Acronis Disk Director v.11 versus Acronis True Image 2014

[BonzaiDuck]

I've had Disk Director installed on my system since it was built in 2011. I used it to make the self-booting CD for cloning, and it seems that this CD can be used on any system in the house, or that I don't need DD installed on my system to use the CD.

The Egg gave me a deal which bundled a WD blue 500GB HDD with the retail box/license for Acronis True Image 2014. Even though the blue drive is sort of low-end, I use these things for backup, and for something like $55, it was a good deal, too.

So now I've cleaned up my WHS 2011 server and clients so I should be able to rely on the system backup feature of the server. But I like "fallback" solutions.

Does True Image contain the same cloning feature as Acronis Disk Director? Choices about which Win 7 computer to install True Image, or as a machine to move the Disk Director depends on the answer. What am I missing? Or does any cloning feature of True Image miss something that Director has?

UPDATE w MORE PRESSING QUESTION TO THOSE WHO KNOW: I'm looking at the retail box for True Image 2014, and happy to see (a) it's a 3-PC license and (b) it works on WHS 2011 as well as Win 7.

I just ordered a 60GB SATA-III SSD. The server box has a 300 GB WD "blue" drive as the boot disk. It was the smallest I could find in my arsenal at the time. It's formatted into a 60GB and a 240GB partition, the smaller being the system/boot volume. I chose not to include the larger volume in my drive pool.

Looking at the PDF user's guide online for True Image, it notes that I cannot clone a logical volume, but must clone the entire disk. Keeping in mind that the SSD is only 60GB, my previous experience with Disk Director, Partition Magic and other programs suggests that I should be able to shrink logical volumes to fit. In fact, I'd simply like to delete the 240GB volume before the cloning takes place.

Am I going to have problems with this? Somebody want to outline a step-by-step process before I begin? It would be very helpful to me. The SSD arrives later this week, possibly early next week. Besides replacing the server NIC, I'd like to "knock this out" successfully in a reasonable amount of time.

Thanks.

 

[Z15CAM]

Looking at the PDF user's guide online for True Image, it notes that I cannot clone a logical volume, but must clone the entire disk.

Simple: Download the 1.32Mb DOS App called "GHOST.EXE" found free and all-over most College and University sites.

 

[Charlie98]

If you can nuke the 240GB partition, then extend the 60GB partition, I think TI'14 can accommodate you. I've never tried it that way, but as I understand it, as long as you don't have over 60GB (for example, in your case) of data it can clone it over.

TBH, I don't know what DD has over standard TI... TI is pretty damned comprehensive.

Just FYI, you can download a free, limited function copy of TI'13 from WD and use it if you have a WD drive in the system running TI. I use it in my HTPC... it's not really missing very many features of the full-on retail copy of TI'13, so it's a pretty good deal if you don't want to use one of your license copies.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

If you can nuke the 240GB partition, then extend the 60GB partition, I think TI'14 can accommodate you. I've never tried it that way, but as I understand it, as long as you don't have over 60GB (for example, in your case) of data it can clone it over.

TBH, I don't know what DD has over standard TI... TI is pretty damned comprehensive.

Just FYI, you can download a free, limited function copy of TI'13 from WD and use it if you have a WD drive in the system running TI. I use it in my HTPC... it's not really missing very many features of the full-on retail copy of TI'13, so it's a pretty good deal if you don't want to use one of your license copies.

Well, think of it. . . . I've got four workstations and a server, and there are three users. The TI 2014 is a 3-pc version. I either got the license for free or the HDD for free, but either way -- in approximate terms -- I got something for free that cost about the same as the other.

But I have to say -- you've got a point there. $50+ not spent is $50+ saved. And I pretty much have nothing better to do than to think of ways to get what I want or need without spending anything. Counting through the 4 workstations and the server, four out of five systems have WD drives, and I coulda had the drive-imaging and cloning for free. I already had the cloning for free with DD v.11, except that it won't work with WHS 2011! Did I miss something, or would the free TI from WD work equally with the server box?

But it's a good feeling. Think of the neighborhood kid -- 4 or 5 years old -- walking down the street with one of those giant Hershey bars, chocolate dripping down his chin and all over his tee-shirt. I feel that way today . . . :biggrin: I bought a bunch of stuff I can use, but didn't spend a lot of money, really.

Maybe next month I'll treat myself to a pair of BitFenix Spectre Pro Green LED fans, so I can make one last tweak to my air-cooled fan-setup and trick out the case so it looks like . . . . a Klingon warship -- yeah!

You should always give yourself a lime popsicle at least once a month . . .

PS -- Anyway . . . I took the first step and deleted the 240GB partition from the drive-pool. Apparently, I'd actually included it in the pool when I set it up. Now I can just kill that partition, and TI 2014 should copy the 32GB-or-so of system files to the 60GB of the SSD. One thing at a time. First, I'm going to decommission the darn nForce g-bit NIC from the server and replace it with something for which WHS has built-in drivers. That was the sticky part of building a server from a C2D system with an NVidia chipset . . .

 

[Charlie98]

Well, what I meant by using the free version is you can try to clone the oversized partition for free without installing and registering one of the 'retail' copies.... but you have a point. The free WD version is TI'13, not '14, and therefor may not handle WHS'11... something to check on.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Well, what I meant by using the free version is you can try to clone the oversized partition for free without installing and registering one of the 'retail' copies.... but you have a point. The free WD version is TI'13, not '14, and therefor may not handle WHS'11... something to check on.

The WHS OS installation is stable, so I might not put off too long making the clone. I've got an EvID 5008 error that says my "NVidia netwk controller found an invalid IP address." Another one is an "application hang" for the "Andreas Advanced Admin Console API." That latter is in revision, so I need to find out if I can update without paying something. Actually -- three such WHS add-ins, including Stablebit.

I should have taken longer to think through using this Conroe-NVidia-680i combination for the WHS. But it looks like all the drivers I used are fully functional. I'd had this one "unknown device" bang-node in my Dev Mgr. I'd disabled it. And I figured I should really resolve it -- it was evenly likely to be something that went into the "system device" section. Made me very uncomfortable, even disabled. Well, today I ran Windows update, and then the system reported "finding" a "power-management" driver at "ASUSTek" named AMD[!!!] Cool and Quiet. It was the ACPI driver for my mobo, and now that's all copacetic.

I'm going to pop in first a Realtek "Trendnet" TEG-PCITXR PCI network card, and see if that doesn't work better. an Intel "Pro" PCI_E card is in transit. Didn't realize I had the Trendnet gbit card until after I'd placed the order for the Intel Pro.

I could even try some sort of reset as recommended for Winsock to resolve that error. All I know -- these errors don't seem to damage full functionality. The adv admin console works; the network comes up on-line and works; the backup feature and "Lights-Off" sleep-management for the whole house works.

 

[Phynaz]

Simple: Download the 1.32Mb DOS App called "GHOST.EXE" found free and all-over most College and University sites.

You're not actually telling somebody to pirate software on this forum, right?

 

[corkyg]

Acronis Disk Director and TrueImage do share a few common traits, but DD can do much more. It can add, change, or otherwise deal with partitions. TI2014 has a more up to date cloning and backup function. Both can creat bootable media which can then be used on any of your computers. That has always been the case with Acronis bootables. I have both, and they perform different functions for me.

 

[Charlie98]

Acronis Disk Director and TrueImage do share a few common traits, but DD can do much more. It can add, change, or otherwise deal with partitions.

I wondered what DD did... makes sense.

 

[corkyg]

I wondered what DD did... makes sense.

It actually does quite a lot. This clip show what you can do (left pane) when a drive is selected. It is really simp0le to use and a great companion tool to TrueImage.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

It actually does quite a lot. This clip show what you can do (left pane) when a drive is selected. It is really simp0le to use and a great companion tool to TrueImage.

No dispute there, but I discovered that even the self-booting CD you can make after installing DD v.11 won't work with WHS 2011 (or Server 2008 R2, etc.) -- only with Windows 7. I could always be mistaken, but I'm sure that's what I discovered over the last year or so -- trying to clone my WHS boot drive. TI 2014 explicitly includes WHS 2011 in its list of applicable OS's.

On the matter of "Ghost" and Western Digital Freeware -- nobody should have to pirate anything like this for mainstream use, since there are free solutions. If I'd wanted to, I might just as well have reinstalled the WHS OS to a new hard disk, reinstalled my purchased add-ins like Stablebit, and then Stablebit would have rebuilt my drivepool without a hitch.

Some folks will tell me that WHS is "orphaned." If one wanted, you'd spend some bucks to update it to Server Essentials. But I follow a sensible budget, and recoil against unnecessary upgrades when something seems to work just fine. I don't think WHS 2011 will do backups for Win 8 the way it does them for Win 7, but we're not upgrading to Win 8. I used the "Vail" v.1 version of WHS and never made any backups like that! [Now THERE was an upgrade you couldn't ignore -- a $60 OS upgraded to a $50 version.]

 

[corkyg]

Actually, for cloning, when using bootable CREATED by DD or TI, the OS source matters not. The bootable media can be opticals or flash, and the result is a Linux variant that simply sees drives and data. The OS never enters the picture.

The key is Acronis Bootable Media Build - not the original program disk.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Actually, for cloning, when using bootable CREATED by DD or TI, the OS source matters not. The bootable media can be opticals or flash, and the result is a Linux variant that simply sees drives and data. The OS never enters the picture.

The key is Acronis Bootable Media Build - not the original program disk.

Huh . . . I thought I tried that, and it threw up a "no can do" message. With the Medicare, maybe I'm starting to lose my grip . . .

 

[Charlie98]

The key is Acronis Bootable Media Build - not the original program disk.

True that...