Question about creating C drive image and restoring it
Hello,
I am a new use of Acronis True Image Home 2014 product and request for some help. I have question about creating backup of C drive and restoring it. I frequently need to format my PC and I want to create an image of C drive so that I can restore all previously installed programs to newly formatted system. So I believe what I should do is: create an image then if I format my PC, after installing windows and Acronis tool, restore entire C drive image. Is this correct? My concern is I will already install Windows and again restoring Windows can cause some issues?
Please help me how you would do entire C drive restoring in case of newly formatted system.
Thanks
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Thanks a lot tuttle for your reply. I read some of guides you suggested. So, I should make True Image bootable disk and create hard disk image. So, if I want to restore C drive, I can restore booting from Acronis TI bootable disk. However, unfortunately I do not have so much space to create entire disk backup. Therefore I just want to create image of C drive and the image which can boot the Windows. Is there any way to do this?
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Pat,
Consider buying a USB drive big enough to contain multiple full backups. These are pretty affordable these days, and this is an investment that is worth it if you want to protect your system.
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Pat Walker,
What MVP Tuttle is saying is that you may be able to restore C only overtop of existing C (if you got a virus or something), but if your disk were to fail, your C only may not be sufficient to create a replacement disk. Whether a restore of C only onto a new disk would work would depend upon what other partitions you now have. Have you used Windows Disk Management to look at your disk via a graphical view to see how many partitions you have as some may be non-lettered such as a Windows Recovery partition. His advice to include all partitons is trying to keep you from being at risk.
What MVP Pat L is saying is good as well as his advice will enable you to perform the "disk image" backups that post #1 is suggesting.
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Thanks a lot MVP tuttle, MVP Pat L, and GroverH for your help. I understand that entire disk image is certainly helpful, however I still want to go with only with partition C backup. As suggested early, if I want to load a Windows image, I will boot from Acronis TI tool and will select an image to restore. However if I just backup C partition, the new system will not become bootable. Now I just want to make 'C' image so that it will boot. Does Acronis TI Home provides such facility? Thanks in advance.
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Yes, as suggested in post #1 by MVP Tuttle.
Click on link #2 below and follow the example of the first picture.
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Hi GroveeH
I am bit confused with your reply.
MVP tuttle said:
Do not backup only the C: partitions. That is not sufficient, as it may result in an unbootable system.
And I asked does TI provided functionality just to create bootable image of partition C. I watched link you suggested, but still I am confused.
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No one can give you a yes or not answer until you post a screen capture of your Windows Disk management graphical view of your disk.
We do not know what partitions are included on your disk. The screen capture will show us and will show which disk is the active partition. Currently, we do not know if drive C is the active boot partition or not. Screen capture will show us.
When you open TrueImge and click the disk and partitions button in top left corner,
the next screen will show Drive C but what other partitions are also shown.?<
Is more than just Drive C listed?/p>
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Hi GroverH,
I attached screenshot of my Windows disk management. And TI does include other drives when I switch to disk mode.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| 155555-110806.jpg | 152.24 KB |
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Hi GroverH,
I attached screenshot of my Windows disk management. And TI does include other drives when I switch to disk mode.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| 155560-110809.jpg | 152.24 KB |
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Your attachment show many many partitons. Perhaps a Win8 or at very least a Win7 and withi UEFI style partitoning plus probably GPT disks.
Very difinitely, a backup of c only would not produce a bootable replacement.
Maybe a backup of C plus all the non-lettered partitons "might" produce a bootable new disk but all other partitions non included within the backup would be lost. It would also be necessary to use the Windows recovery CD and run a Startup Repair.
As suggested before, a disk image backup to a larger storage disk would be desirable if you want to be able to create a replacement disk in the event of disk failure of your main disk.
I am not a technician nor IT professional. Perhaps one of those could assist further.
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If your backup is big, you can save your personal file on to some drive separately. Then you can exclude those files from backup. You should take the image of windows files only. Find a way to backup systems files and personal files separately.
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