Acronis True Image Home 10 @ Bjorn3d

Vikingod

Source: Bjorn3d
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Imagine if you will the following scenario: It's a Friday afternoon and you've had a long, hard week at work. You come home and after doing your honey-dos you settle in to killing as many aliens as you possibly can in your favorite game to rid yourself of the week's frustration and prepare for the glorious weekend ahead. About 15 minutes into the carnage you begin to hear a high pitched squeaking noise coming from your trusty computer. Probably a fan that you can change out later, right? You continue your activity and all of a sudden you hear a noise that is reminiscent of crunching corn flakes in a blender and your system freezes. You're a computer enthusiast and built this rig from scratch and can easily troubleshoot and fix what's wrong! Well not exactly, your hard drive has just gone from 7200 RPM to around 100 RPM and your operating system, programs, and most importantly years worth of data have just been destroyed.

DudeBoyz

So does this thing work like Norton Ghost for DOS does - where you can boot to a floppy or CD and both create and restore full images without the need to load anything or partially install Windows?

Vampyromaniac

Yes, it can do that.

DudeBoyz

So I can totally format a partition and restore image files directly to that partition just like I can with Ghost for DOS?

If so, that be cool.

Don't suppose you could kinda tell me the procedure for that, could you?

I'd appreciate a little Guidance. Thanks.

My C: drive and D: drive are both FAT32 partitions. I use the Norton Ghost created Win 98 SE boot floppy and run GHOST from my D:\GHOST\ folder. I image the drive (Local > Partition > To Image) to that same D:\GHOST\folder and then boot back into Windows and burn those image files to DVD. Ghost defaults to 2 gig split files for the image, so I just burn 2 image files per blank DVD and I'm good to go. It compresses so my 20 gig partition with about 10 gig of data on it usually fits down to two image files (it doesn't archive the pagefile)

When I want to restore with Ghost, I boot to the 98 floppy, go to D:\GHOST\ and run the GHOST app and tell it to do a LOCAL > PARTITION > FROM IMAGE and point to the first image file and it wipes out what is on C: and puts the image set I pick back on that drive. Then it's 100% bootable and life is good.

It works very well, and since it is done 100% outside of Windows, it gets every open file, every protected file, you name it. Nothing is missed.

But since the last TRUE Ghost was the 2003 version, I guess I may have to start looking for alternatives, or make a boot disk that lets me read and write the very latest NTFS version from the command line.

PangingJr

Are you refering to the Symantec's Ghost in the DOS executable format?

if so, then no, the ghost.exe DOS executable program that included in Norton Ghost 2003 is not the last TRUE Ghost,
Symantec still continue developing the Ghost program, it is a much newer version than the version 8.x that included in Norton Ghost 2003 available in its corporate version.
and i believe Symantec will continue developing the program, and it is going to be for a very long time yet.

DudeBoyz

The newer "ghost" versions are based on a different product that Symantec purchased, I believe. PowerQuest Drive Image or something.

PangingJr

that's why i asked you... if the "TRUE Ghost", were referring to/as the ghost .exe, the standalone DOS executable application?
then nope, the ghost .exe in mode DOS program has just a little to do with the way Symantec has integrated PQ's Drive Image technology into its Norton Ghost product..

DudeBoyz

Ghost 2003 comes with both the Windows and DOS version. It is the last one before they switched over to the PQ Drive Image thing. That's what I meant about it being the LAST TRUE one.

Oh well.

PangingJr

i think i know what you mean by the TRUE Ghost now. you are just don't understand what i mean lol.
the ghost.exe for DOS itself, which i think it's actually should be called as the TRUE Ghost, is still based on the original ghost's technology.

Vampyromaniac

Sure, it can do that. It's pretty much the same major steps Ghost has.

You can boot with an Acronis CD, and you get a regular interface with all the common tasks available. Below, I chose to do a Restore job:



You browse to where your image is stored, and then choose what kind of restore you want to do:



Usually you want to do a full image of a disk/partition.

Then you choose what you want to restore:



In this example, the image was of a whole disk, so you can choose if you want the whole disk or just one or more partitions.

(Pics were of Acronis TI Server 9.1. Ignore the weird sizes/partitions, this was all inside of VPC.)

Then you just choose the destination disk/partition, a couple other misc options, and then it dumps the image there in whatever filesystem the image was taken of. There's no need to "separately" format the partition.

Oh, the server versions of Acronis can create images from within Windows, too. It uses some magic to get all the open files. (Not sure whether or not the Home versions can do this too.)

DudeBoyz

Great post! Thank you very much. That helps me understand what it can do.

I've been hammering away at Ghost 2003 to figure out how to image a system with only SATA drives, and also making boot floppies from the Ghost program in Windows. Then I open up Nero, create a bootable CD and base it on that Ghost floppy, and such.

I made one boot CD for normal systems which works great, and one other one for SATA-ONLY systems that also works fine. In the AUTOEXEC.BAT file on the boot disk, I have to add the -noide parameter.

Now I just run Ghost off the floppy or CD directly instead of a local hard drive, which is slower, but it can write to NTFS drives that way even if you can't see those drives at the command line after you exit Ghost.

So I am still able to make Ghost do all that I want, even with a Vista system, and I feel better about things after exploring all the options, making the boot disks, etc. and testing the heck out of it. So no matter what file system is in use, FAT, FAT32 or NTFS, I'm covered, at least until Microsoft changes the NTFS file system and makes it incompatible.

Still, if I can find that Acronis app on sale, I may snag a copy, cause I'm not happy with any version of Ghost after 2003.

Thanks again for the post. Always cool to learn new stuff.

PangingJr

Home version can also do live backups, incremental and differential backups.
AFAIK, most of today's well-known system backup, disk/partition imaging products will support live backup.

DudeBoyz

One thing I am concerned about is the ability of an app to do a TRUE image of a drive while inside Windows.

There are files that are locked that normally don't get backed up. I'm not sure how those will be handled. Will some of them be skipped because they are active? There are some files in the temp folder that can't be deleted from within Windows, for example. Sometimes they can't be manually copied with a file manager even.

So how is Acronis or any other app running inside Windows going to be able to ensure that every single byte, every single file, is truly imaged?

Then, how would it be able to truly restore an image, byte by byte, from inside of Windows as well?

Vampyromaniac

No problem, glad to help. It also (at least the version we use) handles FAT/NTFS, SATA, and Windows network shares all automatically. Just make sure to check the website that the Home version does everything you need, of course.


Thanks Panging.

I think Backup Exec still has some trouble with open files, though it's not image-based backup software.

Vampyromaniac

It uses some kind of magic! I was a little skeptical of this before too, but Acronis can do this. We do scheduled live images for all of our clients, and have recently had to do a full restore from image for one them. Windows Server 2003 is back up and still running perfectly fine to this day. I don't know how it works, but it works.

DudeBoyz

With Acronis, you can make a physical recovery CD that boots and runs completely outside of Windows, right?

If so, I'd have no worries. I'd just create that boot CD and uninstall the app from Windows and use it off the bootable CD.

That would be cool.

PangingJr

the Norton Ghost 9/10 (Symantec's consumer version of Ghost) is the upgrade version to the Norton Ghost 2003 version, however, the Ghost for DOS version 8 (Ghost 2003) that is found in Norton Ghost 2003 is still included in the Norton Ghost 9/10's software package.

a full system backup and restore, or disk cloning and disk and partition imaging, all of these can be done via the Ghost for DOS version 8,
so if that is all you need, and that's if you only use Windows XP, then i think you won't need to upgrade the Ghost software.
however, if you also want to create a full system backup and restore of Vista, then the Ghost for DOS version 8 may not have a full support of the Vista system.
i have not tried the Ghost for DOS version 8 with Vista, so i can't be sure. AFAIK, the Symantec Ghost (Symantec's corporate version of Ghost) 11 is the version that is fully support Vista system.

anyway, for anyone who are looking to buy this kind of software, for a very reasonable price, for a full Vista and XP x64 support, then the True Image Home is the one you're looking for.

Vampyromaniac

Yes, that is exactly what is happening in those screenshots. I booted from the CD (inside Virtual PC.)

DudeBoyz

Wicked. Thanks.

DudeBoyz

I'm testing a buds laptop that has Vista Home Premium on it, native NTFS, and I was able to get Ghost 2003 for DOS to work via the Norton Boot disk as I mentioned above.

It worked perfectly, as far as I can tell, thankfully.

PangingJr

resize the restore's parttition size while restoring Vista, or change primary slot at the same time and Vista is still a bootable OS after without any additional works by the user, or if you need for a number of different types of the Vista's disk drives other than basic disk,
then the Ghost for DOS version 8 (Ghost 2003) may not support this.

DudeBoyz

I'm totally confused by what you just said.

I think I need a nap.

Vampyromaniac

And here, just to show a quick test of making a live image, I did a back-up of my C: drive while I had Outlook open, and the .PST file is locked. I mounted the image afterward as Q:, and did a file compare between the file in the image and the real file. No errors:

DudeBoyz

Thanks for the image. I don't understand why Windows LOCKS files and refuses to allow them to be read-only for a copy process.

I wonder how Acronis gets around that?

Still, I think it would be safer to just do it off the boot CD, don't you? Better safe then sorry.

Vampyromaniac

1. No idea
2. No idea
3. For a home user's C: drive, yes I'd boot the CD since it's not a major hassle. All other drives, I wouldn't bother.
For servers that need to be up all the time, I don't have any doubts about its integrity. A regularly scheduled automat