please help reinstall OS i'm an idiot!!!

wenbo · Joined: Sep 15, 2003 Posts: 390 Location: Ontario, Canada

I am such an idiot Embarassed

My computer crashed. Sent it to my tech guy and he got it working and reinstalled the OS using the discs I burned.

I have my entire hard drive cloned on an external hard drive using Acronis True Image 10. My stupid problem is I have totally forgotten how to use the program to get everything back on my internal hard drive. What's the point of having it if I can't remember how to use it. ARG!!!!

I have a disc that I burned called Acronis Bootable Media. I think I use it to open the program and start to reinstall drive k (external) back to drive c (internal)

Is this correct????? I feel like such and idiot!

Your help will be greatly appreciated.

signed the dummy Confused

micker377 · Joined: May 27, 2005 Posts: 1012

If you have made sure that the Acronis "Drive K" is the original backed up "Drive C", yes. Is that all you have, is one drive backed up? On my XP machine, I have 5 partitions. That's why I said to be sure that "K" is "C". Just click on restore, and go get a cup of coffee!
No problem being an idiot! I have to look things up occasionally that I haven't used in a while!

Baby_Tux · Joined: Mar 06, 2007 Posts: 964

Yeah, don't feel bad about not remembering. I'm fighting TWO medical conditions that AT TIMES really messes with my memory. But it IS possible (for me anyway) to get a handle on the problem as I have a 3.85 (+/-) GPA going.

Now a for the program, I will second the statement to MAKE SURE OF THE DRIVES as ALL of these M$ programs have a tendency to rearrange the drive letters. I learned a long time ago (DOS days?) not to go by such & to make sure ALL my drives (partitions) were labeled, not just lettered. The labels DO NOT REARRANGE & are a better indicator of source & destination. But it sounds like you have the basics of the program & that the REAL confusion is which drive is which. Figure that out first & you are ready to go.

If your drives don't have a label, another way of IDing them is by size, provided they are different & you know what each one is supposed to be.

wenbo · Joined: Sep 15, 2003 Posts: 390 Location: Ontario, Canada

I think I'm screwed.

It can't see my backup tib files unless I select all files instead of backups. When I select the one I want it tells me there are no document properties available. When I select next a popup opens and tells me it is not a ATI Home archive or the file is corrupted.

I did confirm the backup after I made it and it was fine.

Is there anything I can do or am I done?

Baby_Tux · Joined: Mar 06, 2007 Posts: 964

Are the files listed as "zeroK" or some other bad sign? If so, & you don't have another copy elsewhere, then yes, you are screwed. (as far as THIS is concerned)

If not, you MAY be able to pull off parts IF you can get the program to read the file. - probably easier said than done, though. - I haven't had to try it, so not sure about how to go about it but I DO know that the program IS supposed to work with individual files. But that assumes a working backup.

I know this is probably "a day late & a $ short" but I too have had to learn the hard lessons of redundancy. - I don't think I need to go into any detail, but I will say that I recently had a "partial meltdown" of my main system here that COULD have been a lot worse but I DID end up losing my backups. It zeroed out the things. Luckily, I had copies of important stuff & was able to "rebuild" the rest.

So hope you at LEAST didn't lose ALL your stuff.

wenbo · Joined: Sep 15, 2003 Posts: 390 Location: Ontario, Canada

Baby_Tux · Joined: Mar 06, 2007 Posts: 964

Another thought, IF you DO find that those backups are corrupt, you may be able to "fix" them with a "linux based program" called TESTDISK. There is a version that runs under M$ but all the drive references & such are as they would be under linux. I used this just recently where I deleted my entire internal backup partition. (that's what happens when you multi-task with distractions)

WHAT A LIFESAVER THIS WAS!!!!

wenbo · Joined: Sep 15, 2003 Posts: 390 Location: Ontario, Canada

Will that be able to get into the external hard drive?

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1629 Location: Central FL, USA

Any tech worth his salt should be able to do the restore for you.

Acronis is not as easy to use as Ghost........which I use exclusively, but like I said,
any decent tech should be able to do the restore for you.
I know darned well, I could.

But if you're having memory problems then it's high time to start writing things down. I'm a very young 66, but I'm already starting to write notes to myself.

I have one sign at my front door , "So what have you forgotten today?"
It does prompt me to take inventory, before I leave the house.

I cross myself..... "Spectacles, testicles, billfold and watch". Laughing

Sorry I can't be of more help...... not being there.

Doc Cool

wenbo · Joined: Sep 15, 2003 Posts: 390 Location: Ontario, Canada

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1629 Location: Central FL, USA

Yeah, I know....... Acronis is supposed to be easy, but for me, I found it way too complicated. Ghost, run from DOS is way simpler.

But if you made a good Acronis backup, either you or a decent tech should be able to restore it. Give it a try.

Like I said, I don't even use Acronis, although I do have it, and I'm sure I could figure out how to restore the backup, if I had it here.

Check with a local tech and see if he can't figure it out.
It not, he's no tech at all. (Sorry about that)

The Doctor Cool

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1629 Location: Central FL, USA

OOOps! Duplicate post (deleted) Embarassed

The Doctor Cool

wenbo · Joined: Sep 15, 2003 Posts: 390 Location: Ontario, Canada

I have my techie on the way, he's gonna try and see if he can get into it. If not I guess I'm screwed.

It's the passwords that bother me most. I do have some written down but not sure if I've changed them since I wrote them down last time. I know DUMB

Baby_Tux · Joined: Mar 06, 2007 Posts: 964

micker377 · Joined: May 27, 2005 Posts: 1012

Just curious: have you made any OS changes between your current Setup, and your backups? This comes from an article on how to use Acronis files backed up with XP onto Win 7. It probably doesn't apply, but do you know exactly what your "disc that I burned" had on them? How old was that "burned disc"?

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1629 Location: Central FL, USA

Passwords? What passwords?

I hate those things and almost NEVER use them, at least on anything I create.

Did you put a password on your Acronis backup Image File ?

Doc Cool

wenbo · Joined: Sep 15, 2003 Posts: 390 Location: Ontario, Canada

First no I did not make any changes to the OS so that's not the issue.

Second, it's the passwords stored in Roboform for my banking, ebay, paypal etc that I'm concerned about. I do have some written down but worried I may have changed some and forgot to write the new ones down.

wenbo · Joined: Sep 15, 2003 Posts: 390 Location: Ontario, Canada

Well my tech guy has tried everything and keeps getting the same answer that the files are corrupted.

He is trying to do a recovery now to see if he can find anything on my HD. Hopefully he can find what is important to me.

Thanks for all the input.

hulland · Joined: Dec 11, 2002 Posts: 14

I have used Acronis for many years as it is the fastest and ( more or less) the easiest. However I have found that nearly all these "imaging" apps WILL malfunction when you really NEED them ( IE after a crash or non-start episode)

Even Acronis images ( stored on other volumes / drives) have REFUSED to open after a BAD crash. Techies have advised me on 3 separate occasions that the M.B.R. was corrupted and it seems that in this situation, no matter if the image has been verified it cannot be used as restore. I have even gone back in via the recovery disc, but to no avail ( sorry - just my experiences)

I have never had this problem with off-the-pc-images ( such as burnt to CD/s and /or DVD's.) Perhaps that is the lesson?

Also a local Tech guy ( been in IT for 40+ years) has the opinion that if you create any of these so-called "safe zones" they are equally likely to be corrupted due to a bad crash ( example bad earth on pc chassis etc etc etc ) Just my few Euro's worth. So--save it to a disc--NOT a disk !

drwho07 · Joined: Nov 29, 2007 Posts: 1629 Location: Central FL, USA

I have read a forum dedicated to Ghost (pretty much) and I'm appalled by the number of people who want everything to work Automatically.

Ghost, for instance, can be set up to run from a command line, with switches set to do everything including name the output file.

BUT, if you make two files with the same name, the second one will overwrite and corrupt the first one, unless saved to totally different locations.

With Ghost, I can never loose a file, even one I deleted off of the HD ten years ago.
Because I still have those old backup CD's / DVD's etc.

I don't have to restore the whole backup to find an OLD file. I just run the "Ghost Explorer" program and open up the old backup, find and restore the one file.

Every time I decide to clean out "MY Documents" or some other data folder
I do a Ghost backup first...... then if I delete something by accident, I can go back into my backup Image and restore that file.

For safety sake, I always Name each backup file with a distinctive name, like
"XP110508.gho".
Since the name of the backup includes the date and which HD I'm backing up (in this case, my XP drive, backed up on 11/05/08 ), no two backup files will ever have the same name and be overwritten by mistake.

I find that whenever someone is having a problem running Ghost, it's usually because they are not setting it up correctly before running it.
Also, very important, Ghost was originally written to be run from a DOS boot disk and NOT from within Windows. That change, the GUI, was done by Symantec. (Another program that they have screwed up.)
Again, I'll say it again, when Ghost is set up and run correctly it's 100% reliable.

If you do a backup as "Partition to Image" the entire boot sector is NOT recorded. Only when you do a "Disk to Image" backup, is the entire boot sector recorded in the image.
Only a "Disk Image" can be restored to a NEW hard drive.
(unless, that HD is formatted first, with the appropriate format)

Be careful when backing up Win-7. It uses a different NTFS structure than XP and Vista. Go figure!

So be sure that you get at least ONE "Disk to Image" backup, of any new OS install, so you get the entire boot sector.

Cheers Mates!
The Doctor Cool