Resolved Hard Drive replacement with Acronis, Problem

I did a full system backup to my external drive. When I try to do a full recovery to a new drive, Acronis doesn't find my backup. It only shows a fictitious non stop backup from a previous day. External drive was on at start up. Any ideas?

 

Try booting and then plug in the external drive. In Windows navigate to the image file on the ext drive, click to open it, and in the "Windows cannot open this file" dialogue navigate to the Acronis 'application' file and select it. Acronis will then start up.

Roger

 

I can't get to Windows with a blank hard drive installed that I want to load the backup image to.

 

Did you make an Acronis boot disk? You can boot from that if so without going into Windows. Another method, IF you still have the HD that you made the image of with Windows installed is to re-install that, and put the new HD in an external housing.

Roger

 

I have the Acronis bootable CD that gets me into Recovery mode that can't find my backup file. I don't see in the Acronis instructions how to copy the working system onto another drive. It wants to make a file.

 

Can you post your system specs Ken? I have no idea even whether it is a laptop or a desktop you are working on.

Roger

 

Operating System System Model
Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 3 (build 2600) Dell Computer Corporation Dell DE051
System Service Tag: BKKL291 (support for this PC)
Chassis Serial Number: BKKL291
Enclosure Type: Mini-Tower
Processor a Main Circuit Board b
2.53 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4
16 kilobyte primary memory cache
256 kilobyte secondary memory cache Board: Dell Computer Corp. 0CF458
Serial Number: ..CN708215BR05EA.
Bus Clock: 533 megahertz
BIOS: Dell Computer Corporation A00 08/15/2005
Drives Memory Modules c,d
156.75 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
90.16 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GWA4164B [CD-ROM drive]
3.5" format removeable media [Floppy drive]

Dell USB Mass Storage USB Device [Hard drive] -- drive 2
ST380011 A USB Device [Hard drive] (80.02 GB) -- drive 1
ST380011A [Hard drive] (80.00 GB) -- drive 0, s/n 5JVVHTCS, rev 8.16, SMART Status: Healthy 510 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot 'DIMM_1' has 256 MB
Slot 'DIMM_2' has 256 MB
Local Drive Volumes


c: (NTFS on drive 0) 76.73 GB 55.53 GB free
f: (NTFS on drive 1) 20.97 GB 15.46 GB free
g: (NTFS on drive 1) 59.05 GB 19.17 GB free
Network Drives
None detected




Amyuni Document Converter 2.10 on LPT1:
Bitwared on BWFAX
Dell Photo AIO Printer 944 on USB001
Microsoft Shared Fax Driver on SHRFAX:
Microsoft XPS Document Writer on XPSPort:

 

It's all there Ken, but it would have been easier if you had used the 'My System" set-up by going to the User CP as I have done.
Is the Acronis image on the USB hard drive?
Is Windows on drive 0?
If the image is on the USB drive2 -does it show up in '>Start >Computer ' and does it have a volume letter?

Roger

 

Windows is on drive 0. All of it is C, no partitions.
The Acronis image is on the USB drive partition G.
There is a My Backups folder in G with an 18.6 GB My_system file in it.
In normal operation, Acronis knows the backup is in G because it raises a flag when I turn the external drive off.
It just can't find it in the recovery mode using the bootable CD.

 

Is the "My System' file visible when you try > Start > Computer ?
If it is, try doing what I suggested in post no 2, that has worked for me in the past.

Roger

 

There is no "My System" visible. I searched for it and found nothing.

 

Sorry Ken - stupid error! I meant to say > Start > Computer

Roger

 

There is only Turn off Computer. Do you mean the My Computer icon on the Desktop?

 

Yes. Totally forgotten how XP works!

 

I only have one computer so that when I am changing things, I can't communicate. I need to plan the whole process to the end,
If I do #2 and Acronis comes up, how to I get it to the new drive? When I shut down to install the new drive, what ever Acronis is doing will be lost.
After startup with the new drive, I can only run on the CD that has no Windows, no Desktop, and no My Computer.

 

Confused!
You have a partition G on disk 1 and you say that the USB partition is G also.
Why can't you put the new blank drive in place of your present drive 1? Windows is on C; and if you can get to the Acronis .tib folder using Windows Explorer and then follow post 2 Acronis could put the image onto disk 1.

 

I could do that, but I don't know how to get Acronis to just copy C into G without compressing it into a backup file.

 

When you get to the UI of Acronis TI Home you get the choice of cloning a disk or installing a new HD - no compression involved.

 

OK, thanks. I will do some handbook reading and try your method.

 

I finished cloning to the new drive and nothing appears broken. It took 3 hours to do 20GB. I will report back after installation.