Vista - Restore Complete Computer

I've been watching this as well, I'm very inexperienced in backing up this Vista rig, and have been trying to learn a few things... I just bought the discounted Acronis 11, but you say it wont read SATA drives when using the bootdisk?
My HD's are as follows...
2-500GB SATA 32 MB in RAID0 ( with the OEM factory image from HP )
1-1TB SATA 32MB ( storage )
I am needing to do a backup badly and was thinking of keeping a copy on the storage drive, but I'm still figuring out how and what to save.. thanks for the post.

Hi,

I tried True Image 11 Home and it worked fine if backing up files from within Vista OS.

But you really need this image backup software so that when you have a hardware fault it will restore an image to a replacement drive. Vista has a few limitations too, but seems to work quite well. I think very critical of drive numbers, so if restoring to a pc make sure that the total drives numbers are the same as when the image was saved. I have found it to be quite good and from what I can see compression is almost 50% for the saved image.

True Image was great, easy to use within Vista, but to test it for complete fail you need to build a bootable disk so in the case of failure a user can boot and restore a saved image to a replacement drive.

Problem I found when using the bootable disk was it wouldn't see any of my hard drives and gave the error message: "E000101F4 - Error: Acronis True Image has not found any hard disk drives"

If you put that error message into google then many unhappy responses are returned regarding use with boot disk and SATA drives. I found that sites such as wilderssecurity.com seemed to have Acronis support people giving advice. eg. www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=202296

Check it out yourself with that error code but I am glad I have vista ultimate 64 working now which is why I purchased it initially. I also noticed acronis true image 11 maybe didn't work too well with HP machines.

Good luck with Acronis..

regards,

Harry.

Yes, I have seen this too.. that the boot disk wont recognize SATA drives? Thanks for the heads up on the HP thing.. I have to admit.. I bought it, THEN remembered that my third drive came with Acronis disk manager and when I tried to use it, I never did get it to work, so when I bought this version, 11, it told me to uninstall the disk manager that came when I installed my 1TB Seagate 32MB SATA drive. ( My third drive for storage ) I have yet to try it, and now I'm hearing there may be an HP issue.. ( go figure ) and a boot disk that may not work on my SATA drives. HMMM..

PS.. thanks for the link.. It looks as though Acronis asked for info.. but I didnt see any reply or resolution there... I will have to do some searching at the Acronis site to see if theres something to help this...before I try...the backup will be good to have.. but a boot disk would really be peace of mind.

Sorry Brink...you can bump this to the Acronis thread if you wish.. didnt mean to hijack....

I have done everything ... but when I try restore the complete backup from my backed up DVD .. it say my backup is created in x64 and I am restoring this to x86 system .... wondering what did I made wrong

Hello Farooque,

That would be the problem then. You cannot use a Complete PC Backup from a 64 bit computer on a x86 (32 bit) computer. You can use one from a x86 (32 bit) computer on a 64 bit computer though.

You will only be able use that backup on a 64 bit computer.

Sorry,
Shawn

Excuse me .... I did my backup DVD from my existing Vista ultimate SP1 x64 running OS .. and I tried restore it with existing installed OS condition , Formatted, Broken Partition, RAW HDD ... still it say I am using x64 backup on x86 machine... now how can I make a x64 backup if I had a x86 MACHINE ?

Farooquu,

Sorry, from your first post it sounded like you may have been trying to restore it on another computer that was not 64 bit.

Are you using a 64 bit Vista installation DVD to boot from to do the backup restore with?

You might also reset the BIOS back to factory default settings in case it somehow mistakenly ID your CPU as not being 64 bit anymore.

Hey .. that could be the cause .. cause how do the installation DVD realized that I am using an x86 pc while the installer DVD itself is x64 it self ... then may be I should try another vista x64 dvd or BIOS / CMOS default or may be the hardwire conflict ... my pc is not actually optimized for x64 but my processor does only .. I will let you know my full PC specification ..



Thank you

You're welcome Farooque. Please let us know how it turns out.

Shawn

I'm a bit confused by what Harry said, so I guess I'll ask-

I'm using Vista Ultimate x64 on a computer with:
C: -250GB, OS drive
D: -250GB, music and general media drive
F: -500GB, storage drive for backups of both C: and D:

I used to use Norton Ghost for this kind of thing when I had XP, but my version wasnt compatible with Vista, so I switched to the built in Vista version.

My confusion is this: if I want to upgrade my C: drive to a new 500GB drive, will I be able to use the backup that Vista made for me to do it? Can I just pull out the old one, put in a new one, boot from the DVD, and restore the OS to the new drive? Or do I need 3rd party software like Harry suggested to do this? Thanks a ton in advance