Most Fool-Proof Method for Hard Drive Backup / Imaging?

[PhilD]

Question is at bottom, scroll down if you're in a rush...

i've been using Acronis Trueimage 10 to make full disk images (with and without recovery partition) of all of my Thinkpads for several years now. Having not experienced a harddrive failure in any of these machines yet, i never had to restore one of those images (although i did use it on a Sony Vaio once and it worked perfect).

Along comes the new T61. I bought it for the 4x3 screen and decided to replace the 5400 RPM drive with a 7200 RPM drive from Lenovo.

Long story short, after reading all the tips (and horror stories) posted here and elsewhere, i cloned, i imaged, i tried the new drive in an ultrabay adapter, old drive in the ultrabay adapter, and every other conceivable option with no success. every time, i ended up with a blinking cursor after rebooting, the FixMBR utility didn't help. i lost a lot of sleep during this adventure!

What worked was creating Recovery discs with the old drive installed, swapping drives and restoring Windows on the new drive. At this point, i didn't try to restore an image of just the Windows partition (created from the old drive using Acronis) after the recovery process, i just reinstalled all my software.


QUESTION: is the most fool-proof backup technique to first restore the machine using Recovery discs, and then restore ONLY the Windows partition using Acronis (or other imaging software)? i didn't actually test that last (critical) step yet, but plan to next week using a new hard drive i ordered just to test this plan.

Phew, that was long, thanks for reading!


Thinkpad T60, T60p, T61, X61s

[bill bolton]

Long story short, after reading all the tips (and horror stories) posted here and elsewhere, i cloned, i imaged, i tried the new drive in an ultrabay adapter, old drive in the ultrabay adapter, and every other conceivable option with no success.

I have done 5400 rpm to 7200 rpm system image drive transfers on a T60, T61, X61 and T400 using initially Acronis 11 and more recently Acronis 2008 (aka Acronis 12) with no problems at all.

For me that IS the fool-proof method.

Cheers,

Bill B.

[PhilD]

I have done 5400 rpm to 7200 rpm system image drive transfers on a T60, T61, X61 and T400 using initially Acronis 11 and more recently Acronis 2008 (aka Acronis 12) with no problems at all.

no you didn't, you're making that up!

somehow, i doubt your success has anything to do with the differences between Acronis 10 and 12...

[runbuh]

I have had no trouble imaging drives when I left the partition the same size. I have nothing but trouble when trying to copy the partition over to a larger drive/partition.

I ended up using a Knoppix CD to enlarge the partition after using Acronis to image everything over.

[PhilD]

I have had no trouble imaging drives when I left the partition the same size. I have nothing but trouble when trying to copy the partition over to a larger drive/partition.

I ended up using a Knoppix CD to enlarge the partition after using Acronis to image everything over.

thanks for sharing your experience. i specifically read posts (either here or over in notebookreview.com) by folks who claimed to have allowed Acronis to resize (expand) the partitions (recovery and Windows) while cloning with success. i tried cloning both ways (expanding and no change to partition size) without success.

i found an article in Acronis' knowledge base that seems to back up (no pun intended) your technique:

"Lenovo ThinkPad W500 Does Not Boot after Restore"

Cause - The image was restored with the laptop's hidden service partition. The service partition has a certain sector offset of Windows boot loader. As a result of restoration this offset changes, which makes the system unbootable.

Solution - Restore the image without the service partition by unchecking the partition marked as EISA on the Partitions Selection screen of the Create Backup Wizard.

i think what this means is that if you change the recovery partition size (or perhaps clone to a disk with different sector sizes), the machine cannot find the windows boot loader because it is looking in the old position.

i didn't try the option recommended by Acronis because i wanted to include the recovery partition on my new drive.

[Brad]

I have never yet been successful booting a restored image. Always the blinking cursor in the top left corner. When I see another workaround I try it but still no success. I have been successful 99% of the time cloning with the target drive in my ThinkPad and the source drive in the ultrabay or an external USB enclosure.

To me and to avoid confusion imaging means creating a large file with an image of your drive and cloning means making a mirror image of your entire drive on another drive. I currently use Acronis True Image 9 Echo Workstation with Universal Restore and Acronis True Image 11 Home.

Brad

[bill bolton]

imaging means creating a large file with an image of your drive and cloning means making a mirror image of your entire drive on another drive.

Its all in your imagination then!

Cheers,

Bill B.

[PhilD]

I have been successful 99% of the time cloning with the target drive in my ThinkPad and the source drive in the ultrabay or an external USB enclosure.

To me and to avoid confusion imaging means creating a large file with an image of your drive and cloning means making a mirror image of your entire drive on another drive.

i concur with your definition of imaging vs. cloning. a lot of folks incorrectly use one term when they mean the other. i have used both techniques successfully on non-ThinkPad computers, but my new T61 has me stumped. i configured the old and new drives exactly as you said above in one of many unsuccessful experiments. as soon as my new spare drive arrives, i will experiment some more, this time using my T60.

[rbena]

I find different methods work reliably, when imaging vs backing up a drive.

For imaging, two important factors are the OS type, and whether you want to include the hidden service partition. You then need to find the imaging software that has a history of success with your specfic requirements and configuration.

For backing up, I first create a number of separate partitions to store the OS, data files, large media files, etc. Then I image the OS partition to an external hard drive, and copy the remaining partitions to the external drive using an incremental backup program. I do not retain the hidden partition, but delete it once I've customized the OS partition and removed unwanted files and bloatware from the original factory configuration.

I've found this to be an absolutely reliable method of restoring the OS and all programs and data files - and a lot quicker for day-to-day backing up vs creating and restoring an entire image of the hard drive. Data files can also be quickly individually copied from the external drive, without the need to restore an image of the entire hard drive. And for redundancy, the data files can be quickly accessed by a second computer should the main computer fail.

I've had difficulty transferring a single image of a hard drive, to different-sized hard drives. The method of transferring/restoring only an OS partition image, and then copying the other data partitions, has been extremely reliable for restoring to various drives. I've used this method for 12 years, and I am partial to the most reliable backup method because of the value of the files on my hard drive.

[mitasol]

Macrium Reflect, google it!

[rbena]

Macrium Reflect, google it!

What is your experience using Macrium Reflect with the T61p, for imaging and restoring Vista. Also for backups, what file storage format(s) does it offer for creating backups in (eg proprietary format, zip, rar,). Many thanks.

[pae77]

I've been using various versions of Acronis TI or TIH to clone my primary hd to a newer larger hard drive in the ultrabay 2nd hard drive adapter (including the recovery partition) without any problems for many years. (I also use it to make cloned backups to an identical sized hard drive, however the procedure is slightly different when cloning to a drive that is a different size from the original or primary hard drive.)

The cloning part of the program is under "Disc Utilities." When cloning from a smaller to a larger hard drive , what works for me is: 1) The target or destination drive is in the ultrabay hard drive adapter. 2) One has to use acronis's manual (not automatic) cloning method. 3) When setting up the clone, one must go back and forth resizing the two (or more) partitions until the service partition is the same size or close to the same size as it was on the original drive and there is no unallocated free space showing. Then just go ahead and clone. Important: After it is done. Shut down and remove the target/destination drive from the ultrabay and swap out the primary drive and replace it with the newly cloned larger drive. I've never had it fail to boot and work great using this procedure.

When just backing up by cloning to an identically sized drive. Everything is the same except you can use Acronis' "automatic" method because the program will not proportionally resize the partitions in automatic mode when cloning to a drive of the same size.

[PhilD]

I've been using various versions of Acronis TI or TIH to clone my primary hd to a newer larger hard drive in the ultrabay 2nd hard drive adapter (including the recovery partition) without any problems for many years...

do your successful cloning events with True Image include your T61p?

i am starting to question whether or not i removed the original drive (after cloning but before rebooting) from my T61. given that i never got past the blinking cursor after rebooting (with the original/source drive still in the ultrabay adapter), i don't think windows had time to do anything evil, and the original drive booted just fine when i put it back into the machine. i'll have to look into this more.

[deforest]

If you are trying to boot using the drive in the ultrabay adapter, you may have to go to bios and add that as a boot device. If it's not listed as a boot device then you end up with the blinking cursor.

Then during the bios display, if you press f12, then you can select which device to boot from. If the ultrabay ide doesn't show up, then you're not going to be able to boot from it.

And with my present thinkpad, the part of the bios gets reset if i pull out the ultrabay drive and boot off of the main spindle. So if I put back the ultrabay drive, I have to reset the bios once again to select the ultrabay as a bootable device.

[lautamas]

True Image Echo Enterprise with Universal Restore is your friend (not the home version...)

I use my Ultrabay to have a 1gb partition to store a boot disk containing the TRUE IMAGE ECHO ENTERPRISE WITH UNIVERSAL RESTORE...it works as wonder. Deployment over 15 T61 is no problem at all...

[PhilD]

If you are trying to boot using the drive in the ultrabay adapter, you may have to go to bios and add that as a boot device. If it's not listed as a boot device then you end up with the blinking cursor...

i did not attempt to boot from the ultrabay adapter. i did try cloning in both directions (internal to ultrabay and ultrabay to internal). in both cases i made certain that the cloned disk was installed internally before rebooting. that's why i am certain that when i cloned internal to ultrabay, the only drive present when rebooting was the cloned drive installed internally after the cloning operation was complete (i had to remove the source drive to do that). most people seem to recommend cloning ultrabay to internal but others claim success either way.

thanks for the tip though, appreciate it.

[ArtShapiro]

Macrium Reflect, google it!

Well, after this recommendation, I decided to try this product last night - downloaded the free version to image, as a first test, my X61. The Vista Home Basic (yecch!) machine seems to have about 40 gigs in use.

It ran for a little over four hours (wireless- presumably wired would be faster) to image the full disk - the service partition and the C: drive - to my NAS device.

Eight files appeared on the NAS device - 7 of about the same size of 4 gigs+, and then the obvious remainder of 1.3 gigs.

And then I went to at least start a restore operation, to ensure that the product works.

Nope - it doesn't see the imaging files on the NAS device. I can only assume that the "index", which was the last thing the backup operation cited, was not correctly created wherever that happens to be. (On the X61? On the NAS device? On my front lawn?)

Oh well, only a wasted evening and the cats got a lot of affection while I was waiting. Guess I'll uninstall the program.

Art

[rbena]

Oh well, only a wasted evening and the cats got a lot of affection while I was waiting. Guess I'll uninstall the program.

Art - thanks for your comments, and not a wasted evening if you're looking for something better than what's presently on offer.

Imaging and backup programs fall into a special category - the tasks they perform have a very high value. This forum provides feedback on what doesn't work, and this saves a lot of disappointment.

[ArtShapiro]

Art - thanks for your comments, and not a wasted evening if you're looking for something better than what's presently on offer.

I tried it again this morning with a wired connection, having nothing better to do. I restricted it to the C: drive. This cut the time to about an hour.

I watched it go over the LAN, watched it save the index file without complaint, and said index file is nowhere to be seen. Thus there was again no ability to restore, as it asserted that the directory in question was empty.

I purged that directory of the NAS, and deleted the program from the Thinkpad. I'm as happy as the next guy to try a freeware program, but this one seems to be a one-way (write-only) program.

Art

[rbena]

Am thinking a flavor of Acronis TI should work with your X61. If you downgrade to XP, a version many others find successful and I now use is TI 10-4942. For Vista, would need to check what others have found works.

[carbon_unit]

I would stick with Acronis or Clonezilla.

[pae77]

I've been using various versions of Acronis TI or TIH to clone my primary hd to a newer larger hard drive in the ultrabay 2nd hard drive adapter (including the recovery partition) without any problems for many years...

do your successful cloning events with True Image include your T61p?

i am starting to question whether or not i removed the original drive (after cloning but before rebooting) from my T61. given that i never got past the blinking cursor after rebooting (with the original/source drive still in the ultrabay adapter), i don't think windows had time to do anything evil, and the original drive booted just fine when i put it back into the machine. i'll have to look into this more.

Absolutely. As I stated, I haven't had a problem yet. When you clone the primary drive to a drive in the ultrabay adapter, Acronis adds a little routine that runs the first and only time when the cloned drive is put in the primary drive slot and booted from for the first time. I assume this routine writes the MBR or something like that.

Anyway, I can't understand what the difficulty is because it always works for me, and I think I have described the general procedure I follow. I'm using a 320 gb drive in my primary slot right now that I just cloned a few weeks ago from my 200 gb drive (that was in the primary slot at the time of the cloning). Before that upgraded the same way from a 100 gb to 200 gb drive. I also do weekly clone backups to another 320 gb drive in the ultrabay using Acronis' "automatic" cloning mode w/o problem. I still have a functioning the service partition as well, although I'm thinking of deleting it as I never use it. If I have a problem that system restore can't fix, I just pop in my cloned backup (into the primary drive slot) and go from there.

[PhilD]

Anyway, I can't understand what the difficulty is because it always works for me....

me either, one of my attempts was completed exactly according to the method you outlined above.

just one more question please? when you clone, do you boot using Acronis rescue media (presumably off of a USB drive since the ultrabay is in use)? do you use the "safe mode" or "full mode" (i think only the full mode supports the ultrabay)? and you did this with Trueimage version 10?

that was at least three questions, i know, sorry...thanks for the additional information.

[mitasol]

Art - thanks for your comments, and not a wasted evening if you're looking for something better than what's presently on offer.

I tried it again this morning with a wired connection, having nothing better to do. I restricted it to the C: drive. This cut the time to about an hour.

I watched it go over the LAN, watched it save the index file without complaint, and said index file is nowhere to be seen. Thus there was again no ability to restore, as it asserted that the directory in question was empty.

I purged that directory of the NAS, and deleted the program from the Thinkpad. I'm as happy as the next guy to try a freeware program, but this one seems to be a one-way (write-only) program.

Art

Many NAS devices run on SAMBA. Vista can have security issues with SAMBA based devices.

[carbon_unit]

I believe that when restoring an image with these programs you boot to a rescue cd and restore from there. It has nothing to do with Vista other than the fact the image you are restoring may contain Vista.
I have never had any problem with Acronis (pay) or Clonezilla (free) but I have never had any luck with Macrium Reflect. YMMV

[Brad]

just one more question please? when you clone, do you boot using Acronis rescue media (presumably off of a USB drive since the ultrabay is in use)? do you use the "safe mode" or "full mode" (i think only the full mode supports the ultrabay)? and you did this with Trueimage version 10?

I use the Acronis rescue media. I always used a CD that I created along with an external USB enclosure for the hard drive. I wanted a USB flash drive to work but was unsuccessful. After trying many times I finally found a proceedure to get the USB flash drive working. So now I use the ultrabay second hard drive adapter to hold one drive and boot from the USB flash drive. I always used the full mode. I use Echo Workstation 9 and version 11 also.

Brad

[pae77]

Anyway, I can't understand what the difficulty is because it always works for me....

me either, one of my attempts was completed exactly according to the method you outlined above.

just one more question please? when you clone, do you boot using Acronis rescue media (presumably off of a USB drive since the ultrabay is in use)? do you use the "safe mode" or "full mode" (i think only the full mode supports the ultrabay)? and you did this with Trueimage version 10?

that was at least three questions, i know, sorry...thanks for the additional information.

No I don't use Acronis rescue media. I initiate the cloning procedure from within windows, then the computer reboots and starts cloning. When it's finished. I shut down. Remove the drive from the ultrabay, reboot from my original drive and put the newly cloned backup drive away for safekeeping (unless I'm swapping out drives immediately). If I wanted to use the cloned drive, I would just install it in the primary drive slot and fire up the machine as normal, and it would start to boot, than run Acronis's little utility that takes about 3 seconds and then complete the boot as normal.

I'm using the latest version of Acronis now, but have used version 11 and probably older version, but can't recall right now.

I don't use any special "mode." I just fire up Acronis from w/i windows, select disk utilities, disk clone and follow the prompts as I described above and then start the clone and Acronis reboots into it's own little OS and starts cloning. My 320 gig drives take about 45 minutes to an hour to clone.

Btw, just to make sure we're on the same page, I'm talking about "cloning," which is a procedure that does not result in a .tib file that you later have to "restore."

[PhilD]

No I don't use Acronis rescue media. I initiate the cloning procedure from within windows, then the computer reboots and starts cloning. I don't use any special "mode." I just fire up Acronis from w/i windows, select disk utilities, disk clone and follow the prompts as I described above and then start the clone and Acronis reboots into it's own little OS and starts cloning. My 320 gig drives take about 45 minutes to an hour to clone.

Btw, just to make sure we're on the same page, I'm talking about "cloning," which is a procedure that does not result in a .tib file that you later have to "restore."

yes, we're on the same page, i'm talking about cloning too, not creating a backup .tib image file.

thanks for providing the additional details. on my failed attempt at cloning my new T61, i followed a procedure recommended in a number of posts here and over on notebookreview.com: (1) create rescue media (using the utility provided with True Image), (2) boot off of that media (which automatically starts a "DOS-like" version of True Image), (3) and clone. the two modes ("safe" and "full") are an option when using the rescue media, not True Image within Windows.

i have a couple days off from work, so i think i will make another cloning attempt with a spare drive following your procedure (using True Image within Windows). if this works, then i'll use your method for backup going forward - i'll keep cloning to a spare drive rather than make backup images that i may or may not be able to restore. the best part about your method is i can swap drives and test my backup immediately, can't do that as easily when creating image files.

thanks a lot!

[PhilD]

I use the Acronis rescue media. I always used a CD that I created along with an external USB enclosure for the hard drive. I wanted a USB flash drive to work but was unsuccessful. After trying many times I finally found a proceedure to get the USB flash drive working. So now I use the ultrabay second hard drive adapter to hold one drive and boot from the USB flash drive. I always used the full mode. I use Echo Workstation 9 and version 11 also.

a lot of people recommend using rescue media. i dunno, something about my combination of hardware, USB flash drive (for rescue media), True Image version 10, the way i sit and stare at the screen while it's cloning - it just doesn't work for me. i'm going to try pae77's technique and initiate cloning using True Image within Windows. at some point, i may also buy the newer version of True Image just to see if anything is different.

thanks for confirming your use of rescue media.

[carbon_unit]

Do it whichever way works best for you.