Newbie needing help to understand Acronis

RGB123,

If you are new to ATI, you should read read the user manual (google Acronis 2011 user manual) and read Grover's True Image Guides (see link in the left panel here).
ATI is a relatively simple imaging tool, but the user needs to get educated on a few things to make sure it is used properly and meets the expectations.
The learning might be a bit steep for a complete computer novice, very easy for anybody familiar with computers, and it is always worth the investment.

Let us know how we can help after this initial reading.

I tried reading the manual but at over 200 pages this is ridiculous. I'm beginning to think I bought the wrong software. My daughter has a Dell computer and it has a partition with Norton Ghost that has an image of the original factory state of the disk, and the system can be recovered using a Control F11 key.

Whilst I haven't made a separate partition on my hard drive, all I wanted to do was to make a back-up image - but the manual might as well be written in Chinese for all the sense I can make of it. With regards data, I back this up regularly. It's the operating system & programs that I want to image eg XP Home, Canon printer, NVidea graphics, antivirus, Creative Audigy 2, MS Office, Malwarebytes, Perfect Disk 11, Outlook Express settings and mail, Internet passwords, favourites etc etc so that I don't have to reload all my programs if the system crashes and I need to do a full recovery.

All I'm trying to find out is whether Acronis can make a smaller size image of my hard disk, akin to Norton Ghost, and if so how do I create it & put it on my external hard drive, and how do I recover with it in an emergency?

I just need some plain English help and simple step by step instructions - can anyone please help me?

To be able to recover your computer, you need to do 2 things:

1) Create a disk and partition backup that includes all the partitions showing in windows disk management (run C:\Windows\System32\compmgmt.msc):
- marked active,
- identified as diagnostics, recovery, OEM, etc. partition
- called system reserved if any,
- containing OS or applications.

Here are the steps:
- click on create disk and partition backup,
- in the upper right, click on swith to disk mode, check your main system disk. If you have partitions that need to be included in the backup per the criteria above, stay in partition mode instead of switching to disk mode and select all the required partitions.
- click on the destination, choose browse,
- using the left navigation panel, double click your way until you have opened your target destination,
- enter a simple TIB file name, with no space, no special character. Eg: SystemImage
- click OK, you are now back to your backup configuration window,
- click on the blue version chain link, this opens the same window as clicking on the edit backup options blue link at the bottom,
- choose custom backup scheme, incremental. For a daily backup, choose create a new full after 6 incrementals. For a monthly backup, choose create a new full after 3 incrementals, for example. As a rule of thumb, never make the number of incrementals so big that you would never go back to the last full because it would be too old for you. Turn autocleaning on, choose store no more than X most recent version chains (X should be small enough that you always have a lot of space left to do a new full backup on your backup disk).
- click on the advanced tab, unfold validation, click to schedule a validation weekly. Unfold the advanced settings in this scheduler window, uncheck all boxes here unless you really want to enable them,
- click on the performance tab, choose normal compression, choose normal priority if you have a recent processor, high priority if you have a high end recent processor,
- close that backup settings window,
- click on the schedule link. Choose when you want the backup to run (daily, weekly, etc.). Note that some scheduling on events don't work well on all computers. Unfold the advanced settings of that scheduler and uncheck all boxes unless you really want them checked (leaving them unchecked may alleviate some behavior/scheduling issues depending on your machines and OS settings).
- click on backup now or later.
Atfterwards, just let the scheduler do your backups, or run backup now.

If you want to edit your settings, create a new task if you change the backup scheme one way or another, or if you want to rename your TIB files. Do not delete or rename TIB files manually.

From time to times, boot your computer on the CD and validate a backup and/or restore a couple of files.

2) Create a bootable recovery CD

Using ATI, click on create bootable media, and follow the wizard. This will burn a blank CD into a bootable CD. Once done, reboot your computer and press F2 immediately and repeatedly until you enter the BIOS settings. Verify that the computer is set up to boot on a CD if present and bootable. Put the CD in, and reboot. You will see a special version of ATI run from the CD. Follow the instructions to restore a couple of files. Don't restore your entire disk or partitions. Just a couple of files from the backup.

This will make sure you can restore your computer to a completely new disk if you ever had to.

If you are a beginner with backups, consider the following:
- diversify your backup locations (use a couple of disks, rotate them, take one off site when not used. If you do this, create 2 backup tasks pointing at each drive. Make sure you assign a fixed drive letter to each disk)
- double and diversify your backup types for irreplaceable content. For example, use a NSB, file backup or online backup for small, often changing files in addition to your disk and partition backup. Or use some simple sync software for big, already compressed, rarely changing files (like movies, videos, music, photos, etc.)
- diversify your backup software/technologies. Use the built in Windows or security sofware or third party backup software in addition to ATI.
Be paranoid about irreplaceable content!

Thank you so much Pat, that's very helpful - & I'm beginning to see a little daylight at the end of the tunnel! I wonder if you can help my understanding with some other pieces of the jigsaw:

1. My current back up file is 131Gb so I'm guessing that this is a non-compressed back-up? What have I actually created? It contains 33 .TIB files of 4.194,304 Gb each (the last one is 3,562,973Gb)
2. How big should the image file be with normal compression? Surely I've done something wrong if I have a 131Gb!
3. Where I'm also nervous is with the auto-backup facility. Does this create a complete and separate back-up each time, or does it only update certain files that have changed (this seems to be the case with the 131Gb back-up I made)? I backed up using the novice button at the start of the program, hence I didn't really understand what it was doing. My worry is that if it replaces a 'good' file with something that's got corrupted/damaged/infected, I'll lose the good version & my back-up can become useless (does that make sense?). Also, if every back-up is 131Gb I dn't have the hard drive space!
4. Re recovery disk, I have the proper boxed Acronis package (ie not a load down) that comes with a recovery disk - is this sufficient, or do I still need to make up another recovery disk?
5. What exactly will I be backing up - there seems to be so many options. Will the image contain all my files/photos/music/videos/data/word/excel etc or just the operating system, or the operating system plus all my programs installed (eg printer drivers, MS Office etc)

I'm so sorry for my lack of understanding on all this which must sound pretty lame to someone experienced with the system. I'm not a computer guru & in my ignorance, I was expecting a simpler program.

Many thanks again for all your help

Rich

RGB123 wrote:

Thank you so much Pat, that's very helpful - & I'm beginning to see a little daylight at the end of the tunnel! I wonder if you can help my understanding with some other pieces of the jigsaw:

1. My current back up file is 131Gb so I'm guessing that this is a non-compressed back-up? What have I actually created? It contains 33 .TIB files of 4.194,304 Gb each (the last one is 3,562,973Gb)

You are probably backing up to a disk that is formatted FAT32. A FAT32 partition cannot store a file bigger than 4GB, so ATI has to split the backup into chunks. If you don't mind, reformat your backup disk with NTFS. This will erase everything on the disk!

2. How big should the image file be with normal compression? Surely I've done something wrong if I have a 131Gb!

Make sure that you don't have selected the sector-by-sector option in the backup (under advanced). Beyond that, it really depends on the type of files you have on your disk. Big compressed files like video, photos or even music are, well, already compressed. So ATI will not compress them further and you will not save space.
Look at the big folders you are backing up and let us know what file types you have in there.
If you have a lot of big compressed files that don't change a lot, you might be better off excluding them from your backup, and copying them to the backup disk. One copy is enough for backup purposes in this case. You can also use some sync software like Karen's replicator, SyncToy or Synback. ATi 2012 includes a sync version, but I think it will take a couple of updates to get it stable.

3. Where I'm also nervous is with the auto-backup facility. Does this create a complete and separate back-up each time, or does it only update certain files that have changed (this seems to be the case with the 131Gb back-up I made)? I backed up using the novice button at the start of the program, hence I didn't really understand what it was doing. My worry is that if it replaces a 'good' file with something that's got corrupted/damaged/infected, I'll lose the good version & my back-up can become useless (does that make sense?). Also, if every back-up is 131Gb I dn't have the hard drive space!

If your backup scheme is an incremental backup (like the one I suggested), ATI backs up only the files that have changed since the last backup you did. So you have smaller backups, unless you defrag between backups. To restore an incremental, the full and every single incremental you have done until your restore data is necessary. If your backup is a differential backup, ATI backs up all the changes made since the last *full* backup. So the changes are repeated and accumulated in each differential (they grow bigger). To restore a differential, you just need the first full and the last differential you want to restore. My advice is to use incrementals.

You should have at a minimum 2.5 to 3 times the size of a full backup available on your backup drive. If you don't have it, purchase a bigger backup disk if you can afford it. Not worth cutting corners with backups, IMO.

4. Re recovery disk, I have the proper boxed Acronis package (ie not a load down) that comes with a recovery disk - is this sufficient, or do I still need to make up another recovery disk?

Try it. If you can boot your computer on it and restore a couple of files, you are good to go!

5. What exactly will I be backing up - there seems to be so many options. Will the image contain all my files/photos/music/videos/data/word/excel etc or just the operating system, or the operating system plus all my programs installed (eg printer drivers, MS Office etc)

If you follow the instructions I gave you, you will have created:
- a disk and partition backup of the disk contain your system. This backup will contain all the partitions on that disk and therefore all the content on it. If you have only one disk, you got everything you need,
- a file backup of any content that you may have stored on another disk on your computer.

This requires a YES/NO answer:-

Will all drivers be backed up with the remainder of my computer when i do a backup?

Yes.

If you do a disk and partition backup, all information on the disk will be stored in an archive file. The information is taken at the sector level (like a cloning process would do).

Along the left margin, there is some good help topics for 2012 under the Useful Links header.