acadiel
Keep trying - don't give up
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Bloomington, IL
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|  [Need Info] Best imaging program to image new Dell?
I have a new Dell Inspiron D630, and before I wipe the HDD and do an install of Vista Ultimate, I'd like to back up the drive.
Dell uses a funky partition scheme, where there's a Diag partition, a "Recovery" partition (Windows PE with an ImageX image), and the OS partition.
See here if you need more info:
»www.goodells.net/dellutility/partparm.htm
Will Acronis True Image 11 back up this whole partition structure? I'll just hook up a small USB HDD to the system and let it back up away. (All three partitions are 20GB). I can then verify the backup, and maybe restore the image to another USB HDD to see if it works (and then put the HDD in the system as the primary SATA drive to try booting the system.)
The older version of Ghost that I tried to use works fine with XP/2003 under BartPE, but was making corrupted images with these file systems on the Dell for some reason. So it's time for a newer program since I haven't bought a program like this in over 5 years. (I'm mainly a Mac guy, and just use Disk Utility. )
Thanks!
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MarkAW
Call me lil bratt
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join:2001-08-27
Canada
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edit:
July 23rd, @12:08PM
| Maybe these will give you some ideas on what other members think is the best imaging software.
»[Poll] Backup & Imaging Software - 2008 Member Choice Poll
»[Need] The Best Software To Make an Identical HardDrive Image Wi
»[Review] Paragon Drive Backup (disk imaging software)
Edit: Oh and i use Acronis True Image Home Verssion 9 Build 3,854 on three XP systems (2 XP Pro and 1 XP Home). 
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Indy Sabre
Sabre Rider From Indianapolis
join:2003-10-02
edit:
July 23rd, @10:42PM
| reply to acadiel
On my Dell 8300, I back up the whole disk one (this backs up all of the partitons including the Dell diagnostic partition) to an external USB. I have used TI7 and the free version 10 in maxblast / seagate disc wizard to do this.
I keep a base image of disk 1 and then regularly back up just the OS partition. If the PC's hard drive fails, I can reinatall the disk 1 image and then just the more recent C: image to a new drive (when booted from the rescue bot CD).
I back up the data partition files via a file synch utility to a folder on the USB drive. |
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coppertrail
join:2006-01-10
Cleveland, OH | reply to acadiel
I too use Acronis True Image to create an image of my C volume. I use good ole' Windows Backup on my D volume. |
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Ctrl Alt Del
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join:2002-02-18
| reply to acadiel
That is an awesome website. Thanks.
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acadiel
Keep trying - don't give up
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Bloomington, IL
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| reply to acadiel
Thanks, everyone. I got ATI 11 in today... the only quirk I've found is that in the bootable version of the program, you have to add the partitions one at a time when restoring them to resize them. (I used a smaller target drive to attempt restoration.)
Once I backed up the whole disk and MBR, I restored to a smaller drive (80GB from 500GB). The Dell Utility partition, Recovery (F8 - Repair), and OS partitions all come up just fine.
However, I tried the Dell Recovery (F8 - Repair, and then factory restore), and that doesn't seem to work right. After reformatting the OS drive and restoring it to the factory load (WIM file with ImageX - gotta love that they use MS utils now to do this), it wants to reboot. And then it goes in a reboot cycle... can't boot from anything other than the Dell Utility Partition.
I'm wondering if that's an issue with me restoring to a smaller drive. I had plenty of space for each partition. Strange.
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