disk is failing and I want to replace it (how to backup and restore)

[JeffCharger]

I have a system where the disk seems to be failing. It's have "bad block" messages showing in Event Manager every few hours. I've run scan disk and it fixes some issues, however the problem continues.

I want to replace the drive. It's a signle drive machine with 2 partitions. I have an Acronis license CD but haven't used it before. Can I create an image of the existing drive (OS, and programs and configurations) and restore to a brand new drive and swap the new drive in? Will this avoid the challenge of the setup?

thanks

[Uncle Michael]

Take a look at the Seagate DiskWizard software. I used it to replace the drive on my HS machine and it was very nearly painless. You install the new drive as a second HD, then copy the contents of the original drive to it. After that, you swap the new drive for the original and the computer boots off the new one just as if it were the original.

[JeffCharger]

Thanks Michael, does it copy all registry items and configuration setup too? (it's a western digital drive)

[Uncle Michael]

Jeff,
I believe it makes an exact copy of your system, at least that's how it looked to me, but I'm no expert. The Seagate website probably has more information.

My original drive was a WD as well. That didn't seem to make any difference. The software came with a new Seagate drive, but I think you can also download the software from the Seagate site. I don't know if you must have a Seagate drive as the destination, or if it will work with any HD.

[Ultrajones]

I have a system where the disk seems to be failing. It's have "bad block" messages showing in Event Manager every few hours. I've run scan disk and it fixes some issues, however the problem continues.

I want to replace the drive. It's a signle drive machine with 2 partitions. I have an Acronis license CD but haven't used it before. Can I create an image of the existing drive (OS, and programs and configurations) and restore to a brand new drive and swap the new drive in? Will this avoid the challenge of the setup?

thanks

If you mean Acronis TrueImage, then you can use that disk to boot, then use the clone feature to create an exact copy of your old disk on your new disk. Just make sure you select the correct disk as the "source disk"

[JeffCharger]

Thanks Ultra, yes, It's TrueImage. I went and picked up a new hard drive, and it's running now.

The old hard drive was booting still - so I thought that it was easier to do it now than when it's actually failed.

(in fact, it did fail to reboot after a power failure. It couldn't find the boot volume. I repaired it, but it still seems to be having problems when I look at Event Mgr, so I thought I had better be a bit proactive!)

Thanks

[TeleFragger]

at work we have Ghost and drive image... plus we also have altiris that uses rdeploy...

so ghost will make a .gho
drive image makes a .img
altiris rdeploy makes a .img or .exe

so if you have access to any of them you could image your drive to a server then restore down..
you can go drive to drive but I always like getting my failed drive to image up and have a backup.....

or you can use barts pe

while typing this I just remembered it....

I have used barts pe to boot up on and ghost my drive image from that computer across a network to another workstation at my house.... then put new drive in and ghost back following the same process....

barts pe is free.... however you need to build it...
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

[JeffCharger]

well, I installed the new hard drive, used Acronis TrueImage to clone it - and presto! 30 minutes later I'm up and running with the new drive! What a treat!

[Stevech]

I used to use Acronis TruImage to image the partition(s) on my drives.
For my office PC, I now just clone the drive from one to another every couple of weeks. Drives are cheap. The clone method seems better to me because the target drive is verbatim and bootable whereas the image scheme yields a partition image but you still have to make a bootable drive and roll in that image.

Plus, now and then, I boot the clone and install some risky software and try it, before doing so on my usual drive.

Aconis is great.

I also use low cost SecondCopy to watch selected folders on drives and network share for changes and automatically backup individual important files.

[brothers]

I've got an HP MediaSmart server, running Windows Home Server. Every night, in the wee hours, every computer in the house does a backup to the server (there's a client you install on each computer). There's a bootable CD that can be used to restore an exact image of the PC's disk (at the time of the backup, of course). It uses a clever backup strategy, so that if (e.g.) PC A and PC B have identical versions of a given cluster (like the ones making up Office or the OS), only one copy is stored on the server.

This system has saved my *** twice so far.

You can accomplish the same thing with Acronis software, but the setup is more complex and (in my experience) requires more monitoring. And on one sadly memorable occasion, Acronis was unable to read a backup it had made (and verified).

- Dennis Brothers

[completelyhis]

Steve,

I own Acronis Home but there is no way i know of to "clone" automatically. only can schedule backups. how would one go about cloning on a schedule automatically?

[completelyhis]

what about this?

http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

[Stevech]

Steve,

I own Acronis Home but there is no way i know of to "clone" automatically. only can schedule backups. how would one go about cloning on a schedule automatically?

I don't think Acronis can clone automatically. It can image or file-by-file automatically. This is because to clone the boot disk, it must lock the partition, reboot, and run their stand alone program that does the clone.

IMO, choosing a disk image/cloning product needs to be done very conservatively. I used to use Norton Ghost, but many, many users say Acronis is better, so several years ago I changed. Acronis has never failed me in quite a few emergency needs, and in routine switching among drives that have clone copies. It does automatically reboot, clone and reboot again, but only when told to do so manually.

I see that they have a new version now "2009". It says it will do the image (or clone?) and then optionally turn off the computer, so you can go to bed while it's doing so.

I just won't use no-name/shareware disk backup software, nor will I buy on-the-cheap drive hardware. For obvious reasons.

[completelyhis]

I guess it would be ok to do the clone manually, forces me to actually look at my HS computer :-)

next question is - is there any way to clone a drive and leave both drives connected/running? right now I have two drives that are identical installed inside the computer. i do not have a "removable bay" or anything, and would not want to go in and pull the plug on one of them...that equals hassle. it seems to me, though, that every software cloning option i've seen says you need to remove one of the drives (either original or clone) after the cloning process. is that true?

[Stevech]

My experience with Acronis 11

You can clone a non-boot drive without rebooting - but it gets locked while being cloned (of necessity) so the applications and services that might write on that data disk have to be stopped.

I use VNC to access my always-on PC (runs Sage and HS and many others). Only when things are FUBAR do I have to go to the garage and turn on the dusty old LCD hooked to it and try to find the mouse. With VNC, I have desktop icons - I simply click on the icon and the VNC window to that PC pops up. No login password, blah because the password is in the icon.