Howdy.
I have used Acronis True Image for a while now to make one-for-one drive clones ad it's great. But now I want to clone 5 different drives onto one drive (5 partitions on new drive). Acronis doesn't play that way; Acronis wants to wipe out whatever is on the destination dive, literally CLONING the other. No option to retain existing data, even when I leave 1.5TB of unallocated room.

Can anybody vouch for a software? I prefer free of course, but I'll spend of to $50 I guess, if that's what it takes.

I would like to make a bootable disk with 5 selectable bootable partitions

 

I saw the bat signal...

I thought it difficult that Norton Ghost wiped before writing so I needed a partition for each image, but I've been using Acronis on THIS machine and I have 2 backups on one of my 8 partitions. Not that it matters, but one backup is Vista simply installed and activated and the other is Vista installed, activated, and with a few of my preferred programs installed. I used the Acronis version that came free with a Seagate HDD.

My position is that you must be mistaken.
I am ill-equipped to educate you because the Acronis procedure I received was so simple that I can't describe any problems I had to overcome.

 

I use both Acronis true image and Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.
This will place multiple systems on a disk including systems already present.
Max.

 

Howdy.
I have used Acronis True Image for a while now to make one-for-one drive clones ad it's great. But now I want to clone 5 different drives onto one drive (5 partitions on new drive). Acronis doesn't play that way; Acronis wants to wipe out whatever is on the destination dive, literally CLONING the other. No option to retain existing data, even when I leave 1.5TB of unallocated room.

1. Can anybody vouch for a software? I prefer free of course, but I'll spend of to $50 I guess, if that's what it takes.

2. I would like to make a bootable disk with 5 selectable bootable partitions

1. Try "Clonezilla", a Linux based cloning tool - freeware and does the job very well.

2. Try YUMI (Your Universal Multiboot Installer), another Linix based Freeware utility. Works well with multiple Linux and One Windows Boot partitions. I have'nt tried Multiple Windows Booting.

For multiple Win XP boots, one can configure the "boot.ini" file.

Ramesh

 

#12 are you using the acronis boot from cd program or installed, run-from-windows program? Acronis is one of the programs on one of the other HDDs that I wish to recover. I used up my serial on the other computer and its assigned to an email address that I don't have access to anymore. So I'm using the acronis CD's bootable program, which doesn't require registration, to do what I'm doing now. It's been a long time since I've used the Windows-based program; maybe it is more flexible. I'll try swapping that other drive into my laptop and see if I can use that acronis.

 

Scratching around for old disks...Seagate Disk Wizard on a CD.
I probably installed Acronis and copied Seagate Disk Wizard to a bootable CD.
Remove coffee cup from automatic, slide-out cup holder, place CD in cup holder, close drawer, reboot, run.

Of course, my copy demands a Seagate HDD, so I keep one that doesn't work and plug it into an IDE cable so the Disk Wizard sees a Seagate HDD and consents to work.

 

Can anybody vouch for a software? I prefer free of course, but I'll spend of to $50 I guess, if that's what it takes.

I would like to make a bootable disk with 5 selectable bootable partitions

I see it is Disk Director version 11 now, but you can get it for less than $50.00
Max.