Raul

>They provide a bootable ISO image that has drivers for most disk interfaces, including (S)ATA and USB. So assuming you have done a backup to a removable drive (e.g. external USB) you just connect the drive, boot from CD and then a wizard walks you thru the restore. Last time i did this it took me approx 40 min to have everything back (most of the time was taken for just copying the data since USB2 is relatively slow).
>
>Other disk imaging products use a similar method - idea is to do a bare-metal restore using a bootable cd or usb stick.

Unless the drive has gone unbootable I generally just do a sector by sector restore.

Roy Lambert

Roy .

<< Unless the drive has gone unbootable  ... >>
Good point - i've never actually needed to restore from a running OS as you can just mount backup and copy individual files/folders from windows explorer.


<< I generally just do a sector by sector restore.>>

Any specific reason you are restoring the free space? Doing the disk/partition restore instead should speed things up a bit (assuming your drive is not completely full).

Raul

Raul

><< I generally just do a sector by sector restore.>>
>
>Any specific reason you are restoring the free space? Doing the disk/partition restore instead should speed things up a bit (assuming your drive is not completely full).

I'm not certain but it seems as though a disk/partition restore doesn't fully overwrite the old stuff.

One reason I use Acronis is to "get rid" of junk. As an example for the dog rescue charity I'm working with I decided to see what I could find in the way of free accounts packages. I downloaded and installed all I could find and had a play with them then uninstalled. I have found very few applications that do a thorough job of uninstalling so after my playing I restored back from Acronis.

Roy Lambert

Raul,

<< I'm guessing RAID will be in order once you rebuild >>

Actually I'm just making sure that everything is backed up now.  Had I
made sure of that to begin with, we could have been completely back up and
running within an hour.  The internal systems were back on-line very quickly
due to the fact that all of it is backed up.

After all, we're talking about a MTBF of around 8 years for this one SCSI
drive, and 10 years and counting for the other SCSI drive.  I can live with
an hour or so of downtime every 8-10 years.

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Tim


Had it ever been turned off in all that time? Just curious.

Roy Lambert

> I'm guessing RAID will be in order once you rebuild
>
> I've been personally using the (software) RAID that comes with most
> modern motherboards and have lived thru couple of drive failures in
> the past 4 years with no down-time or data loss.

FWIW, I'd only ever use the MIRROR version of RAID, but likewise I've been saved by
it. All critical computers here have a mirror. One time I got a notice that a drive
on my PC had failed. I ordered a new one, fitted it and had downtime of 20 mins or
so. Really nice compared to any data loss.

That said, I also have complete disk images copied to (non mirrored) drive in PC,
plus then copied to various NAS boxes and a removable 500GB RDX drive for taking
home. And I also have every file being copied as-is to NAS, and over DSL to home
where another box has a mirror to protect the off-site.

No, I don't care for my data... 8-)

/Matthew Jones/

Roy,

<< Had it ever been turned off in all that time? Just curious. >>

Only a handful of times, and those were either long power outages (eastern
US blackout) or scheduled maintenance.

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

<Raul> wrote in message
news:9FB96E60-81FC-4EEE-8348-08A850283388@news.elevatesoft.com...
>< "Robert K" wrote:
> Thanks for the info. What is the process for restoring using Acronis?
>>
>
> Robert,
>
> They provide a bootable ISO image that has drivers for most disk
> interfaces, including (S)ATA and USB. So assuming you have done a backup
> to a removable drive (e.g. external USB) you just connect the drive, boot
> from CD and then a wizard walks you thru the restore. Last time i did this
> it took me approx 40 min to have everything back (most of the time was
> taken for just copying the data since USB2 is relatively slow).
>
> Other disk imaging products use a similar method - idea is to do a
> bare-metal restore using a bootable cd or usb stick.
>

Thanks for the info.

Do you know if it would work restoring from a network drive? IE can the
bootable CD be smart enough to recognize the network drive?

Robert

<< "Robert K" wrote:

Do you know if it would work restoring from a network drive? IE can the
bootable CD be smart enough to recognize the network drive?

>>

Yes.

There are actually couple of options AFAIK.

- The bootable Linux CD has drivers for most common network cards and then you can access SMB and other types of shares including windows/domain machines, NAS boxes, FTP even i think,  etc.

- they also support WinPE (with home product you need the Plus Pack) so with little bit of extra work you can use any network card there is a Windows driver for. I never had to use this myself but it's an option.

Raul