

DI2002 works really fast in there. I'm still working on getting
PartitionMagic 8 to work but I'm close to success.

M$ bought out power quest. Hopefully
they took the best of it and put it into Ghost. Mabye I'll give that a
try.

I just try to avoid the "giants" when I can, so I'm avoiding Symantec's Ghost
for now. To tell you the truth, if you look around the web at user forums I
think you'll see people complaining about Ghost as much as they complain
about Acronis.

There's also people who used to complain about DriveImage. Yet, you and I
now swear by DI as the gold standard.

Before jumping into a Ghost purchase, you might want to look around the web.
People complain about Ghost in many ways--especially the CD and DVD backup
reliability.

One thing about Ghost does impress me, however. It claims to be able to back
up Windows Dymanic Disks. I don't know if it's truly successful at doing so
but I'm pretty sure it's the only one to make that claim. I really wonder if
it could even do that on the fly while you work in an active OS? That would
be cool. I'm not laying out cash for it until I see some good reports--a
whole bunch of good reports.

//rus//

 

[Rus]

I can understand your hesitation, but I've restored over a dozen
images that were created under WinXP by TI7 or TI8 on a wide variety
of PCs. I've never seen any difference between these and restoring
images created from the boot CD, which I've done several dozen times.

It's the only way to make automated backups, which is my goal. It's
far simpler to let it run under Windows.

Well. Okay. You've convinced me that I'm a fool for totally overlooking the
possibility. I'll try it.

I finally got some removable drive bays that work so I can go back to
swapping boot drives in this computer.

I'll use TI9 to make some experimental active backups and recoveries to see
how things go.

I really want some automated backup method because if it's easy I'm more
likely to do it more frequently--but--I don't want to give up reliable just
to get easy.

//rus//

 

[Rod Speed]

(e-mail address removed) wrote

You are most welcome. I just try to give people benefit from my
mistakes. I jumped in on the packet writing wave when it began.
Experts in UseNet tried to warn me. I blew them off. A couple of
years later I cried the blues when I couldn't retrieve some file that
I really, really wanted from some packet written CD's. I've learned
my lesson.

The Acronis boot CD is cool. That's what drew me in--Linux
boot--without all the work involved in making Knoppix utilize my
chosen tools. I made some images to hard drive with the Acronis boot
CD. I stopped the trial because of all the people reporting problems
with opticals.

But that Acronis trial left me with an overwhelming desire to have a
boot CD with tools that offered something more than a 16-bit DOS
environment and some RAM limit that was too small to be useful.

Then I discovered Bart. Bart's PE builder. Wow.

Have you tried using BartPE with DI2002 and PQPM8?

The problem with that approach is that DI has one hell of a problem
with permissions when restoring NTFS partitions which basically
means its essentially unusuable with modern XP configs.

You use your Windows XP installer disc to create a
disc like the Windows PE (Pre-installation environment.)

Boots from CD to a 32-bit Windows environment. People
all over the world help to build plug-ins for it so you can
add tools. FireFox with JAVA and Flash are easy to plugin
so that you can even Google a problem while CD booted.

DI2002 works really fast in there.

But has a massive problem with permissions and NTFS partitions.

I'm still working on getting PartitionMagic 8
to work but I'm close to success.

Symantec did, not MS.

Its grossly inferior to TI, you cant even create an image
from a bootable CD at all, it has to be installed on the
system before you can create an image.

You cant even clone from a bootable CD either, and that
means its completely useless for cloning hard drives.

I did, and dumped it quick smart when I did.

I just try to avoid the "giants" when I can, so I'm avoiding
Symantec's Ghost for now. To tell you the truth, if you look
around the web at user forums I think you'll see people
complaining about Ghost as much as they complain about Acronis.

Much more actually, partly because ghost is more widely used
and also because it just cant do some of what TI can do at all.

There's also people who used to complain about DriveImage.
Yet, you and I now swear by DI as the gold standard.

No it isnt, it was completely ****ed with nic support when the
nic wasnt in its native list, tho not quite as ****ed as Ghost 2003.

Before jumping into a Ghost purchase, you might want
to look around the web. People complain about Ghost
in many ways--especially the CD and DVD backup reliability.

I've never thought that creating images to CD and DVD directly
made much sense, particularly when more than one disk is involved.
Makes more sense to make disk sized image files to the hard drive
and then burn them all at once to the optical media.

One thing about Ghost does impress me, however. It claims
to be able to back up Windows Dymanic Disks. I don't know
if it's truly successful at doing so but I'm pretty sure it's the only
one to make that claim. I really wonder if it could even do that
on the fly while you work in an active OS? That would be cool.

No technical reason why it couldnt, but it basically gives up much
too easily with incremental images and starts again from scratch,
losing the whole point of incremental images in the first place.

I'm not laying out cash for it until I see some
good reports--a whole bunch of good reports.

I always run a pirate copy for a while, not going to waste my money
on that steaming turd now unless they can demostrate that they have
fixed all the problems that are inevitable with ghost. And I certainly
wont be bothering with it until it can image and clone from a booted CD.

The other ****ed thing about ghost is that it needs net framework too.

 

[Rus]

Well. Okay. You've convinced me that I'm a fool for totally overlooking the
possibility. I'll try it.


//rus//

I worked night shift last night so I was up most of the night last night.
During that time, I used Acronis TI9 to store an image on another hard
drive.

I triple boot Win98se, Win2K, and WinXP from the main drive. I created
images of that drive and stored those images on another hard drive. I
performed the process from Windows 2000.

I broke the image into 1.2GB chunks. So far so good. Image chunks were
created and stored without a hitch.

I'll burn those chunks to DVD. It should take 2 discs.

I've got a duplicate hard drive partitioned exactly as the one from which I
created the images.

I'll try restoring those DVD archived images to the duplicate drive and
then see what happens. I'll be using the Acronis bootCD to fire up the
process.

I'll be burning the DVD's using Nero in conventional mastering format using
strict ISO specs.

If Acronis turns out to be successful, I guess I'll have to add a command
line to the process so that I can set the computer to make a full backup
and then shut itself down when done. In that way, I can set the backup to
occur when I'm done using the computer and it will shut itself off when the
backup process is complete.

//rus//

 

[Neil Maxwell]

If Acronis turns out to be successful, I guess I'll have to add a command
line to the process so that I can set the computer to make a full backup
and then shut itself down when done. In that way, I can set the backup to
occur when I'm done using the computer and it will shut itself off when the
backup process is complete.

I have it set to image in the middle of the night. Since my PCs are
often turned off then, I also checked the option for "Run profile at
startup if PC was turned off at scheduled time" (or whatever).

This slows things down at startup, but I do a weekly full and daily
incrementals, and the incrementals don't take much time, so if I turn
it on and walk away to do other stuff, it's usually done when I come
back.

If you're interested in the weekly full/daily incremental approach,
the best method I've found is to make 2 profiles. One does the weekly
full, at an appropriate time, and the other does daily incrementals to
the same backup set as the weekly full. This way, the incrementals
restart after every full, overwriting the old ones, and you don't have
to manage them on the HD.

Be sure to let us know how it works out, particularly any problems you
have. I haven't switched to TI9 yet, so I'm interested in feedback.

 

[Rod Speed]

I worked night shift last night so I was up most of the night last
night. During that time, I used Acronis TI9 to store an image on
another hard drive.

I triple boot Win98se, Win2K, and WinXP from the main drive. I
created images of that drive and stored those images on another hard
drive. I performed the process from Windows 2000.

I broke the image into 1.2GB chunks. So far so good. Image chunks
were created and stored without a hitch.

I'll burn those chunks to DVD. It should take 2 discs.

I've got a duplicate hard drive partitioned exactly as the one from
which I created the images.

I'll try restoring those DVD archived images to the duplicate drive
and then see what happens. I'll be using the Acronis bootCD to fire
up the process.

I'll be burning the DVD's using Nero in conventional mastering format
using strict ISO specs.

If you use Roxio Creator Classic to write the image file to DVDs,
you dont even need to split the image into multiple files, it will span
DVDs auto and reassemble them when you retrieve them, auto.

 

[Beemer Biker]

Running TI9 on windows XP with two partitions. OS has been freshly
installed and no other backup applications have ever been installed.
(active partition holding OS). I stored this image on drive D. This
image restores just fine without a hitch. This was a full partition
backup using normal compression and all default settings.

I would like to have a backup of my active parition stored on media in
case of a hard drive failure. From XP desktop I was able to burn an
image of my C partition spanning it over 4 CDs. No problems. Size was
correct. All default settings used including normal compression.

I rebooted and using my rescue disk I went to restore pre-OS boot. I
inserted disk one, but then was prompted for last disk in series, disk
4. I put in disk 4, located the last part of the image and clicked
proceed. In less than a minute, I got a pop up saying restore was
successful. This was supposed to be a full partition restoration and

I have seen that on corporate TI 9. Anything goes wrong and they say they
are done "pc restored" even though it isnt. Then you are left with an empty
partition. ie: if it was "C" you were restoring then "C" is missing. We
just restore over it assuming the image is not corrupted.

during the restore the active partition was actually deleted and was
supposed to be recreated. However, it appears that the unallocated
space was never re-partitioned. Naturally, upon reboot nothing
happened because there was no partition. So, I rebooted using the
rescue disk and restored my active partition using the image on
parition D as a source. Everything back to normal just fine. I used
the exact same procedure, settings and prefrences each time, but when I
try to restore from CD it fails and when I restore from a different
partition (same hard drive) it works.

I repeated the procedure with 4 new CDs but the results were exactly
the same.

Make sure you got verify turned on when burning. If you got Nero then watch
to make sure that the real time buffer doesnt drop down to %30 or less. If
it did then it probably hit 0 and you are depending on the burnproof or link
to fix the problem. In any event a verify will tell you if it was good.

I assume you burned the image on the same cd that is reading it?

You might post over at the acronis forum and see what they say.
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=65

Any idea what I'm doing wrong? Would it help to create the image
pre-os boot using the rescue disk? I checked the Acronis FAQ and
searched usenet for a while, but if there's a solution out there I
wasn't finding it. I like the product and would like to keep using it,
but I just don't know where to go from here.

FYI: I did not use the "Acronis Startup Recovery Manager" feature at
any time.

We are using that and it is no guarantee that the image will be uncorrupted
even on the disk drive. We got a guy looking into that problem as we are
ghosting images using acronis server and haveing the corporate version do
the restore on the workstation. 1 out of 4 times we see a corrupted drive
and the disk we are restoring becomes unpartitioned. Usually we do a retry
and it works. Something is not right.

At home I have used acronis since ver 6 and update it constantly. I have
found that an image created by an updated (later build#) can not always be
read by the original boot acronis cd. you got to have the newer version
create a new boot cd. Sometimes it works, other times is says the image is
not acronis or says it is corrupted. I have also seen this when you create
a backup image on one computer and then try to restore it on another. ie: I
took the boot drive out of one computer and attached it to another that had
acronis. Then I backed up the disk and burned a dvd with the data. I put
the disk back into the other computer and attempted to boot. Occasionally
it will fail, depending on how different the systems are. Usually if one
system has an optical mouse and the other doesnt, the mouse does not work.
I am not sure about the licensing on what I am doing and acronis may be
checking to see if I am restoring somebody elses computer (like my wife's or
kids).

....HTH...


--
=======================================================================
Beemer Biker (e-mail address removed)
http://ResearchRiders.org Ask about my 99'R1100RT
http://TipsForTheComputingImpaired.com
=======================================================================

 

[Rod Speed]

I have seen that on corporate TI 9. Anything goes wrong and they say
they are done "pc restored" even though it isnt. Then you are left
with an empty partition. ie: if it was "C" you were restoring then
"C" is missing. We just restore over it assuming the image is not
corrupted.

Make sure you got verify turned on when burning. If you got Nero then
watch to make sure that the real time buffer doesnt drop down to %30
or less. If it did then it probably hit 0 and you are depending on
the burnproof or link to fix the problem. In any event a verify will
tell you if it was good.
I assume you burned the image on the same cd that is reading it?

You might post over at the acronis forum and see what they say.
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=65



We are using that and it is no guarantee that the image will be
uncorrupted even on the disk drive. We got a guy looking into that
problem as we are ghosting images using acronis server and haveing
the corporate version do the restore on the workstation. 1 out of 4
times we see a corrupted drive and the disk we are restoring becomes
unpartitioned. Usually we do a retry and it works. Something is not
right.
At home I have used acronis since ver 6 and update it constantly. I
have found that an image created by an updated (later build#) can not
always be read by the original boot acronis cd. you got to have the
newer version create a new boot cd. Sometimes it works, other times
is says the image is not acronis or says it is corrupted. I have
also seen this when you create a backup image on one computer and
then try to restore it on another. ie: I took the boot drive out of
one computer and attached it to another that had acronis. Then I
backed up the disk and burned a dvd with the data. I put the disk
back into the other computer and attempted to boot. Occasionally it
will fail, depending on how different the systems are. Usually if
one system has an optical mouse and the other doesnt, the mouse does
not work.

Thats got nothing to do with TI, thats just XP.

I am not sure about the licensing on what I am doing and acronis may be
checking to see if I am restoring somebody elses computer (like my wife's
or kids).

Nope.

 

[Beemer Biker]

SNIP


Thats got nothing to do with TI, thats just XP.

This is before XP even gets installed. The TI boot cd fails to recognize
the mouse and you got to go thru the install using the keyboard. After it
boots the systems works just fine. Perfect restore assuming it can read the
cd. If the second system is very similar to the first then there is no
problem.

 

[Rod Speed]

This is before XP even gets installed. The TI boot cd fails to
recognize the mouse and you got to go thru the install using the
keyboard. After it boots the systems works just fine.

You're very vague sloppy with your terminology, you appear to
be talking about an restore of a TI image, not an install of anything.

And it isnt clear what you are actually booting that doesnt see the mouse.

Perfect restore assuming it can read the cd. If the second system is
very similar to the first then there is no problem.

When booting what exactly ?

 

[Rus]

Yeah. You're definitely <plonk> trash.

 

[Sambo]

Yeah. You're definitely <plonk> trash.

Never ever could bullshit its way out of a wet paper bag.

 

[Rus]

I told you I would test it. I finally did. Acronis TI9 restored from DVD
for me this morning. I can't say it was smooth but it did work.

I'm still afraid of TI because of all the error messages that popped up --
especially because the error messages were describing error situations
erroneously.

TI9 imaged an entire drive while I was active in Windows XP on a drive that
contains 3 OS's and 2 data partitions. I used Nero to burn the 1.2GB image
chunks to 2 DVD's using ISO Level 2 with verification after the burn. During
the restore, TI9 called those chunks "volumes."

I formatted the partitions and booted to the Acronis CD to do the restore.

To make a long story as short as I can (since people say I write too much):

TI9 gave me the same "corrupt" disc messages that I have read about in user
forums. At least 3 times, it also asked for a volume that was already on the
disc in the drive.

I mostly ignored the error messages. If it asked for a volume, I inserted
the other DVD--even if it was asking for a volume that was already on the
disc it was reading. If it said the disc was corrupt, I'd insert the other
DVD of the set. As long as I kept inserting the other DVD of the set, it
kept on doing stuff.

I think I discovered one thing by accident. I found out that just hitting
"retry" over and over again would lead to nothing but an error message
complaining about a corrupt disc ...

.... but ... if I'd insert the other disc, and hit "retry" before the DVD-ROM
drive had recognized the disc, it would go ahead and read the thing and do
some stuff. Like, I'd insert the disc, shove in the tray, and while the LED
was still blinking, I'd hit retry.

In other words, no matter what error message popped up on the screen, I just
ignored it, took out the disc, and inserted the other DVD of the set.

So ... I'll say TI kinda works from DVD but it surely seemed risky.



For now, I'm sticking with DI2002 in the BartPE environment. DI2002 has
served me well.

I'll keep checking in on TI from time to time. I think it has promise.

//rus//

 

[Neil Maxwell]

This is before XP even gets installed. The TI boot cd fails to recognize
the mouse and you got to go thru the install using the keyboard. After it
boots the systems works just fine. Perfect restore assuming it can read the
cd. If the second system is very similar to the first then there is no
problem.

I've seen some curious inconsistencies like this from the TI8 boot CD
as well, running on old IBM T30 laptops. Sometimes, the touchpad will
work, sometimes the eraser will work, and sometimes neither will work.