Making system/file back up with Acronis True Image Home 11

thor

That sounds like archiving. I want to clone by keeping the partitions as they are but just putting them on another larger drive so that they can all be on the one disk.
The partitions should still have the same lettering(or would they?) so that the boot.ini can be left as it is sinnce it will still know where everything is.
Am I barking up the wrong tree here?

basmic

I'm going to go completely against the grain here, based on my own exeprience.

I've tried a few pieces of backup software, and Acronis was not flexible enough for me. You see I have three partitions - two on my 400gb harddrive, and one on my 250gb harddrive. Each partition has a drive letter, C: and E:. Not everything on each drive needs to be backed up, just the files which hold information - ie: My Documents, favourites, etc.

I have a USB external harddrive, something I highly recommend you get. All I do, is create some folders on it, and copy the respective files from the my computer to the external harddrive.

You might like to keep in mind, that DVD or CD media can fail - not to mention being slow to backup to, and very bulky. Verbatim is a good make, don't get me wrong - but if you bought a good brand of an external harddrive (I just bought a USB enclosure, and use a Western Digital harddrive), and only kept it powered on when you needed to backup - then I can't see a problem.

Picture me doing a monthly backup, to DVD - I don't like the idea of tubs of DVDs!

All I do with my external harddrive is power it up, plug it in via the USB port, copy the files across, unplug the USB lead and power and put it back into "storage" (in my case, a rarely used cupboard) until next time.

Whenever I need to recover a file from the backup drive, the sequence is nearly identical. Setup the drive, copy the files I need, unplug drive - much quicker than fumbling around with more than couple dozen of DVDs!!

basmic

loaner wrote: »

I think that's what a lot of people do, it doesn't cope with various failure scenarios (virus for example) which is why imaging, and at least one DVD image copy of your windows installation and crucial data are a good idea.

I suppose maybe copying your important files to DVD every 6 months isn't a bad idea - but personally, I wouldn't bother with the hassle any more, after discovering how easy a USB harddrive is to use.:beer:

Antispam

Acronis is flexible you can backup documents/picture not just OS. You can also do sequential backup which only back up latest files

thor

loaner wrote: »

well you have 5 partitions, too many for one disk without a boot manager.

Boot.ini entries look like

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)

so you will have to change the disk numbers, and partition numbers, even then, it might be tricky.

You would be cloning partitions instead of disks, not sure what you mean by archiving.

By archiving I meant saving the lot in one big compressed file.
Well it sounds like that it may be too much hassle to turn my dual boot 2 drive system into a dual boot single drive system. I guess I will be able to clone each drive separately so that they can be replaced should one of them fail though. It is going to be a pain buying 2 disks.

basmic

thor wrote: »

By archiving I meant saving the lot in one big compressed file.
Well it sounds like that it may be too much hassle to turn my dual boot 2 drive system into a dual boot single drive system. I guess I will be able to clone each drive separately so that they can be replaced should one of them fail though. It is going to be a pain buying 2 disks.

The last time I archived my backup into one several 4.37gb files (to put each file on CD), I used Acronis - little did I know it uses ZIP format, which handles large files (ie: file sizes in excess of 2gb) rather badly. I think it split my files into 2gb chunks, and I had to patch them together! :eek: