Storage, Drives & Media

[Sequoia7]

It looks like this might actually work to clone the drive as it came from the factory and to restore it back to that setting if I repartition the drive and lose the hidden restore and diagnostic partitions on it.

I may try it out but thought I'd ask here first in case any one has tried it.

[JersWork]

I understand what you are asking,  but I'm not sure if the answer will tellyou what you want to know.

True image will backup a drive (or partition) into an image file.  I have made a drive imae using TI8,  and then replaced my internal HD and restored the image onto the new drive and as far as my system was concerned,  nothing had changed except that the C: drive now had an additional 20GB of free space because I restored a 60GB image onto an 80GB drive (and specified to enlarge the partition).

Since TI8 allows you to create incremental backups,  I do not think that it does a sector based backup,  but rather it does a file basd backup.  From looking at the help PDF file for TI Server 8,  Here is some info I see:

Acronis True Image Server 8.0 for Windowsstores only those hard disk parts that contain data (for supported partition types). This reduces image size and speeds up image creation and restoration from.

A partition image includes all files and folders independently of their attributes (including hidden and system files), boot record, FAT, and Root.

A disk image includes images of all disk partitions as well as the zero track with Master Boot Record (MBR).

TI8 does allow you a "Clone Drive" option which makes a copy of one drive onto another,  but I have not used that functionality myself.

[dg1261]

JersWork, I share your skepticism about TrueImage making sector-based images.  I suspect it's really file-based.  There's one way to tell for sure, so maybe some of you people who own TI can run an experiment for the rest of us: start with a partition that has fragmented files, then image it, then restore it, and finally compare the level of fragmentation of the restored partition to the original.  Sector-based imagers will preserve the fragmentation, while file-based imagers should naturally defrag the partition as part of the process.

(I'd experiment for myself, but the version of TI you can download won't allow you to restore unless you pay money for it, so it's pretty much crippleware.  You can't get any real idea how a cloning/imaging program works unless you can see how the restore process works.)

[Simmerheli]

JersWork and dg1261:

You took the words right out of my mouth.  :smileyhappy:

It appears that TrueImage is really file-based (which really isn't a true image if we want to get technical about it).

This can be good or bad, depending on what one's needs are. For testing purposes this may be bad since a restore will LOOSE all fragmentation, metadata and attributes. For general use, this may be OK, since most folk's intent is to be able to restore a "baseline" in case of a system crash, virus or HD upgrade.

But to call it "True Image" is rather misleading.

I also agree that the trial version is rather crippling, since it only creates basically a WOM (write-only-memory) file.   :smileyindifferent:

For my needs, however, I need an app that can create a compressed file of a baselined HD and then, in the case of an upgrade, virus, etc. I can restore from that file and have the system back to THAT EXACT baseline state (independant of fragmentation). Can True Image do this for me?

Without having to experiment with my hard-earned currency, in my humble opinion, I feel  that a time-trial is better then a cripple-ware one.

Anyway, it appears that "True Image"????  may do what I need it to do, which is to backup a baselined HD, and then in the case of a virus, HD upgrade, etc. can restore that backup and be back to my baseline...   Is my thinking correct or am I still missing something?   :smileyhappy:

Thanks

-Mike

Message Edited by Simmerheli on 04-03-2005 09:04 AM

Message Edited by Simmerheli on 04-03-2005 09:06 AM

Message Edited by Simmerheli on 04-03-2005 09:14 AM

[speedstep]

True image worked for me.

However Digial Dolly is Free for home users.

http://www.innotrix.com/index.htm

I think named after the sheep that got cloned called Dolly.

[dg1261]

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However Digital Dolly is Free for home users.

http://www.innotrix.com/index.htm

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Thanks for the link, SpeedStep--I hadn't seen that one before.  I think I'll review it closer when I get a chance because (if it works) it looks like the first free program (for personal use) I've seen that can resize NTFS partitions.

For the purposes of this thread, though, it appears to make clones/copies only.  Documentation is sparse, but I can't see where it creates images.

[Simmerheli]

Ok, here is a description from the Aconis site:

Acronis True Image software "sees" a hard drive as a group of sectors — that

is, the physical divisions of the disk. Using imaging technology, Acronis True Image

creates an exact duplicate of the live workstation hard disk, including operating

system, all configuration files, programs, updates and databases. Contrast that

with conventional backup programs, which look at drives as groups of files. Filebased

backups are incomplete since they are unable to capture open Windows

files, hidden files, some system files and data that changes during the backup

process. Acronis True Image not only creates an exact image of the hard disk, but

it tracks changes that occur during the imaging process so that the final image is

exactly like the disk. It's safer and faster to restore disk drives using Acronis, and

the software itself ensures that images are perfect duplicates to guarantee consistency.

Looks to me like it will do what I need.

Thanks all for your help

-Mike