Strategy for backing up system
I would like to set up a plan to backup my system. I have four hard drives totaling about 0.5 TB of data. Programs are installed on various drives to reduce the load on the C: drive.
I bought a Western Digital My Book system but it doesn't work on Windows XP. I bought a 2TB external drive for backing up. I want a plan to be able to backup and restore my entire system in the event something crashes. I had a period where I got a bad virus and I couldn't boot my system. Eventually I got it fixed.
Is it possible to obtain an image of all four drives on one backup drive and then maintain incremental backups on the same drive? Or is there a better way.
Nicholas Geti


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I have two purchased CDs for Acronis: version 2011 and 2012. They have served me well so far.
I think an image of the C:\ drive would be required. It is the only way to recover from a system crash due to viruses or bad drive. Even if no crash but corrupted Windows files, is it possible to restore the C:\ drive from a straight backup (i.e. no image)? That is, some system files on the C:\ drive are read only or in use. Can these files be repaired by copying while Windows is running?
Almost all of my programs and application data is on the other three drives and I don't anticipate any problems restoring those drives.
To speed up restoring is it possible for Acronis to compare a backup file with the target and backup only when they differ? I have an app called File Sync that compares two folders to determine differences in content and builds a list of differences which allows the user to select only the differences to transfer between folders. I am not sure that the compare function is any faster than actually copying the files.
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Nicholas, what version of Windows OS are you running here?
When you say that you have the two ATIH 2011 and 2012 CD's - have you installed the application or are you running it purely from the CD's in an offline rescue media boot environment?
A backup image of your Windows OS drive (C:) is essential if you want to be able to recover from any significant failure or issue (disk, malware etc), and whilst it is possible to restore individual files or folders from the backup image, this really only applies to user data - you will not be able to restore any Windows OS files or folders as this will not be permitted by Windows itself. Recovering system files which are normally locked when Windows is started has to be done outside of Windows by booting from the Acronis Rescue Media (on CD or USB stick).
Restoring your programs and application data on your other drives would require that those programs or applications are not started / running or else you would again encounter the issue of locked files preventing the restore.
Please note that Acronis True Image cannot be used to move programs or applications.
ATIH does not function along the lines of tools like FileSync - you cannot just restore files based on comparing differences etc.
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I just bought 5 licenses for ATIH 2017 so I can use it on Windows 8.1. Building an image is extremely fast.
I did not see an option to build a bootable ATIH CD in version 2017 like the earlier versions of ATIH. Did I miss something?
OK. My strategy will be to build an image of the C:\ drive and do backups/incrementals of the other drives. Then periodically create a new image of the C:\ and full backups of the others. I'll soon find out if there are any further issues.
Nicholas Geti
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Nicholas, you can find the Acronis Bootable Rescue Media Builder in the Tools section of the GUI or via the main Windows programs menu for Acronis in the Tools & Utilities folder.
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