backup of my C drive operating system
Hi I just upgraded my desktop and have windows 7 installed, I also purchased a copy of acronis 13. I went through the steps in back up and recovery which seem reasonably easy. What I wanted to do was back up my C drive which has the operating system installed in case I have issues in the future, so I may return to the state the operating systeme was when I picked it up. I clicked on 'disk and partition back up' then a window appears with "Configure disk backup process" from there I can see my C drive ticked with also 'System reserved'. It recommends that I leave system reserved ticked so I did. From then on my destinaton is my L drive, my back scheme I change to 'FULL' and I give it a back up name, then I click back up now. It was really quick probably about 3 mins. But what I noticed was that my c drive is approx 17 gig but it backed up about 9 gigs?? Does it compress the files by any chance?? One last thing I noticed was that there is an option for disk backup option which I didnt touch, do I need to do something there because when I click there another window opens and there are more options there???? If someone can help thanks much appreciated, Sarina
Information about the additional disk options are in the manual, but most do not need to be changed. You may want to enable validation for a while (it will increase your backup time) to be sure the files can be read properly by Acronis. You could also set up email notification to have an email message sent to you about the backup job status. If I was you, I would stick with the basic backup and restore functions until you are very comfortable with them, before using any of the more advanced program features such as non-stop backup, online backup, sync, try and decide, secure zone, startup recovery manger, etc. These features are not needed for basic system protection. They work well for some folks, and can be problematic for others. You do not need to sign in to your Acronis account from within the program to use the basic features. If you have plenty of space on your backup destination drive, you should consider setting up a scheduled custom backup plan using either differentials or incrementals as per Grover's guide.
Be sure to create the Acronis Rescue Media either on a CD/DVD or USB flash drive (or both) to be able to restore/recover your system in the case of an emergency. After creation, be sure to try and boot the computer to the Rescue Media to be certain it boots and runs the Acronis rescue environment.
James
I have a question along that line - as a new user I setup a regimen to backup one of my three partitions (my C:) to a NAS. I setup with no compression (for faster backup) and incremental. Scheduled it to run nightly. Then started the backup manually during the day. The scheduled backup started at night and it appears both backups are the same size on the NAS at 124 gb each. Question; 1) does a partition or disk back ignore incremental and always produce a full backup or did I circumvent incremntal when I started it manually and 2) before I restore will I need to partition the disk with three partitions or will the restoral produce one C: partition, then I split it into three partitions before adding data partitions? Thanks!
Setting up to no compression will not provide you with a time advantage because ATI adds check data to the backup data. You should use normal compression.
You are not the first user having issues with a backup to NAS. It looks like ATI doesn't see the existing backup on the NAS and therefore creates a new full backup.
try this:
a) create a new backup task to a local disk, just to make sure the incremental task would work then,
b) if you backup to the NAS directly, try to use a Windows share you set up from the NAS instead, or create a mapped disk to the NAS and use this as the destination
If a and b work, you have a problem with the way ATI authenticates to the NAS,
if a works, but b doesn't, you probably have an username/password or privilege setup issue on the NAS. Make sure that the same username has full access privileges to the NAS.
Scott,
In addition to what Pat has suggested, take a look at your backup settings for this task. In the cleanup options, there is an option to keep the first backup which results in the second backup created being a full also. If you have not run the backup task a third time, run it again to see if the file size is different on the third and subsequent backups. In addition, the new backup file naming conventions should also show whether or not it is a full or incremental backup by looking at the backup filename (for "full" or "inc" appended to filename).
James
Thank you both for your comments, very helpful. Both backups mark as "Full". Cannot locate anything that states cleanup options... Will let it run tonight and see what shows up!