Acronis True Image

Post by **Vomit** » Fri Dec 16, 2011 3:59 pm

Just a quicky.

Now i have used Acronis for a few years now on my old system, very impressed with it, got me out of trouble
a few times, and also a quick and easy way of testing stripe sizes for my raid array.

As most of you know i have recently built this PC, I tried a few versions of Acronis Rescue media and encounter some problems that make it unusable/unsafe to use.

I think its entirely down to the new hardware.

have a gigabyte z68 motherboard and I am using the intel raid controller (striped and a ssd cache set up)
and also using the marvel controller for other drives.

If i boot to Acronis I either get C not showing at all or my raid set showing as 2 seperate drives and both reported as bolloxed (one completely empty, the other almost full), which they are not or i wouldnt be using them.

Has anyone managed to build a Recovery disc using bart pe-builder and the acronis pe plugin?

Thanks for reading.

Post by **Claw** » Fri Dec 16, 2011 6:43 pm

Vomit wrote: Just a quicky.

Now i have used Acronis for a few years now on my old system, very impressed with it, got me out of trouble
a few times, and also a quick and easy way of testing stripe sizes for my raid array.

As most of you know i have recently built this PC, I tried a few versions of Acronis Rescue media and encounter some problems that make it unusable/unsafe to use.

I think its entirely down to the new hardware.

have a gigabyte z68 motherboard and I am using the intel raid controller (striped and a ssd cache set up)
and also using the marvel controller for other drives.

If i boot to Acronis I either get C not showing at all or my raid set showing as 2 seperate drives and both reported as bolloxed (one completely empty, the other almost full), which they are not or i wouldnt be using them.

Has anyone managed to build a Recovery disc using bart pe-builder and the acronis pe plugin?

Thanks for reading.

I've always used Acronis from either Hiren's CD, or as my favorite method via the Falcon 4 Disk - which includes Hiren's offering.

You will find F4's disk on any good torrent side, including PB.

The good thing about these kinda discs is that you're not having to use the software within a live OS environment. Hope it all goes well.

Post by **Nellyboy** » Fri Dec 16, 2011 7:12 pm

I read the problems arise because the program does not recognise the raid controller (no drivers etc).

<a href="http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/243 ... ports-raid" target="_blank">This</a> might help.

<a href="http://www.sevenforums.com/backup-resto ... ackup.html" target="_blank">Or this.</a>

Post by **Vomit** » Sat Dec 17, 2011 12:03 am

Thanks for the replies.

I would much prefer to use acronis if possible Nellboy as that is not so fussy about hard drives that are not
exactly the same capacity as the ones the imgae was taken from, that is a handy feature for future upgrades.

Will have a proper look for the falcon disc tomorow.

Post by **Vomit** » Sat Dec 17, 2011 3:28 pm

Well its been an interesting experiance.

1 cannot load anything past the first menu on the falcon 4 disc
2 cannot instal XP from CD (was going to run xp and acronis that way instead.
3 after a lot of reading, i need to flash my bios (current intel and marvel controllers have a lot of compatability issues)
4 the bios that fixes at least some of these issues is beta (not bothered with beta drivers, not messing with beta bioses, EVER)
5 im screwed on this front until the bios is finished

Post by **Claw** » Sat Dec 17, 2011 3:58 pm

Check your memory. I had that with a system recently and one of the memory sticks was duff. I'm not saying this is definitely the problem, but if it is you'll also need to be careful flashing your ROM.

It could also be a bad download. Here's a torrent link to <a href="http://hfcdn1.hostfile.org:13370/not_oc ... .5.torrent" target="_blank">FalconFour Ultimate Boot CD</a>. (FFUBCD) It's about 690MB.

When you burn it, try a lower write speed, and don't have anything running in the background. Sorry if you knew all of this anyway, I don't like to patronise, just hope it's helpful.

Post by **Claw** » Sat Dec 17, 2011 4:08 pm

...and have a look here... <a href="http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/623860 ... PB.torrent" target="_blank">PB - FUBCD</a>

Post by **Vomit** » Sat Dec 17, 2011 4:47 pm

Claw wrote: ...and have a look here... <a href="http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/623860 ... PB.torrent" target="_blank">PB - FUBCD</a>

Its the same one i already have m8, forced a re check just to be on the safe side though.

I have also tried down clocking the memory, relaxing the timings, disabled a shed load of stuff in the bios, and tried all my cd/dvd drives.

The pc is running fine, none of the usual symptoms of failing memory, ran a test recently.
Booting to cd's is not a recent issue, its been a pain in the arse from day 1 as far as that goes, had to instal 7
from a usb cd rom, again that is a fairly common problem with these boards. Some of the cause may be that my drives are a couple of years old, specifications change a lot in a short space of time.

Post by **Hammer** » Sat Dec 17, 2011 5:19 pm

Hi mate. I'm using an Asus z68 board and SSD's in raid 0. I use Acronis True Image all the time. Saying that I've only backed up since building my new rig about 2 months ago. I installed the software to boot in to True Image using F11 on boot up. This is an option once the software is installed in Windows, using Win 7 x64 Pro and also used the Home Premium version.
It does this fine and I can backup and restore from here. I haven't tried the boot cd yet but I haven't had any problems use True Image so far on any of my rigs.

Post by **Vomit** » Sat Dec 17, 2011 8:09 pm

I have used on most of mine in the past, although i have had a few raid controlers it has not played nice with, usualy just a case of getting the newest version available.

I have backed up my drive with some software that was on the boards driver disc, it uses the windows shadow copy. It was a live copy and im reluctant to put much faith in it for that reason.

Personaly i prefer to boot cd method, i try not to get my pc in a state were its damaged beyoned reasonable repair and deal with problems as soon as they becomae apparant. The main reason I want to back up my C drive is mostly in case of drive failiure.

My board is <a href="http://uk.gigabyte.com/products/product ... 12&dl=1#ov" target="_blank">http://uk.gigabyte.com/products/product ... dl=1#ov</a>

Post by **Vomit** » Sun Dec 18, 2011 10:03 am

Some progress, not much though

Managed to get the F4 disc to boot into mini xp (raid array is not showing in that)
Ran memtest with no errors from the F4cd
Still no luck with instaling XP, crashes out soon after loading the drivers with a bsod

Seems that Linux based software just wont boot at all, i have another disc ubcd, that i have used for a few years, also on usb pen and they all fail to load.

Post by **Nellyboy** » Sun Dec 18, 2011 12:02 pm

Seems strange that Hammer can see his raid0 with acronis but you cannot. Are you using the same build of acronis?

Post by **Vomit** » Sun Dec 18, 2011 3:52 pm

Still on it m8, got acronis to see my raid in windows, no luck still with a rescue disc or pen drive, I have built a fair few of the things so far today with various options and still no go.

Looks like i will have to use the part pe method at the moment, at least that uses windows drivers.

Post by **Nellyboy** » Sun Dec 18, 2011 6:25 pm

Yeah read that <a href="http://kb.acronis.com/content/11071" target="_blank">here.</a> I guess adding your own drivers is too complex really, too much to go wrong.

Post by **Vomit** » Sun Dec 18, 2011 6:57 pm

well i did the disc, boots up fine, mouse and keyboard works, acronis starts, ******* still cant see my raid drive though nor can the bart file explorer. all the other drives show up appart from that.