"You can make system images. You just might not be able to restore them" - Acronis
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- My father's Windows installation stopped working (for reasons unrelated to this post).
- My father uses Acronis True Image to make full copies of his system
Obviously the one and only purpose of full system images is being able to quickly restore them back to the disk, right?
So he tried to do that.
"Sorry, can't do that. You didn't have enough free space on the partition when you made the image"
So a program that costs $50 fails at its one and only function, without any warning, if your disk happens to be full .
There is a workaround, thankfully: you mount the image and delete some files (or move them somewhere else). Still a WTF.
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And if someone wants to says "Well, he should have used X instead of Acronis", I made another thread for that:
https://what.thedailywtf.com/t/backups-what-do-you-use/50337
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E_THREAD_STILL_MISSING
<lalalalalalalallala
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I'm a slow writer
Edit: done. Do I get some badge for "pre-emptive jeffing"?
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Honestly, it'll all go to waste unless we start up a good flamewar in here. That thread is sure to continue for a few days at least, but now half the reason to reply to this one is gone.
Tl;dr: anyone have any good flamewar topics to derail this with?
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Tl;dr: anyone have any good flamewar topics to derail this with?
In the vein of the UAC flamewar, do we have anyone who strongly opposes system imaging for bullshit reasons?
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system imaging for bullshit reasons
The restored images will never be identical because the image doesn't contain the hard disk's Aura. This kind of dismissing of the Aura forms the base of potential serious data corruption issues in a far future.
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But when you repeatedly compress and restore the data with a lossy algorithm, it makes them stronger and more potent, because the disk remembers the bits of original data.
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because the disk remembers the bits of original data.
Disk Memories are potent things. That is why you always should zero-out a re-used hard drive. Before you know it you end up with your hard drive serving up the previous owner's porn instead of your pictures of grandma's birthday party.
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I'm sure images have plenty of problems. I prefer to reinstall myself if something happens, just in case.
But here is an argument:
If an OS enforced proper separation of system files and user files, you wouldn't need images, since you would be able to restore it to its exact state by simply reinstalling the OS, then copying the user files back.
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I have a pretty negative HD aura, so that would be good for me.
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mine is unquestionably quad HD.
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Honda is far better than HD.
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<Insert Hayabusa mention here>?
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Status update:
Gabe Newell - This isn't working – 00:03
— Battletoad El RevivedSo, we tried to use the workaround
- Find other Windows system, install Acronis 2011, mount image read/write
- Delete/move several files, unmount.
- This creates a new "incremental" file containing the modifications. For some reason this file is 600MB (???).
- Try to restore latest version with the changes. Same problem happens. Apparently Acronis is not seeing the changes.
- Try to "consolidate" file to see if it fixes things. You cannot consolidate images that have been modified ( ).
- Give up.
I suggested simply deleting all the files in the partition and copying them from the mounted image. Since the boot sector is identical, it should still work, right?
Edit: but before that, try Acronis 2015 (demo version) instead of 2011.
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Update 2: he can't install Acronis 2015 because Acronis 2011 is failing to uninstall.
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Update 2: he can't install Acronis 2015 because Acronis 2011 is failing to uninstall.
note to self..... never trust Acronis....... ever.
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never trust Acronis....... ever
Having seen a school server (not mine, Jinsy praise him) burnt by relying on Norton Ghost, I am no longer inclined to trust any commercial backup solution. I'm all about LVM2 snapshots and rsync and custom scripts whose failure modes I understand well enough to work around.
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anyone who strongly opposes system imaging for bullshit reasons?
I do. I think you should only image a system for good reasons.
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But when you repeatedly compress and restore the data with a lossy algorithm, it makes them stronger and more potent, because the disk remembers the bits of original data.
Halfway through I thought you were going for a joke about making the data stronger by evolving.
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But when you repeatedly compress and restore the data with a lossy algorithm, it makes them stronger and more potent
Only if you thoroughly succuss the drive between compression runs.
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succuss the drive
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I only use Acronis for full system image backups to a separate drive. Never had a problem restoring to the original system after an OS failure, occasionally had problems when attempting to restore to different hardware. The one time an old motherboard caught fire, I didn't attempt a restore to the original system. ;-)
I am aware of same-drive backup features like you're talking about, but I never elect to do that for one reason: if that drive physically fails, what good is my backup?
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I am aware of same-drive backup features like you're talking about, but I never elect to do that for one reason: if that drive physically fails, what good is my backup?
i think of same-drive backups as more "file versioning" than backups. i can go and in fsck up a file with them but i can't DR the drive with them.