Using External Hard Drive for image backup?

duplicate

 

Point well taken Abraxas! With Acronis installed, boot from CD, Acronis on occasion for whatever reason could not find any hard drives on this machine. May behave differently with program installed?

Surferdude: Did you ever consider that they maybe have individual FAQs tailored to the user and his machine? If something doesn't work, a little bit of code sends you a specific set of FAQs saying "that's a feature not a bug."

If you can't get it to work, I would suggest you email their tech support. I found them very helpful and at one point, before version 8, emailed me a custom patch for version either 6 or 7 (memory also corrupt) that enabled it to work on this machine.

Another glitch maybe, I always thought that the scheduled incremental backups would just modify the current full backup, but apparently not, at least not here. It just kept eating up gigabytes in the Acronis Secure Zone, I just kept expanding it, but when it reached 55 gigs, I thought enough was enough and uninstalled it. How can somebody running one 40gig drive even use it?

Another problem, if I reset my Windows password, to get the scheduled backups to work I had to delete the current schedule with the old password and set up a new schedule using the new password. Why would a scheduled backup, with machine running under my name as administrator, need to know my Windows password to work is beyond my understanding. but the error message for the failed backup was specific.

At least with Drive Image scheduled backups, although also not incremental, you can limit the number of backups stored automatically and keep the space usage somewhat under control. It will delete oldest backup to make room for newest. I usually set it to keep three, done on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so if something goes wrong, I have a good working backup not more than a week old.

Take Care,

Martin

 

I suppose we could say that. In essence, they have my number. The number being version 6. That is likely the difference we haven't been considering.

I tried and failed again so I'm going to conclude that version 6 cannot do that operation. I will assume that the restriction was unceremoniously removed at some later date and version. Then they neglected to update their FAQ's. I hate when people neglect things.

If you guys have a later version, I think we can lay this saga to rest.

I can't help but wonder why we haven't heard from Lis. Perhaps she feels neglected but I can assure her that's not the case. This chit-chat is for filler and we welcome you back Lis since your problem may actually have a more rewarding solution than mine.

ps. Martin, you really should look into that MOBO time clock error.

 

Hey Dude, that error has happened before, but only after restoring an image with Drive Image 7. I figured it was normal for the time to be off. Prior to installing the image, DI asks for time zone. So I set it to EST. I just don't remember when I synced the time, whether it was with the messed up boot after the first start in the morning or after the image was restored. At the time, I didn't think it important. Live and learn they say.

So, hopefully, the problem won't recur, but if it does, I'll look to see when the time needs to be synced. Other than that, I don't know what I could do about it. The only problem I have noticed with the time is that it runs a little fast, picks up a couple of seconds a week. I never even thought about trying to adjust that, it doesn't seem to cause any problems that I'm aware of.

And I wouldn't know where to start to fix it.

Take Care

Martin

 

My incremental backups make the stored image growe by about a gig each time, so it really does seem to be a simple add-on of whatever changes have occurred. But that is not always the case---some changes I have made make it grow considerably more, though I have never paid much attention to what exactly did that.

For one thing, I store my images in separate 650 meg files rather than one large .tib file. I wonder if that makes a difference.. (I once got 100 650 meg CD's for $1.00, so I use those cheapies for copying the image files to CD.)

I'm not sure I understand the problem you mentioned with passwords. If you run the task under your name, it will need your password. But I'm sure that is not what you meant.

In any case, after I discovered that I could make a complete image in 10 minutes from the CD, the schedule seemed moot and I uninstalled the Windows version.

 

Youall missed Lis' plea for help!

 

Lis,
You will need a program that does backups. Like others here I use true image. There are others programs also you could use.
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/ They have a user guide you can download on that page. Before I do a backup I do some clean up work first. You would want to do a check for a virus and ad-ware. I clear out temp files, unwanted emails and empty the recycle bin. Then just run the program and answer the questions.

 

No Sparrow, I responded in post # 31 and she never came back to answer my question about what kind of imaging software she was using. I still wonder and can't give much more guidance until she lets me know.

 

On the password deal, I use a password on start up log in to Windows and to reactivate after screen saver. Acronis asks for this password when setting up scheduled backups. If you change the Windows password you must also change the password in Acronis. If you don't, at least on this machine, Acronis scheduled backup will fail with an "incorrect password" error message. I always forgot this at a time when I should have remembered it.

The real downside of this is that I don't see the error message until I try to use the backup. That really makes it an unpleasant surprise.

It certainly appears that Acronis functions differently on different machines. My initial backup of drives "C" and "D" on this machine used approximately 20 gigs, and the incremental adds about 10 more. If it only added 1 gig, or if it replaced oldest images with new ones, I would have kept it. When 55 gigs wasn't enough to keep it going, I gave it up. Apparently you can continue to expand the Secure Zone until it occupies every bit of space on your machine.

With Drive Image, I have it set to auto backup on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So for example the new image made on any given Monday wipes the image made the previous Wednesday. This approach at least keeps some control over the space used for backup. I have a 40 gigabyte drive dedicated for this use. Can always find a recent backup when I need it.

You take care

Martin

 

Acronis True Image

I second that advice. True Image 7 is great. I had Symatec Drive Image 7 before that and it gave me a fatal error when I tried to restore from an image contained on external usb2 HD, so I sold it on ebay and am much happier with the Acronis product. I also use Acronis Partition Expert Personal 2003 which came free with a magazine and it works a treat on XP. A great compliment to disk management with an external hard drive. One can partition the pc harddrive into say regular and occasional sections and backup using imageing softwear of each complete partition which is much faster than backing up with normal files or zipping.

I strongly advise anyone using XP to format their ext. hard drive with the NTFS file format to benefit essentially from proper recognition of large image files.

I didn't get on with the acronis spyware program though, but at least they were decent enough to return my money.

Alan.

 

In the process of purchasing an external hard drive and software. Thanks for all the replies. Son inlaw will make the install. Wish me God Speed.

 

If he needs the experience, fine; you could do it yourself!

 

Son inlaw doesn't require the training. However, I do not have a step by step recipe to follow. Appreciate the reply. Thanks.

 

This one would be your best bet; it comes with all the software and directions you'll need.

 

Great buy and option. Thanks. Shall we say issue resolved. Case closed.

 

You're welcome, Lis; I love to shop.