2009-09-26 #1

Backup Dell mini 10 Using True Image 11 Home

I felt the need to backup my Dell mini 10 before installing another OS. Being owner of a True Image 11 installation on my old machine, I gave it a try.

1. I prepared a Kingston USB stick to boot from (using the True Image rescue media builder), but had no success.
   For whatever reason I tried the "HP Drive Key Boot Utility" (google for it) and did it work the USB stick. After that, I had rescue media builder do its job once more.
2. Dell mini booted from the USB stick (Check the "Legacy USB support" and the "Boot options" of the Dell mini - accessible by pressing F2 on startup).
3. True Image Home 11 did not recognize the internal HDD of the Dell mini when loaded as full version (incl. USB/SATA Support). I tried to change the kernel parameters (F11: acpi=off noapic), but that did not help at all. This might work with other versions of TI, so give it a try.
4. True Image recognized the internal HDD only, if I selected the safe mode start of True Image - but then I could not use an external USB HD to backup to. So I took an old USB HD and followed the instructions at http://www.wilderssecurity.com/supportfiles/acronis_bootable_usb_hd.pdf . In short, this guides you to backup the USB drive with True Image to a .tib file and restore it to the USB HD. Afterwards the leftover space on the USB HD can be formatted as primary NTFS partition to work as the storage drive.
5. So with the USB drive loaded with the True Image rescue system and having space for my backup, I booted into TI safe mode now using that USB drive instead of the USB stick.
6. Finally I could now backup my internal HDD to the USB drive's storage partition. As this method (safe boot) does not allow you to use USB 2 speed, the backup procedure will take ages (I started it up 3 hours ago and it tells me, I have 16 to go...).