Acronis true image restoring hard drive help

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Hi

I am trying to restore my hard drive using Acronis true image version 8 but am totally stuck.

Basically my hard drive (an 80gb SATA drive) has problems (windows xp is corrupted). I have taken the laptop to a service centre and they couldn't do anything except reinstall the OS. Rather than doing that and losing all my programs (some of which I no longer have the cd's for) I decided to simply get a new hard drive installed. So I now have a new 250GB SATA hard drive in my laptop.

I have an Acronic image of the old hard drive on an external hard disk made before the problems arose. It's in 12 parts. I want to restore that to this new hard drive but I can't. I don't have an Acronis bootable CD. Will I be able to restore my old hard drive to this new one? I can't access the old hard drive to make a bootable CD because that one doesn't work properly. Is there any way I can do this?

I would really appreciate some help on this as I'm currently in the middle of fieldwork in a remote indonesian island and there's not really anyone I can ask to help me here!

thanks
Nancy :)
 
What is the exact place where you are located.
What sort of files do you have that need to be reinstalled... software, documents, images, audio?

You can install the old drive in an external enclosure and connect it to your current laptop with a USB cable... then drag and drop nearly all the files you need, provided you have installed to the new hard drive the software that runs or uses the files needed.

There are plenty of places in Indonesia that have what you need, but having been there many times, I know it is a huge country where you are not going to easily find where external enclosures can be purchased... but somebody can get one to you in less than five days from Britain, Japan, Hong Kong, Manilla, or USA.

The acronis is of no value without the disc.
 
Hi

I'm on a remote island off the south east coast of sulawesi. I need to resinstall everything - my OS has a problem which causes a BSOD whenever anything is connected to the USB ports. I'm not so worried about data as I can do as you say and transfer them over. The problem is the programs - I'm currently doing research out here and need various specialist programs which I can't reinstall out here.

I already have the external enclosure so that's ok (managed to get one ordered from the mainland).

I was considering trying making a bootable Acronis disk from this new hard drive (as I have the laptop's recovery CD so all the drivers can be reinstalled) and then using that to try to restore the image. Fingers crossed that might work....

thanks
Nancy :)
 
Doesn't sound right... OS does not cause a BSOD. BSOD's normally do not happen from USB ports either as the software is fundamental... more likely modem software, ethernet software, chipset, and most commonly video graphics driver software... or hardware errors that cause those drivers to fail... But of course any hardware failure can cause a BSOD... when I was not too far from you, the power was totally unreliable... do you have a way to assure the power is controlled for ups and downs?

Perhaps we just do not understand what Acronis software you are using... as we use Acronis every day... are you dealing with a download... or are you slipstreaming in some way?

Is there anything we can send you from USA...
 
Its usually a hardware fault/change that causes a BSOD, never ever had one caused by USB ports.

Surge Protector would almost prevent power spikes of such nature, its what I use.
 
The islands on which I have been assigned in Indonesia had power too unreliable even for a regular surge protector. Only the behemoths worked reliably.
 
Hi

I am trying to restore my hard drive using Acronis true image version 8 but am totally stuck.

Basically my hard drive (an 80gb SATA drive) has problems (windows xp is corrupted). I have taken the laptop to a service centre and they couldn't do anything except reinstall the OS. Rather than doing that and losing all my programs (some of which I no longer have the cd's for) I decided to simply get a new hard drive installed. So I now have a new 250GB SATA hard drive in my laptop.

I have an Acronic image of the old hard drive on an external hard disk made before the problems arose. It's in 12 parts. I want to restore that to this new hard drive but I can't. I don't have an Acronis bootable CD. Will I be able to restore my old hard drive to this new one? I can't access the old hard drive to make a bootable CD because that one doesn't work properly. Is there any way I can do this?

I would really appreciate some help on this as I'm currently in the middle of fieldwork in a remote indonesian island and there's not really anyone I can ask to help me here!

thanks
Nancy :)

1) Yes, you'd need an Acronis CD to boot into to try and recover the the old drive image
2) My guess at your options to get that boot CD
..a) Buy a new copy of Acronis online. Download and install it on a working computer. It will create the boot image you can burn to create the boot CD
..b) Buy a new copy of Acronis (boxed version). It will come with the bootable CD
..c) Contact Acronis support and somehow convince them you have a legit copy, need a boot CD and see what they say
 
Hi

Thanks for all the replies.

Re: the BSOD - I know it seems unlikely but I don't know what else is causing the problem. It was fine 6 weeks ago and then suddenly when I plugged in a USB stick I started getting the BSOD (the stick was fine on all other computers and all external hard drives / memory sticks produce same effect on my laptop). I'd not installed any new software and have up to date antivirus.

I tried all the fixes I could manage alone - e.g. system restores, registry checking and cleaning, changing and testing the RAM, reinstalling the chipset and drivers. Nothing worked. So finally I sent the unit to a Toshiba service centre in the capital. They tested everything as well and concluded that it must be a OS related issue (or a software issue that wasn't obvious) as when they put in a new hard drive there were no probs, and so the best option was to reinstall the OS to fix it. I wasn't keen on that so I asked them to install a new hard drive. I have kept the old one which caused the problem in the hope I may be able to fix it if I can take it to someone with a better knowledge of these sort of issues. In the meantime though I need to be able to use my laptop so I'm wanting to try Acronis.

With regards to power - yes you're right power is an issue, but we have voltage stabilisers in the village where we work which seem to be ok and no one else's laptop/computer has suffered any ill effects. I also have a surge protector on top of that.

So now I have a laptop with an empty 250gb hard drive. It has all the drivers installed as thankfully I brought the recovery CD with me to Indonesia (phew!).
I am rather naive when it comes to Acronis as aside from making back up images I didn't really fully understand the need for a bootable CD to restore them (stupid I know but it was free software when I got it and I didn't fully appreciate it's usefullness. I have Acronis True Image version 8. It came with one of my external hard drives so all the set up files are on the hard drive (in fact I think I did originally make the bootable CD but failed to bring it with me and have no idea where it is now) so I can easily install it on the new hard drive - which I have done.

Basically what I'm in the process of testing right now is creating the bootable CD from the new hard drive and then restoring the image of my old laptop (which was created a week before the BSOD problems) on to the new hard drive.

Thanks again for all the help and sorry if my posts are confusing!
Nancy :)
 
Nancy,
Acronis True Image Home 2009, one of the current versions can be downloaded for a trial evaluation period, you could make a bootable recovery CD from this version and view the backup files. The created "bootable" USB or ISO CD can then be used to restore a good Acronis archive. The "backup" archive must be on a dirve other than the drive you are trying to restore. If the HD that has been corrupted has your back up files it will have also corrupted your backups. Always backup to external drives or network drives. Please take note that "sality.a" will infect your thumb drive from infected shared file folders on a network and then corrupt a drive file structure causing blue screens.

Hope this link helps
http://kb.acronis.com/content/2768
wefixpcsnyc : )
 
It would be rare to have the USB device cause the BSOD unless it was infected from connection to another infected device. Otherwise they are trouble-free unless damaged.
Otherwise,
Excellent judgment so far... but costly.
Be careful with the Acronis so as to not destroy what you have on the used drive.
Using the enclosure will move the data, but you need the install disks to properly run the software that was onl the old drive.
You are almost guaranteed to have problems migrating the installs from the old hard drive to the new one with Acronis and expecting them to work. It is not easily done the first time. You need experience with Acronis to move an entire hard drive install... and the Acronis install.
Too difficult to give you good advice from here. But if your data is as valuable as it appears, you are risking too much with the Acronis, methinks.
 
Hi again

Well it took all day but it worked! My laptop is back up and running and Acronis worked a dream!

I decided to take the risk ONLY because the original hard drive didn't need to be touched to do this AND because I had the image and all my files backed up on 2 separate external hard drives. So if it all went wrong I wouldn't lose anything. :)

Basically what I did was as follows:
1. Installed Acronis version 8 on my "new" 250 gb hard drive (which was installed using the original recovery CD for the laptop so had all the appropriate drivers etc).
2. Created a bootable Acronis CD
3. Booted up using that Acronis CD
4. Plugged in my external hard drive (not the damaged original 80gb hard drive but the external hard drive I had the last image saved to).
5. Restored the most recent image prior to the BSOD issues
6. crossed my fingers and waited!!

It worked!
My laptop is functioning normally, all programs etc are working fine (as far as I can tell so far) and everything looks back to normal.
I still have my original damaged hard drive in an external casing in the hope I can try to fix that later but fingers crossed I may not need to now.

I am SO impressed with Acronis - I can't believe it worked!
Thanks again for all the help here
Nancy :)
 
Terrific news. Thanks for letting us know of the success!
Did you use the paid Acronis download? or the downloaded free trial? Or an Acronis version on CD or Flash drive?
You will likely be able to reformat the "damaged" hard drive and have it work normally.

As you know, be careful with anything related to what you were using. You always have to worring about damage by an infestation as the cause of the previous damage.

How did you restore the "...most recent image prior to the BSOD issues..." Did you somehow use one you put away with System Restore?
 
Hi

I used Acronis true Image OEM version 8 which came on a Freecom external hard drive I bought several years ago so it was a free version.

The image I restored was on my external hard drive (not the original damaged hard drive but a separate 500gb external hard drive - WD passport). I probably don't use Acronis properly as until now I never realised it's usefulness but what I used to do was every couple of months I would manually create a true image backup of the entire hard disk and save it to my external drive (usually it was a 12 part .tib file). I always keep 3 backups and then overwrite the oldest one each time. I had done this a couple of weeks before my BSOD issue and as it was saved to the 500 gb external drive it wasn't affected by the problem. So when I restored it I simply located it on the external drive and restored it from there.

I hope that makes sense!
Nancy :)
 
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