I used "Acronis True Image 9.0" which is XP (but maybe not Vista
compatible). I bought it over a year ago for about $10 from a place
selling surplus, back-level software. I didn't know that it could clone
a drive. I intended to use it for normal backups but ended up using
SyncBack SE instead (with which I am very happy).
After I got the drive dock I started to look for a way to clone the boot
drive and ran across something somewhere about using Acronis for
cloning. I ran the software and discovered that drive cloning is a
prominent, main menu selection.
Moose and I have had some email discussion on what to use since I have
seen bad reviews of Acronis 10 and 11 which were marketed as Vista
compliant while version 9 was pre-Vista. But that doesn't mean that 9
wouldn't work. Vista dependency for cloning would be minimal since the
actual cloning operation is done by collecting the control parameters in
Windows and then, since the OS can't be running, rebooting into a DOS
character mode screen for actually reading and writing the drives. The
Windows interface needs to query the drives and partition info. I don't
know if that requires device driver authority in Windows or not. If it
does it *might* be a problem in Vista.
I suggested Norton Ghost as an alternative to Moose but he rejected that
as suffering from bad reviews as well. Utilities from drive makers for
upgrading your hard disk to a larger one can also clone the boot drive
but I had mixed success with that route. The Western Digital utility
wouldn't work for other than a WD drive. The Seagate utility could be
forced to work in some obscure way but not easily or in a friendly
fastion. For $10 or whatever Acronis 9 would cost I think I'd at least
try it on Vista. The interface is good and very simple.
We also had some discussion about how to maintain the currency of a
clone. I thought I could use SyncBack SE's mirroring capability to keep
the clone up to date once the boot sector was in place but SyncBack Se's
tech support said they wouldn't advise it. They didn't know exactly how
it might fail but have never tested such a thing. As it turns out their
reticence was well placed. I quote from my response back to them:
"Thanks for the advice because I'm going to take it. I didn't have to
wait long for a test case. After running SyncBackSE in mirror mode
between the boot drive and its clone from last night I was surprised to
discover a number of new files from Microsoft. It was an uninstalled
update which installed on shutdown. So I re-ran the SyncBackSE mirror
run and performed the update. The updated clone drive then booted OK
and I was able to start Adobe PhotoShop but it didn't take long for
anomalies to show up. First, SpyBot wanted to know if it was OK to
change a system registry entry from Drive C to drive J (the new boot
drive letter). I honestly didn't know the right answer and rejected the
change which may very well have been wrong. Then a system task of some
sort popped up reporting an error which it wanted to send to Microsoft.
I rejected that and decided it was time to reboot into drive C. I
suspect that the new clone drive is at least a little corrupted already
and it's time to re-do the clone operation."
I'm sure these problems wouldn't have cropped up if I had rebooted with
the clone drive in place of the original drive C so I'm reserving
rebooting with the clone until and unless a real need arises. I've done
enough so far to show that the boot works and that's all I really need.
I've given up the idea of mirrored maintenance and will simply
re-clone the C drive from time to time. I cleaned up lots of image
files that didn't need to be there and now the time to clone the drive
is less than an hour. I just need to run it maybe once/month to keep it
reasonably current for use in a real disaster.
ps: On the very first reboot of the clone the first screen up was an
Acronis screen telling me it was going to reboot into Windows which it
did. On that first reboot the original C drive was apparently disabled,
presumably by Acronis. But it became visible after the second reboot
where it was seen as J: Too many confusing elements for me to deal with
here so I'll just leave it alone unless disaster strikes and I have to
do a physical drive replacement.
Chuck Norcutt
Jez Cunningham wrote:
> Interesting, thanks.At the risk of reopening a discussion, what did you use
> to clone your C: drive?cheers
> jez
>
> On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 5:31 PM, Chuck Norcutt <
> chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> I ordered 3 WiebeTech protective drive cases and they arrived this
>> morning. <http://www.wiebetech.com/products/cases.php> It's a simple,
>> semi-rigid plastic box not much larger than the 3-1/2" drive it's built
>> to contain... 183x120x29mm.
>>
>> Inside are 6 thin rectangular posts about 10mm wide that stick up from
>> the bottom and reach nearly to the top. The posts are a bit springy and
>> are mounted inboard from the sides of the case to provide some
>> cushioning distance. The drive fits snugly down between the posts and
>> the top of the posts are tapered toward the outside to make insertion
>> easy. There is also a small, dense foam pad about 25mm square with
>> adhesive on the back. There are no directions included but I have
>> assumed that this pad is to be stuck to the inside center of the cover.
>> All is held snugly in place when the cover is closed and latched with
>> its molded snap latches.
>>
>> At $7 each this is a high profit item for the manufacturer but I'm glad
>> I've got them. It looks like they will work very well and are much
>> cheaper than buying eSATA cases for each drive. I found a couple of
>> sites selling them other than WiebeTech's own but both were more
>> expensive than the manufacturer. I've discovered that the BlacX drive
>> dock works very well for use with bare drives and, for only the second
>> time in my life, I now have a cloned boot drive ready to install should
>> the C drive fail.
>>
>> I bought the BlacX drive dock from Amazon because I was able to get a
>> couple of other small things with no shipping charges.
>> <
>> http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-Sata-HDD-Docking-Station/dp/B0012Z3MKW/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1232468674&sr=8-3
>> But what appears to be the same thing for $24.99 can be found here
>> <http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=EN391&cpc=SCH>
>> Or with the addition of 4 flash card slots for $29.99 here
>> <http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=EN391-S2HC&cpc=SCH>
>>
>> Chuck Norcutt
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