Re: New workstations - modern image backups

My first suggestion is to upgrade Acronis. A single license is only $50
for new or $30 for the upgrade according to their site. They have other
options as well.

Second, set the BIOS to boot off USB then DVD then hard drive second and
leave it. Unless you suspect users will attempt to boot off their own
media this makes it a set & forget thing.

Third, if you do upgrade Acronis (or use some other boot-based backup),
look in to using a USB thumb drive instead of DVD. They're generally more
reliable and faster.

You may be stumbling upon one of these issues:
1. The version of NTFS on the new PC may include features Acronis doesn't
recognize due to it's age. While the major version of NTFS hasn't really
changed much, some underlying things about the way Windows does things has
changed.
2. When hard drives larger than 2TB appeared, there was an industry move to
a 4K sector from the old 512B. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Format. Perhaps your Acronis was
released before Advanced Format became the norm.

As to other backup options, do you have a Windows Small Business Server,
Window Home Server, or Windows Server Essentials? Those editions come with
a free workstation backup agent. No downtime or rebooting required for
backups & you can restore individual files or entire machines.



On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 7:35 AM, Jeff Crosby <jlcrosby@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

All,

We've got 4 XP workstations that are being replaced one at a time, monthly,
before next April. I just installed the first.

In the past (and now) we have been using Acronis True Image to make
periodic backup images of hard drives onto external USB drives for disaster
recovery purposes. This new workstation is different somehow.

I went into the BIOS, which is completely new looking to me. (It's been a
while since we bought a new workstation.) I changed the boot order so the
workstation would boot from DVD first. Put in the bootable DVD and Acronis
loaded up.

When I tried to do a copy of the hard drive in Acronis, it says it can't
read from (or can't find) track 0 of the hard drive. I changed the boot
order back and, thankfully, it boots from the hard drive properly.

Disk Management in Windows shows the hard drive has a 100mb partition in
front of the Windows partition. I'm assuming that is what is causing fits
for Acronis, but don't know for sure. The version of Acronis is from
/several/ years back.

Is there an easier, better way to make images of hard drives for disaster
recovery purposes these days? Is there anything built in to Win7? What's
the best, inexpensive way to do this?

If we had a server with VMWare (a possibility in a couple of months), we
could probably do a physical-to-virtual periodically and use that. But
that's months away at a minimum, if we do it.

Thanks.

--
Jeff Crosby
VP Information Systems
UniPro FoodService/Dilgard
P.O. Box 13369
Ft. Wayne, IN 46868-3369
260-422-7531
www.dilgardfoods.com

The opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily the opinion of my
company. Unless I say so.
--
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