I recently had a system with XP Pro on it have the hard drive go south on me. I thought no sweat I had a Bounceback cloned hard drive I could just pop in and be up and going in no time. I have used Bounceback for a couple of years and I have easily restored lost files. This was the first time I tried using it for the claimed clone feature. Supposedly on your first backup of your c: drive you can identify that you want that backup to be a bootable copy of the c: drive. Well, I had done that and guess what didn’t work. Shame on me, all these years using Bounceback and I assumed(you know what that makes me) it worked without testing the main feature I purchased it for. Peeved would be the kindest thing I could say.
Now I have moved that specific computer from office to home, three years ago and have no clue where the XP cd and key for that system is. I know, I should practice what I preach but I hadn’t planned on selling the business (got a good offer) and it was a fast transition. Luckily when I discovered that my CD and key were in limbo land I used Magic Jelly Bean key finder to pull my key code off of the hard drive. So I am not totally stupid just annoyed that my proactive use of BounceBack software turned out to be not so proactive. I was able to get the defective hard drive up and running, deleted a bunch of stuff and did two new BounceBack backups and neither of them booted either.
So I have just tracked down Acronis which my brother, who moved to consultant land when I sold my business, uses. He prefers version 11 over the more recent version and he has tested it thoroughly for creating a bootable clone replacement drive. I will post here if it actually works for me.
As far as BounceBack is concerned, I’m disappointed. I have liked it’s file restore and thought it was my fail safe. I was wrong. BTW I am cognizant that I may be doing something wrong with the software, I am fallible (gasp) but I am telling you what I experience and I am at least reasonably competent. Since I first wrote this I have tried another Bounce Back clone drive, it did boot up but since I no longer have the system, I got MS errors and I don’t know if I could work them out or not. So in all fairness, it is possible that BB does work. I’m still going to try Acronis and will let you know how that fares.
Now I have moved that specific computer from office to home, three years ago and have no clue where the XP cd and key for that system is. I know, I should practice what I preach but I hadn’t planned on selling the business (got a good offer) and it was a fast transition. Luckily when I discovered that my CD and key were in limbo land I used Magic Jelly Bean key finder to pull my key code off of the hard drive. So I am not totally stupid just annoyed that my proactive use of BounceBack software turned out to be not so proactive. I was able to get the defective hard drive up and running, deleted a bunch of stuff and did two new BounceBack backups and neither of them booted either.
So I have just tracked down Acronis which my brother, who moved to consultant land when I sold my business, uses. He prefers version 11 over the more recent version and he has tested it thoroughly for creating a bootable clone replacement drive. I will post here if it actually works for me.
As far as BounceBack is concerned, I’m disappointed. I have liked it’s file restore and thought it was my fail safe. I was wrong. BTW I am cognizant that I may be doing something wrong with the software, I am fallible (gasp) but I am telling you what I experience and I am at least reasonably competent. Since I first wrote this I have tried another Bounce Back clone drive, it did boot up but since I no longer have the system, I got MS errors and I don’t know if I could work them out or not. So in all fairness, it is possible that BB does work. I’m still going to try Acronis and will let you know how that fares.
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