Full Backup Mirror with 2 Hard Drives Possible? Z60T

[panflute]

I now have 2 hard drives in my z60t since I upgraded the original drive to a 7200 rpm. I finally got the drive bay adapter. But now that it is installed, I see no option to make a full copy (mirror) of my C drive to the 2nd drive (D drive), only to make a full backup to DVD using the thinkpad utilities. Am wondering if anyone knows for sure. I have acronis, maybe that will do it.....thanks.

[panflute]

well I just answered my own question....acronis migrate easy does seem to work just fine as it recognizes both drives. It sure beats the hours required to make a dvd backup, although it is a good idea to make a hard copy once in a while just case a backup fails...

[panflute]

The acronis backup to the 2nd drive did NOT work, at least the resotre part of got screwed up. The last system update from lenovo really screwed up the machine...they do that once in a while, and then fix things they broke in subsequent backups. This system update caused a lot of things to stop running, like add/remove programs & other things. I tried restoring from my 2nd drive backup - it did not work becasue the laptop read both drives as being the D drive. That has NEVER happened with acronis before on any other system....I am thinking maybe because I should have booted up with the DVD drive in the first time so that the drive letters would be assigned? (IE the laptop got confused)...
well too late for that now. FORTUNATELY I am anal about backups and made a DVD backup last week which I am not in the process of restoring. The DVD writer was well worth the extra cost in this machine.

[panflute]

well, since acronis did not work right, I looked for a solution with IBM backup. here is what ibm says:

Symptom

When creating a backup to a second hard drive contained in a SATA UltraBay adapter using Rescue and Recovery, there is an option to also make that drive bootable. This drive will not boot even though the process to make the drive bootable completes without error. Instead the drive boots to a blinking cursor.

Rescue and Recovery does not currently support making a second hard drive contained in a SATA UltraBay adapter bootable while creating a backup on it.

Solution

To recover from this error, do one of the following:

Create a different rescue medium: CD/DVD, USB hard drive, or non-SATA 2nd hard drive (such as PATA or IDE).
Run the Microsoft diskpart utility to "clean" the drive first. Make the second hard drive contained in a SATA UltraBay adapter bootable using the Create Recovery Media application. Then take a backup to it.
CMVC Defect Number: ymato_76628

I am not entirle clear what they are telling me to do, and what the results actually are...I don't know what "cleaning: the c drive with the diskpart utility will do to the drive.... I wish they would add the option to make a full backup to the 2nd SATA drive. You would think they would do that since it would be a handy utility, and they do sell the hardware for it.

For now, I think I will stick to the reliable DVD backups, which have worked flawlessly for me on may occasions, until another option appears or i figure out what they are saying.

[Humpa]

I use acronis with no issues on my Z60m. Though in the past, I've had the issue you are referring to.

To make sure that the backup works correctly, one thing you can do is put the new drive in the laptop (not in the hdd adapter). That's how I always do it now. I have my backup's stored in various places, but when I need to use one, I simply stick the backup image file on a hard drive and put that hard drive in the hdd adapter. Then put the new drive in the laptop, and boot to Acronis. The easiest way to boot to Acronis (since I just put an hdd in the ultra bay, and thus have no cd drive) is to use a USB flash stick. I made a USB stick bootable, and installed the Acronis boot disc/program to it.
This method works perfectly.

[panflute]

Humpa

sorry you lost me.....
I can boot acronis from my usb drive, but not sure what you mean by drive image.....
If you are saying you put the new drive into the laptop, and the backup drive into the adapter, how did you make the original image to the backup drive? The only way I can figure is to use a backup dvd set to restore to the new drive, then put it aside in case I need it. That still takes hours on the front end, but handy when I need to go back.

Also, I had a problem once when turning on the laptop with the usb stick inserted - what happaend is that the touch pad stopped working, even disappeared from the bios....somehow the bios got confused. The fix was to remove the palmrest, disconnect the touchpad ribbon cable, reboot, reconnect & reboot again and it came back. Ever since then I've been careful not to turn on the laptop with the usb stick inserted.

[Humpa]

Humpa

sorry you lost me.....
I can boot acronis from my usb drive, but not sure what you mean by drive image.....
If you are saying you put the new drive into the laptop, and the backup drive into the adapter, how did you make the original image to the backup drive? The only way I can figure is to use a backup dvd set to restore to the new drive, then put it aside in case I need it. That still takes hours on the front end, but handy when I need to go back.

Also, I had a problem once when turning on the laptop with the usb stick inserted - what happaend is that the touch pad stopped working, even disappeared from the bios....somehow the bios got confused. The fix was to remove the palmrest, disconnect the touchpad ribbon cable, reboot, reconnect & reboot again and it came back. Ever since then I've been careful not to turn on the laptop with the usb stick inserted.

The "drive image" I am referring to is simply the file that acronis makes when you backup your drive.

I do not use IBM's utilities, and I do not use Window's restore points - I turn off restore points and I remove IBM's backup utility and delete the hidden partition.

I use only acronis and backup my C drive once a week. I open acronis > Backup > and select "The entire disk contents or individual partition". I save these "images" on my home pc, and the newest/latest one I keep on the spare drive that I keep in my hdd ultrabay adapter. Anytime I want to restore one of my backup images, then the drive I am going to use goes into the thinkpad, and the image I'm going to use goes onto the drive that will be in the hdd ultrabay adapter. I also partition my C drive and only have the OS and program files on the main partition - any files, documents, pics, mp3's, etc go elsewhere and I back up those as appropriate - but those simply require nothing more than a drag and drop or copy and paste. This keeps the C drive down to a civil size, so it is easy to go back to a previous state without losing any data.

It only takes 10-15minutes for acronis to create the backup - so I'm not sure what you are referring to when you say "hours", but I assume that is how long it takes the IBM utility.

I very rarely (if ever) need to use a backup image - though lately I've been using it a lot because I've been messing around with Vista on the weekends. I load my Vista backup onto my thinkpad on friday, but but my XP backup back on for work on monday.

When I need to use acronis to restore my drive, then I put the usb stick in and I boot up my thinkpad and change the boot order - I select "boot from usb" or whatever it says. The usb stick must be bootable (I use HP's bootable usb software for that), and it must have acronis on it.

[panflute]

ok..after reading your last 3 posts I think I understand what you are doing...I'll need to test it out on my machine, which I can do now since I have a recent backup to DVD so I wont have to worry about messing up anything. Yes, I was referring to the ibm utility, which works GREAT when backing to DVD...I have about 24 gigs of data & that takes 4 dvd's and about 2.5 hours to backup or restore. The good part is that they are very reliable...I've never had a full DVD backup fail to restore, no errors or anything...and the DVD's are a "hard copy" that won't lose data unless they get scratched or I use cheap DVDs.
I have windows defender installed and that makes restore points automatically all the time. I just delete the old restore points to free up space...
I posted here about PC Utilitys 5.0 that lenovo just put out as a download...it really screwed up may machine....avoid that one for now.
To keep my laptop running great I use the following:
avg virus-free
ad aware-free
spywareblaster-free
spy emergency-not free but excellent
O&O defrag (does a defrag via access date -speeds up loading)
cleanup! - deletes hidden IE files (GREAT little free program)
tuneup utilities - rebuild icon cache & clean & defrag registry
winASO registry optimizer- aggressive reg cleaner, but very good..

using all of the above works wonders for the machine....

[panflute]

That is PC DOCTOR, not pc utilities that Lenovo now makes available....they will probably have a fix later on, but definitely do not install it on your machine for now....it will disable windows add/remove programs, it will NOT un install itself, will mess up drives letters, will mess up other programs....this is good advice...

[panflute]

well I tried it, placing the new drive in the laptop, the old drive in the drive bay, booting up to acronis off my usb drive...acronis is taking 8 hours to do the image---way too long. not sure why this is happening---