Snacko Posted October 13, 2010 Share Posted October 13, 2010 Ok, I just bought a small laptop yesterday. I was looking at Netbooks and saw this really nice little Toshibia Satellite T215 that had a bigger HD and more memory (2gig) much more video memory (800+meg). All for $469. It has a way to restore it to stock using a separate partition on the hard drive I think. But I want to use my Acronis to make a Backup image after I have it setup the way that I want. And I want to be able to restore from a bootup using another disk on my network, or external hd. The bios has options to boot from the hd, usb, lan, fdd. The laptop also has a eSata port on it. So, I was thinking I could for a USB stick to boot with Acronis to restore my image. My USB stick is only 8gig, and my backup will be 20gig uncompressed. (Not sure how big if I compress it) Maybe I can access the image from the external hard drive using esata or another usb. Or, is there some way to use the LAN to access the backup file from an Acronis boot? Is there any best practiced way of doing this? Is the booting from LAN useful, or what is that for? I tried to boot from LAN but it said there was no boot file. I don't know anything about that. Maybe it is for network engineers who setup lot's of pcs and not the way to go? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2. Administrators fruitbat Posted October 13, 2010 2. Administrators Share Posted October 13, 2010 get a hard drive caddie, stick in any spare internal hard drive you have, and plug into laptop via usb. plenty here on display, http://www.ebuyer.com/store/Components/cat/Hard-Drive-Accessories/subcat/Caddies-&-Enclosures now you've got a big memorystick! I just got myself one that supports up to 1 terabyte sataII hard drives, and can be connected either by usb, firewire, and even better eSATA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snacko Posted October 13, 2010 Author Share Posted October 13, 2010 Thanks Fruit. I do already have an External HD. I guess the main thing I'm wondering about are my boot options to restore it. I don't know how to book from a LAN, or from my External HD. So, all I can think of is to boot from a formatted USB with Acronis on it. Then, try and access the external drive from there. I also am curious about booting from a LAN. And also how access works on a LAN from a DOS or Acronis boot? If I boot from a USB with DOS or Acronis, how does the Lan come into play? Do I have to use PC names to access drives? Like: \\AndysPC\C I think just doing it will answer some questions, but I just thought I would ask some techies first. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2. Administrators fruitbat Posted October 13, 2010 2. Administrators Share Posted October 13, 2010 i booted from my caddie by plugging it in via usb, and then booting from usb device in bios. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1. DDz Quorum B16Enk Posted October 14, 2010 1. DDz Quorum Share Posted October 14, 2010 LAN boot requires a bootp server, either a Linux box that will tftp a boot image or a Windows server configured to do the same. For your purposes a bootp server is over kill, and I would suggest using the Acronis boot tool, you will need to set a share up on your main PC. So long as Acronis supports the net books LAN device you will be able to upload an image to the share you created above, once you have mapped the drive. Not used Acronis this way personally but I have with Norton Ghost. By far the easiest and quickest method, however, is to boot off an Acronis bootable USB drive with a large USB drive also attached, and drop the image that way. Quicker than across a network with packet over head Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snacko Posted October 14, 2010 Author Share Posted October 14, 2010 Hmm.. Well I think they way I am going to try and do this is to make my usb stick bootable. Windows only gives an option to format it, not make it a boot disk. But I found some cmd instructions on using a tool called diskpart to do it, so now it is boots and runs Acronis. Next is to make a backup, verify it, and copy it to my External hard drive. Then test restoring to make sure it all works. Thanks for the info guys. I've never done this without multiple hard drives and a cd before. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snacko Posted October 15, 2010 Author Share Posted October 15, 2010 Well, the first laptop that I bought I had to return because the touchpad buttons simply would not work. So, I just got another one and it seems to work fine except for this stupid eSata/USB combo port. I wanted to plug in my LaCie 1T external drive to do my Acronis Image backup and restore. But the laptop will not see that drive using eSata at all. USB works fine... But I plug in the eSata and boot up and get nothing. And it looks to me like the eSata plug does not go in all the way. This is my first time using an eSata/USB Combo port, so I don't know how each connection should look. But my eSata plug goes in all the way on the front and back ports on my desktop, and also in the external drive, but will not go in more than 1/3 of the way in this stupid eSata/USB combo port. As you can see below. The toshiba laptop forums were not much help. One guy said that was problem how it plugs in. I asked on the Toshiba forums if this was plugged in correctly and if an eSata/USB combo port needed a different kind of plug? The answer that I got from one guy just said it look ok, and no, there is no special plug. So, all I can assume is that the eSata simply does not work. It is enabled in the bios and has that ACHI option for hotswapping turned on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2. Administrators Jabo Posted October 15, 2010 2. Administrators Share Posted October 15, 2010 Doesn't look to good to me Snacko m8, but I know a lot of the laptops we sell are going that way. not tried an eSATA connection with any of them yet, but I'll have a check at work tomorrow and report back Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snacko Posted October 15, 2010 Author Share Posted October 15, 2010 Thanks, I'd appriciate that. It is so loose that if I just move the cord 2 feet from the plug about 1/2 inch it starts to come loose. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2. Administrators Jabo Posted October 15, 2010 2. Administrators Share Posted October 15, 2010 Yeah, not good for certain if it's that loose. Jabo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blairgowrie Posted October 16, 2010 Share Posted October 16, 2010 Sorry to highjack your thread Snack but I have a question about Acronis. If one does a full backup to an external drive, do you then do a windows XP reformat on the hard drive? When you do the backup from Acronis, I assume this also has Windows XP in the back up? Does the backup restore overwrite the operating system? Many thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snacko Posted October 16, 2010 Author Share Posted October 16, 2010 When you restore from an Acronis or Norton Ghost backup image it overwrites the entire partition. No format is necessary. Everything on that drive is lost and the restored image takes it place. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1. DDz Quorum B16Enk Posted October 16, 2010 1. DDz Quorum Share Posted October 16, 2010 And of course you can mount the image as a virtual drive, to restore individual files/folders. eSATA cables are different Snacko, and the dual ports are odd. You don't happen to have a BIOS setting to turn eSATA on/off do you? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snacko Posted October 16, 2010 Author Share Posted October 16, 2010 Yes, there is an option in the bios and it is enabled. I am going to take this back to the computer store to check it out. They have a tech lab there and I can test other eSATA plugs and buy a new one if I need to. Nobody on the Toshiba forums has posted a problem like this, so I am not sure what is going on. But that plug is certainly not in the port very good at all.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blairgowrie Posted October 16, 2010 Share Posted October 16, 2010 When you restore from an Acronis or Norton Ghost backup image it overwrites the entire partition. No format is necessary. Everything on that drive is lost and the restored image takes it place. Thanks Snack, I wondered if that was how it happened. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snacko Posted October 16, 2010 Author Share Posted October 16, 2010 Yea Jim, Acronis is not like a normal 'file backup' of your system, which restores individual files over the current system. An Acronis Backup Image has everything, even the OS in it. Like Roger said, there is an option to 'Mount' the backed up Image. Once that is done, you will see it as another drive letter in your system, and you can copy individual stuff out of it. But when you are restoring the entire image, it overwrites the entire partition, so you lose what's on it. I like Acronis, but it can be a headache sometimes. Now, when I am trying to get it to do a Restore on my new laptop it locks up when trying to Analyze my current hard drive/partitions. I'm doing a full chkdisk now to see if its ok. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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