Working while backup is in progress?
Hi
Just updated to Acronis Cloud and I'm currently doing my initial backup on my new Macbook Pro. The backup is around 45GB and is estimated to take around 24 hours. I am looking to start installing my programs while the backup is taking place as I need to get things up and running quickly for work.
Is the initial backup a snapshot of the computer at the time of starting the backup? Or is it a snapshot of sometime during the backup? I am going to be troubleshooting a while bunch of compatibility issues and want to be able to restore a fresh OSX install. If I start installing programs now, I don't want them to be included in the initial backup.
Thanks for any thoughts you might have!
Andrew
Well, sorry, missed that you were using Cloud backup. I see the use of the Acronis cloud backup since it will be an offsite storage medium so that is convenient, although slow. If you have a portable drive, doing a local backup with Acronis, Time Machine or OS X recovery disk utilities will be less than 24 hours - probably less than an hour depending on the type of drive and connection (usb3.0 vs usb2.0).
When you fire of a bakcup task a snapshot at that moment of time is taken to perform the backup. Any changes done after the start of the backup will not be included in the resulting backup file. You do need to allow the actual backup to start running howver. This generally does not take long. Once you see the progress bar moving the shapshot is complete and the backup is taking place.
Thanks for the great info!
Yes, I'm primarily using the could service for offsite backups, just in case I need to restore while I'm away from work and don't have access to my NAS. I am using Time Machine alongside True Image to make sure I am fully covered. I also use Windows on my desktop, so I will be using True Image for all my backups there as well...both local and cloud.
I will start installing programs while I wait for the backup to complete!
Also, when I create a USB recovery disk can the USB flash drive contain other files? I'm guessing I should use one flash drive just for Windows recovery and one for Mac recovery, correct?
Yes, you can add other files to your Acronis bootable media (say if you want to still add other folders, files, music, movies, etc). It's a bit messy though as Acronis writes files directly to the root of the usb media. Additionally, whenever you update the media (re-run the bootable media creator), acronis will wipe the drive and recreate the files it needs. In that regards, it may not be the best place to keep permanent personnel files on the same drive.
As for bootable media for Mac and Windows, yes, you will need one instance for each - either 2 USB drives, 2 ISO's or one of each. If you have thumb drives, I'd recomend those since a lot of the newer Mac's and even many laptops no longer have disc drives in them, but nearly all have USB support. Really depends on what works best for you though.
Okay, I think having two seperate USB drives is the way to go, along with using them just for recovery. Any idea how large the USB recovery files will be for each OS? Need to buy two USB drives and don't want to buy anything to big.
Thanks!
Andrew
The offline Acronis Bootable media is relatively small - the size will vary depending on which software you have installed. In Windows, using the recovery media builder in Acronis itself will install 32 and 64 bit versions of ATIH, plus 32 and 64 bit versions of Universal Restore, plus 32 and 64 bit versions of System Report. Likewise, in Windows, if you installed the Universal Restore add-ojn, you can use its medial builder function and it basically does the same thing; however, this one also let's you pick and choose which applications you want to add to the bootable recovery media so you can make the disk size smaller if you don't want to include everyting. In the OS X version, I don't think you get a choice (been a while since I've used it).
Regardless, you should never need more than 2GB in any instance (that's with a large buffer, just in case). If using the Windows version of Acronis, your bootable recovery media output will generally be somewhere between 400MB - 1GB. The OS X one is even smaller at only a couple hundred MB.
USB flash drives are so cheap these days, you're probably better off finding a 16GB usb 3.0 drive as you can find them for about $5, although not all flash drives are created the same and/or perform the same. I like the San Disk Ulta Flair because it is phsyically small and fairly fast, but I picked it up for about $7 and now it's a bit more on the big A webiste. If you have any older usb 2.0 drives that don't get much use, those should work fine too - just takes a little longer to write them because they are USB 2.0, but once they are booted into the recoverable media, speed isn't an issue since the appliation gets loaded into system memory.
One other word of advice, Acronis and other applications, don't always like Flash drives that are set as "fixed disks" instead of "removable". I don't think it makes a difference on the OS X versions of Acronis (can't remember), but it does on Windows. Most USB flash drives are "removable", but when Windows 8/8.1 came out a few manufacturers set the flash drives as "fixed" so that they complied with Windows-2-go criteria. That was a while ago and most have since moved away from this because it's not really needed and there are also third party tools that can create Windows2Go disks regradless of the removable or fixed disk media type. Probably not an issue you need to be concerned with now, but just something to be aware of.
And if you do have such a "fixed" disk usb flash drive. the workaround is to use another removable flash drive to create the bootable media >>>> then take an Acronis image of it >>>> then pust that image back to the "fixed disk" USB and it will work just fine.