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Return to Home Page Return to Computer Info and Processes Acronis True Image 10.0 Recovery Procedure October, 2007 Introduction This is a procedure documenting the steps necessary to recover the important information on your main hard drive (C:) if disaster should strike your main hard drive suddenly and without warning. The underlying premise is that you have a backup hard drive (D:), internal or external, and are faithfully executing a backup strategy using Acronis True Image 10.0 software. This procedure was prepared with the invaluable cooperation and generous contribution of detailed information from Gene Barlow of User Group Relations in St. George, Utah, from whom the software was purchased. Procedure The first step is to run Acronis True Image 10.0 Home edition on your computer. On the main True Image screen, click on the Tools menu item and then select the Create Bootable Rescue Media option. This will bring up the Acronis Media Builder Wizard. If you have a diskette (floppy) reader on your computer, you will be given the option to create the bootable rescue code on either diskettes or a CD. The CD is recommended for many reasons. One of the most important is that approximately 40 MB of storage capacity will be required and this would require many, many diskettes. You will then have a choice of whether you want to write either the Full or Safe versions of the True Image recovery program to the CD. You should choose (via checkmarks) to create both on your CD. The Full version is a small Linux system that has many device drivers for USB external hard drives and such. The Safe version is a very simple DOS version that is very limited. In most cases, the Full version will work fine. Having both gives you a fallback option if the Full version does not work for some reason. You should then burn a CD with this code on it. If you have problems burning the CD, you can read a list of suggestions on how to best do this on Gene Barlow’s web site at www.ugr.com/questions.html. Having just burned the CD, you should now test it. In order to run a successful test and to assure you will have the capability to recover should a disaster strike your hard disk, you must know the boot order sequence to which your computer is set. Most computers, but not all, will try to boot from a floppy diskette and a CD (in any order) before booting from the hard drive. Assuming you have burned a CD with the recovery software, you need to be sure that the CD-ROM precedes the hard drive in the boot order sequence for your computer. Each computer is different in how this boot sequence is set up. When you boot your PC, there is generally a PF key that you need to press to get into the setup options. Some computers may give you two keys to press -- one for the setup options and the other for the boot sequence. So, start or restart your computer and watch for the black and white line that says for "Startup Menu press F8" or “BIOS Settings: F2” or some other folder and button combination. Then follow that instruction and see if it will get you into the setup option. If it does, then look for the boot sequence and change that option so that you boot from the CD-ROM first, then the hard drive. If you have a diskette reader on your computer, you may want to make it boot first from the diskette, then the CD-ROM, and finally from the hard drive. If you can't find out how to do this, you may need to check the hardware manual that came with your computer. Since each computer is different in how this is done, it's a good thing to check this before, and not be surprised when, you have problems. That's one of the main reasons for running this test of the Recovery Program CD. As an example, on my computer, the following is the process to determine, and if necessary, change the boot order sequence. Depress the F2 key when the system is first turned on or restarted. This will get you into the BIOS. Once in the BIOS, depress the right arrow key to move over to the main Boot Menu. You will see the boot order sequence of floppy, CD-ROM and hard drive (the list is sequential, top to bottom) in the main Boot Menu. Depress the enter key to get into the Menu and access the sequence. Then use the minus key to move items down to rearrange the boot order sequence. When you have established the sequence you desire, depress enter to return to the main Boot Menu. Then depress the right arrow key to move over to the Exit Section Menu where you can select Exit Saving Changes and, by so doing, exit the BIOS and return to normal Windows startup. Then use the Recovery CD, which you just burned, to boot your computer. It takes more time to boot than you might expect. Be patient. Do not depress any keys while the boot is occurring. A screen will ultimately appear and ask you if you want to run the Full or Safe version of the Recovery program or run Windows. Pick the Full version of the Recovery program and let it continue to boot up. When it finishes booting, you should see a screen very similar to the main True Image screen which you normally see when opening the program in Windows. The screen is titled PICK A TASK, and you should select the Recovery option. As an aside, you should note that it is easy to make a mistake on the PICK A TASK screen. On the lower half of the screen are Pick A Tool options and one of those is Activate Acronis Startup Recovery Manager. This is an enticing, but incorrect, choice. This choice will lead you to the Recovery Manager Wizard which will subsequently ask you to create an Acronis Secure Zone which you do not want on your computer. When you have correctly selected the Recovery option on the PICK A TASK screen, the Restore Data Wizard will appear in the next screen. When you select the Next button, the Archive Selection screen appears. On this screen, you will be directed to select an Archive from which data will be restored. The following choices may be listed: The first thing you will/should notice is an apparent discrepancy between the identification of the hard drives in this listing and the drive designations normally assigned by Windows (e.g., the main hard drive is normally designated as C: and the backup drive is normally D: or some other letter, but not C. The reason for the different designations in the listing is that the Full stand-alone version of the True Image 10.0 Recovery program runs under a small Linux system which assigns drive letters different than Windows. So, don't go by the drive letters, but go by the content of the folders you see. So under Linux, the backup hard drive is the one you want to select. Then, on the next screen, you want to find the latest image file that you made on this drive. If you can see this drive and if you can see the .tib image files, then your test is complete. You do not want to continue the restore beyond this point. You have tested out the boot sequence for your computer, the functionality of the Bootable Rescue CD, and the ability of the Linux version of True Image 10.0 to see your image file on the backup drive. So, all is working fine at this point. Related Important Notes: If and when you ever need to restore an image of your main hard drive, you would normally select the last incremental image that you created as the one to restore from (or from which to restore individual files and not the whole hard drive). True Image 10.0 will restore/mount the full backup image associated with that incremental one and all of the incremental images that follow the full backup, up to and including the incremental image you selected. So, if you know that the last incremental image contains some bad files that you do not want back on your computer, you can do the restore by selecting the incremental image just before the last incremental image. Then the full backup and all of the incremental images up to the one you selected will be merged together and restored. The last incremental image that you did not select will be left out of the restore and can be discarded. As another example of possible interest, you create a full backup image and several incremental backup images, but later decide you only want to restore the full backup image and nothing from the following incremental images. In this case, just select the full backup image when doing the restore and only the full backup will be restored. All of the changes in all of the incremental images will not be restored. This gives you a great deal of flexibility in restoring image files. As one final example, you make a full backup image and start to make some There is another intriguing feature about computers which may pop up and bite you while attempting to backup your hard drive. Most users of Acronis True Image 10.0 Home will schedule the backup to run overnight so as not to interfere with other computer uses. That’s all well and good except when your computer is set to go into a standby or hibernate mode when not being used. In that mode, the backup program will not run and waits until the next activation to run. In order to set your Power Options properly, go to Start/Control Panel/Power Options. On the Power Schemes tab you have three levels to set. The first level simply turns off the motor on both the Monitor and the hard drive, but all continues to run as normal. This level can be usually set to activate at about 30 minutes. The second level is called Standby. In Standby, your RAM memory is saved, but most of your devices are shut down for you. Things are not running on the computer, but they are ready to run at the first signs of life, such as an external impulse. Your backup program will not run in Standby. Therefore, this level should be set so that it will not activate until after your backup program has run. Or it can be set to Never as you choose. The third level, hibernation, is on the Hibernate tab. Hibernation is similar to shutting down your computer. All of your programs are shut down and your RAM memory is flushed and everything is turned off. Unless you have a special need for this option, it is best not to enable hibernation. So, remember to select the levels that will permit your backup program to run as you have scheduled. And then check in the True Image logs to make sure it happened. |