Acronis True Image help

philjayj

philjayj

philjayj

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I have a copy of Acronis True Image Workstation 9.1 installed on a new PC, i would like to take an image of the hard drive (currently 5GB approx) so that if anything happens, I can reinstall the OS from the image.

However, when I make an image of the hdd, the image size is only a few hundred megs, and also, I don't want to create a recovery partition.

Is there a way were I can just put a CD into the PC, boot it from the CD and re-install the OS as it is on the CD image? If so, how?

Thanks

Phil
 
I am pretty sure there is a way, but a brief search on Google hasn't bought up anything that promising.

You might be able to try creating a new partition, saving the image to the partition which would write the bootable files and then use software such as Sonic and make image from files and then burn to a CD/DVD. Not really sure of much else.
 
Hey I use Acronis in work to do exactly that.

Install the software then in the software there is an option to create a boot disk.
Once you have created the boot disk boot from it then in the first menu click on the "full version" then once you get in to the software click on "backup" follow the instructions on screen until it starts to create the backup.

to restore an image do the same boot from disk but click the recover option in the menu.

i found the easiest way of storing the images is on external drives. i have tried to burn a number to dvd but most of the time it fails.

hope that helps if not give me a shout and ill try and explain it a bit better.
 
siclilmonkey said:
Hey I use Acronis in work to do exactly that.

Install the software then in the software there is an option to create a boot disk.
Once you have created the boot disk boot from it then in the first menu click on the "full version" then once you get in to the software click on "backup" follow the instructions on screen until it starts to create the backup.

to restore an image do the same boot from disk but click the recover option in the menu.

i found the easiest way of storing the images is on external drives. i have tried to burn a number to dvd but most of the time it fails.

hope that helps if not give me a shout and ill try and explain it a bit better.
Click to expand...


Does Acronis not give you an option to create an ISO or other image file that can be burned to a disk using another application?
 
what i do is store my images on an external usb2 (& sata) drive, writes quickly to it, and restores even faster

the image is small, because most of the 5gb you're hard drive is using is probably your pagefile (temporary ram file that windows uses)

disable system restore and run ccleaner on the pc before making the image, so no temp files & non essential files are copied to the image

you can use the acronis boot disc to write the image onto multiple cd/dvd's for you.. but an external usb hard drive is a lot less hassle and is a lot more 'handy' as you can use it as a backup drive for important files too
 
I may be missing the point here, and if I am forgive me. But how can a file that Acronis creates, which is no bigger than 60mb, restore a system which takes up 5GB on the system drive?
 
you said it was a few hundred megs..

if you have 2gb of ram, then having a 4gb pagefile is realistic, and it could well be compressed down to the around the size of 1cd
 
I use acronis to handle backing up 200+ PC's in work
Iam using 9.1 3718 workstation version , and on average a 5 Gig of used windows partition
would compress down to about 2.5G on the default compression settings
Sounds like something is up when you get such a small file

Are you sure not not backing up some hidden small partition installed by the PC manufacturer for recovery purposes ( I know our dells in work all have them )
 
Why don't you just put in another cheap drive to hold your acronis backups. The acronis disaster recovery cd you can create should then pick them up easily for recreation of your main drive. You should browse your image with the acronis image browser (if you have one on that version of the product) just to make sure all files you expect to be present are in fact there. I have a 12GB (used) system partion which the latest version of acronis takes down to 4-5GB on backup. Presumably you "few hundred megs" is immediately after OS installation.
 
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Acronis rocks, choose to backup the drive rather than data backup and fire it onto a networked location or external drive. The view from there should allow you to use either default settings or custom, choose custom and select the compression setting, from there it will tell you what size of image it will make and how long it will take, what does it say for you?
Some screenies below to show you what I mean, iIve outlined the compression details in red in the last pic.
acronisscr1.jpg

acronisscr2.jpg

acronisscr3.jpg
 
Success, its worked!

Just one last question, when I recover a system from the image i've created, does it format the drive before installing the image?

Thanks for all your help everyone, very much appreciated.
 
It doesnt format it, the reimage is too quick for a full format to have occurred too. I can have a 2003 sbs server reimaged from scratch/over the top of another install in less than 5 minutes, formatting alone would take at least a huge chunk out of that if it was a proper format.
 
when you restore it wipes ALL partitions on the drive that you restore to

it doesn't "securely wipe" them, just replaces the partition(s)
 
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