[HOW-TO]Acronis-Bootable CD/DVD w/ image included

[Zxian]

How to create a CD/DVD based image of your hard drive with Acronis True Image

Rev 1.1

I was digging around on the Acronis website and couldn't find what I wanted. Acronis has the ability to write the image to a CD/DVD if you have UDF packet writing support (Nero InCD or the like). But that CD/DVD isn't bootable. I wanted a bootable CD/DVD with the image of my hard drive on it. That way, if I had to replace the hard drive in my computer, I could simply pop in the CD/DVD and be back to everything exactly the way I wanted it.

Foreword

If you are going to be creating your backup image on CD-R's, follow the blue text. If you're going to use DVD-R's, follow the green text.

What you'll need

• Acronis True Image
  
• UltraISO (Or other image editing software)
  
• CD/DVD Burning software (if your image editing software doesn't support burning)
  
• Free space on your hard drive equal in size to your hard drive image
  
• Some blank media (CD-RW, DVD-RW recommended)
  
• Some time (30mins-1hr)
  

How-to

• Open Acronis True Image
  
• Create image of the partition you want to back up (most likely your system partition) and save it to a location on your hard drive. Select Maximum Compression to ensure that the image fits on the disc. Let's call it C:\Backup.tib. Acronis will complain that it's not safe... blah blah blah.
  
• At the Image Archiving Splitting screen, select Fixed Size. In the box enter 650MB/4GB
  
• Grab a cup of coffee or a beer or something... come back 10-20 mins later
  
• Click on Create Bootable Rescue Media. Insert blank CD-R/RW (do not remove after CD is created)
  
• Exit Acronis True Image
  

• Open UltraISO
  
• Go to Tools->Make CD/DVD Image. Let's save this as C:\Acronis.iso
  
• Browse to C:\Acronis.iso and open it
  
• Right click on the Recovery Manager folder and select Hide/Unhide
  
• Rename the CD Label to ACRONIS
  
• Drag the BackupX.tib file to the upper panel to add it to the image (where X is the highest number)
  
• Save this as Acronis_backup0.iso
  
• Create a new image. Repeat the above 3 steps, each time using a different Image archive file and saving to a new .iso file. Name each .iso file with the corresponding number of the .tib file it contains
  
• Burn all of the ISO files with your favorite CD burning program (or UltraISO). Be sure to label them in the order that they have the image archives. I call the CD/DVD with the bootloader Disc0, and then each disc with the number of the archive file that's on it.
  

To restore the image

• Insert Disc 0 into your optical drive and set your BIOS to boot from this drive
  
• Boot into Acronis True Image (full version)
  
• Click on Restore Image
  
• When asked to select the Image Archive, browse to the CD/DVD drive and select BackupX.tib (X=some number)
  
• Continue through the menus, until you get to press the Proceed Button. Take out Disc0 and insert Disc1. Click Proceed.
  
• When Acronis needs the next volume, it will give you an error about opening the file. Simply enter the CD/DVD with the corresponding image that it's asking for and click "Retry". When it asks for the last Volume, insert Disc0.
  
• You're done!
  

Final Notes

I would recommend uninstalling games before creating the image. Most games today are very large and would cause the image to be too large for even a dual-layer DVD. It would probably be best if you install all your core programs, configure them to your needs, and then follow the guide. You do not need to worry about disabling your pagefile or the hibernation file (if you use them), as Acronis will automatically detect them and not include the data within them in the image.

I keep all my documents and files on other partitions, so my system drive contains only Windows and my programs. With all the programs that I use (Acrobat, Photoshop, Office, MathCad... not "small" by any means), my system partition on my laptop is just over 5GB (without pagefile or hibernation file - those are excluded by Acronis in the image). The image (max compression) took about 20 minutes to create and came out at 2.7GB. This will easily fit on a single-layer DVD, and for those of us with more programs or files, there are always dual-layer DVDs.

Some comparison

I created a VM with a vanilla XP install to test all this out. All of my images were run from my 24x CD-RW/DVD drive, so there's no unfair advantage of being run from the hard drive. I used Acronis True Image 8.0.912 and UltraISO 7.6.2 to follow the guide.

The image created by Acronis came out to 458MB.

With the Acronis bootloader, it's 480MB.

The XP CD that I used to install XP was 576MB, created with nLite, all hotfixes integrated and cab files set to high compression.

To restore the image took 5 minutes. To install took about 20 minutes.

Hope this is helpful to everyone! I'm sure that you could emulate this with Norton Ghost if you've got that instead. If you have any comments or suggestions, let me know.

Changelog

V1.1 - 2005-10-05 (16:26) - Added ability to span multiple CDs/DVDs, Instructions to Restore spanned Image

V1.0 - 2005-10-05 (11:14) - First revision

Edited October 6, 2005 by Zxian

[Guest boomboom]

Ingenious!

I've struggled with this same problem for some time, but never had the time or patience to solve it entirely.

When I tried to copy the tib-file into the root of the iso with UltraISO, I ended up with Acronis complaining about a corrupted image. I figured it had to do with the filesize being more than 2gb, but I never got around to test it with segmented images.

This looks like it probably will solve my problem, so you just made my day

[trickytwista]

hey man...nice bit of info there........cheers...i guess its my round for the beers

[Zxian]

When I tried to copy the tib-file into the root of the iso with UltraISO, I ended up with Acronis complaining about a corrupted image. I figured it had to do with the filesize being more than 2gb, but I never got around to test it with segmented images.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hmm... I haven't run into that problem myself, but I can do a bit more testing to see if there's a work around. Splitting the image archive to files that are a maximum of 2GB would probably solve your problem. I don't remember if CDs/DVDs have a maximum file size...*searches*

[Zxian]

Update to V1.1!!!

Added instructions on how to create and restore from spanned image.

From what I've read, data DVDs have a maximum file size of 4GB, so that's what I included in the guide. If this is incorrect, let me know and I'll update the guide.

[albator]

Are you sure that there not a simple way ? I had once create the media rescue cd, and then just open session with nero and add my .tib image file, and everything was woking fine. Or just use the cd, I never install Acronis true image and diskdirector, I just use the bootable cd.

I dont understand what you are trying to do , please explain.

And, I suggest not desinstall game, Just install you game on another partition, for example d:, just use registry export feature to be sure they will be useable after reinstalling windows (some games work without any reg entries, but just to be sure).

Your guide seem to be based on very slow pc time, Creating a image of my C: drive is taking 1 min and restoring itr only 45 sec.

I suspect that your paging file is on c:drive, wich is bad ! You dont want to backup paging file, so if you put it on another partition you will save a lot of time... You should not wait 20min...

Edited October 6, 2005 by albator

[Jeremy]

Some people...

Albator, I don't think it's going to make a "world of difference" in the "real world" scenario.

Edited October 6, 2005 by Jeremy

[Zxian]

Are you sure that there not a simple way ? I had once create the media rescue cd, and then just open session with nero and add my .tib image file, and everything was woking fine. Or just use the cd, I never install Acronis true image and diskdirector, I just use the bootable cd.

I don't really like the idea of a Multisession disc because more space is taken up by the extra session. This can be anywhere from 20 to 50MB. With my method, if you need to make the image on CDs, you don't run the risk of the last image file not fitting along with the Rescue CD contents.

And, I suggest not desinstall game, Just install you game on another partition, for example d:, just use registry export feature to be sure they will be useable after reinstalling windows (some games work without any reg entries, but just to be sure).

I think I get what you're saying...

Install the game to D: and use a program like RegShot to capture the registry entries that are made by the installer. That way, when you re-install Windows, simply import the reg file and the game will work again? I've never tried this... I don't game much...

Your guide seem to be based on very slow pc time, Creating a image of my C: drive is taking 1 min and restoring itr only 45 sec.

I suspect that your paging file is on c:drive, wich is bad ! You dont want to backup paging file, so if you put it on another partition you will save a lot of time... You should not wait 20min...

I don't think that my computer is "slow" by any means.

Pentium-M 1.4GHz (approximately equivalent to P4 2.4GHz)

1GB PC2700 DDR RAM

80GB 5400RPM 8MB HD

Just for comparison... how much stuff do you have on your C drive? People who have been here for a while know that you use nLite and like to use small and standalone programs as much as possible...

I've got 5GB of installed programs which results in a 2.7GB image after 20 minutes. Even 7-zip or WinRAR would take a while to give you the same kind of compression ratio.

For the record, Acronis does not make a full backup of the data contained in the pagefile or the hibernation file. You gain absolutely nothing by disabling these in terms of time or space before creating the image. In fact... I just ran Acronis again in my VM, once with a 768MB pagefile and once without.

With pagefile: 659,318 KB

Without pagefile: 659,389 KB

I know we're talking about KB here, but still, I think you can see my point.

As for the pagefile on C: being bad... I'll keep it short. I have one hard drive (it's a laptop after all). You only gain performance by moving the pagefile to a drive that is on a different IDE channel than your system drive. I don't have this option, so there's no point whatsoever for me to put the pagefile on another partition on my hard drive.

Edited October 6, 2005 by Zxian

[albator]

@Zxian

good, that mean that acronis finaly update their program, I had contact the company a long ago, and suggest that, The teck actually answer me that this feature was coming...

For the registry, I dont talk about a complete snapshot, just the a correct branch, you dont need any program to do that just use (as I said) the export feature in regedit.

It seem that we are not the same type of pc users. I understand you guide now. You need more than 1 cd to to a acronis backup. ( my image is takin 310 meg only.)

For the time to do a backup, You have a laptop with a 5400 rmp Hd and I have desktop with a 10000 rpm

sata HD, So I think it explain a lot.

Ps: you answer was really good.

Edited October 6, 2005 by albator

[Zxian]

For the registry, I dont talk about a complete snapshot, just the a correct branch, you dont need any program to do that just use (as I said) the export feature in regedit.

Do most games only put registry entries in one branch? With RegShot, you can compare the before and after registries and create a file with the differences. This will also allow you to uninstall the game afterwards as well having reinstalled Windows, if you wish.

It seem that we are not the same type of pc users. I understand you guide now. You need more than 1 cd to to a acronis backup. ( my image is takin 310 meg only.)

For the time to do a backup, You have a laptop with a 5400 rmp Hd and I have desktop with a 10000 rpm

sata HD, So I think it explain a lot.

20 mins * 5400RPM/10000RPM * 310MB/2764MB = 1.2 mins... that makes sense...

Ps: you answer was really good.

Thank you.