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Thread ID: 124669	2012-05-11 11:16:00	Windows Backup & Restore mystery	Jayess64 (8703)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1274668	2012-05-11 11:16:00	After some nasty experiences with failing motherboards (2 in a week) I decided to cut my losses and bought an Acer Aspire M3970 desktop from Noel Leeming. This comes with an i5-2300, 4GB DDR3 and a 1.5TB hard drive, Win 7 64-bit installed. The only fly in the ointment was that the HD was partitioned into two 750GB drives, C & D. I have always preferred to have the OS on its own partition (better still its own physical drive) separate from data & documents. So I decided to shrink C to about 180GB and put the rest into D. I blundered around thinking I knew what I was doing, whereas... , well anyway, I got the partitions sized the way I wanted them, but they were magically transformed into dynamic disks instead of basic disks. But everything worked so it seemed simpler to stay with this. So I started to install some basic software and then decided it would be a good idea to back up an image of the system to give me something to fall back on if anything went wrong. I have always used Acronis True Image to form system images, but I now found that Acronis doesn't seem to like dynamic disks - the selections for the available partitions were greyed out, with bright red labels saying "Dynamic Disk". So instead I tried Windows Backup & Restore, and it worked. I got a system image on an external drive and was a happy camper. Since Acronis was not going to be much help I then uninstalled it. When I had the system completely configured I set out to back up another image, but now when I clicked on 'Backup & Restore' in Control Panel nothing happened - just that, nothing at all. I tried to start it from the Start Menu, I even dug down into the Windows folder and double-clicked sdclt.exe, but nothing. In desperation I reinstalled Acronis, rebooted, and tried Backup & Restore again - and it worked. I was offered the choice of using Acronis or starting Windows Backup & Restore - chose B & R and created a new image. So what was going on? Presumably Windows Backup and Acronis True Image are independent applications, but apparently uninstalling Acronis clobbered Backup & Restore, while reinstalling Acronis brought it back again. So I have Acronis on my PC but can't use it for backing up, but I can't make backups without it. I can't believe that is really the case, but can anyone tell me what I am missing here?	Jayess64 (8703)
1274669	2012-05-11 19:53:00	After some nasty experiences with failing motherboards (2 in a week) I decided to cut my losses and bought an Acer Aspire M3970 desktop from Noel Leeming. Acer use ECS motherboards. They have the highest failure rate I've seen.	pctek (84)
1274670	2012-05-11 23:21:00	Acer use ECS motherboards. They have the highest failure rate I've seen. Jeez, thanks for that! A Google search on ECS gives the usual mixed bag of opinions, I'll just have to hope, I suppose. But do a Google search on "Gigabyte" & "Waiting for ME ready" and you will see what made me give up on Gigabyte. I experienced the same things described there on two successive boards, a P67 and a Z68.	Jayess64 (8703)
1274671	2012-05-11 23:44:00	Be aware that older versions of Acronis don't actually make backups of win 7 even though they say they have they don't work. It has it's own excellent backup program built in or use something like Active@ which is about $50us	gary67 (56)
1274672	2012-05-12 00:49:00	The trouble with using windows 7 for disc imaging is it only does the partition, not the disc, so the boot partition won't be restore and therefore the backup no good IF you need to restore to a fresh drive.	SolMiester (139)
1274673	2012-05-12 05:38:00	gary67: "Be aware that older versions of Acronis don't actually make backups of win 7 even though they say they have they don't work. It has it's own excellent backup program built in or use something like Active@ which is about $50us " I am using Acronis True Image 2011 which should be handling Win 7 backups correctly. After my original post I discovered that it's not correct to say that Acronis won't handle dynamic disks. It will if you use the so-called Plus-Pack that is an optional extra for True Image. When I upgraded to True Image 2011 I got the Plus-Pack installation file as a freebie and it has been sitting on my HD without being installed. I installed it last night and sure enough, the dynamic disks were sitting up wagging their tails, waiting to be backed up. Haven't tried it yet, though. >>> Solmiester: "The trouble with using windows 7 for disc imaging is it only does the partition, not the disc, so the boot partition won't be restore and therefore the backup no good IF you need to restore to a fresh drive. " I wasn't aware of that, so thanks for the heads-up.	Jayess64 (8703)
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