Can't restore my entire HD (VISTA)

[bX510]

I backed up my entire hd onto an external. When restoring, it doesn't seem to detect the hard drive. Also, the windows back up is not in the root of the hard drive.

 

[Tarrant64]

What tool did you use to create the backup?

 

[gba]

I was just about to post that I was having the same problem. I am using Clonezilla. I backed up the boot partition of my Vista x64 HP install to an image file, but when I go to restore, Clonezilla says it does not see any images in the home folder and terminates. I am backing up to a USB external HD which is partitioned with NTFS...

thanks all.

 

[bX510]

It's a Vista feature. You can back up your entire computer, and then "restore" the back up later. Here is some info: http://www.vista4beginners.com/How-to-backup-your-data

 

[Muadib]

Originally posted by: bX510
I backed up my entire hd onto an external. When restoring, it doesn't seem to detect the hard drive. Also, the windows back up is not in the root of the hard drive.

Is it a USB external, or eSATA?

 

[bX510]

USB External.

 

[Jeff7181]

It doesn't see what hard drive? The internal hard drive you want the OS on, or the external hard drive the backup is stored on?

 

[bX510]

Originally posted by: Jeff7181
It doesn't see what hard drive? The internal hard drive you want the OS on, or the external hard drive the backup is stored on?

It doesn't detect the USB external which the backup is stored on.

 

[ginfest]

I've had this same "problem" in the past. Do a quick basic install of the OS, then restore over that.

 

[bX510]

I am using HP, so my quick install is basically a recovery. It will just recover the system to what it is now. I don't think that would help, but I guess I can try it.

 

[cparker]

What version of vista? I believe that only business and ultimate versions will do an image backup of a disk partition. FWIW I had a problem with Acronis true image 11 working with a usb drive in Vista. When I tried to access it using the Acronis boot cd that I had created it had problems with the image on the usb drive. It wouldn't verify that image and the program just hung. I then experimented with having the image on a "d" partition on my main internal drive. It worked fine and verified fine and when I really needed to restore that partition later on, I booted from the cd and restore worked. So if you somehow can't get the usb drive to work in restore you might want to copy the image onto another partition (create one if you have to) on your hard drive or just plug in a spare drive and copy the image to that one. Then you should be able to restore from the internal drive. Hope this is of help to you.

 

[Rottie]

I had same problem with external HDD with acronics true image 2009 It does back up system restore (vista hp) but wont clone or image the entire HDD to external HDD it would fail.

 

[bX510]

Originally posted by: cparker
What version of vista? I believe that only business and ultimate versions will do an image backup of a disk partition. FWIW I had a problem with Acronis true image 11 working with a usb drive in Vista. When I tried to access it using the Acronis boot cd that I had created it had problems with the image on the usb drive. It wouldn't verify that image and the program just hung. I then experimented with having the image on a "d" partition on my main internal drive. It worked fine and verified fine and when I really needed to restore that partition later on, I booted from the cd and restore worked. So if you somehow can't get the usb drive to work in restore you might want to copy the image onto another partition (create one if you have to) on your hard drive or just plug in a spare drive and copy the image to that one. Then you should be able to restore from the internal drive. Hope this is of help to you.

I'll give that a try

 

[bX510]

Are there any other ideas?