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Quick Question(s) About An Archive

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Using Acronis TrueImage 2010

I have two internal hard drives, and a couple external (One used mainly for serious back ups)

When I do my weekly back-ups, I make one on the second drive, then make one (not copy it) to an external hard drive. Then every couple weeks I make a copy of my second internal hard drive on an external drive.

My question is: If I needed to restore my system, would I be able to if needed, navigate to the archive, that was contained on my second hard drive archive that's on my EXTERNAL drive? (Hope that makes some sense) In-other-words, get an archive from an archive? Second question: Is there any evidence that defragging a drive can effect the archive's integrity? Thanks for taking the time to read this. Regards, jnibori

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Sorry, but when I selected to be notified about comments after reading my posting online this box popped up, and I have not been able to delete this posting, only edit it. I guess I missed the box on my original post.

Perhaps it's defaulted to do that, as even when I went back to edit it, I was unable to locate it.

jnibori

jnibori,

If you have just 'transfered' the archive/images from one drive to the other, there will be no problem in resotring an image. If the archive contains the system partition you should restore using the rescue CD and you just navigate to the drive and restore appropriately. You won't be able to just click on the archive from the list within TIH Windows as it will try to recover the archive from where you told it to image to. It is possible to navigate to the external drive archive and recover from there, but I would only attempt to do this on an image that doesn't contain the system on it.

I seem to recall TIH 2010 can make a copy of an image to a second place.

I haven't seen any hard facts about defragging an archive, but personally I believe you run a higher risk of corrupting an image/archive if you defragment it, due to the rewriting that has to go on, it is just one more step where something catastrphic could happen rendering your image useless. Only one binary bit in the image needs to be wrong for the complete image to be unrecoverable.

If of course you have a copy of the archive and validation has reported that it is OK, then if you have a lot of fragmentation on the internal drive you could defrag as you'd have some redundancy built in. If your archive is large it will take quite some time to defragment it.

If you edit your first post you can transfer this thread to the True Image Home forum where more people can read it and reply with their thoughts.

Well, I'm glad my question made some sense :) Thanks! And thanks for the prompt response. 

'" haven't seen any hard facts about defragging an archive, but personally I believe you run a higher risk of corrupting an image/archive if you defragment it, due to the rewriting that has to go on, it is just one more step where something catastrophic could happen rendering your image useless."

Exactly what I was concerned about. My normal routine for the main drive is to defrag the second internal drive prior to creating a new archive. I keep three archives and have the program defaulted to validate them each time. I also use Paragon Back-up & recovery and COMODO as my first line of defense. (COMODO- i've never restore my system using Paragon) I do not use system restore> Junk on XP.

This is exactly the reason I burn (make additional copies) on external drives rather than simply coping them. My theory is if a copy was somehow corrupted, then I have two useless copies. Admittedly it's very time consuming using USB 2.0, however I do make my meager living using my computer(s) so a full reformat / re-install would kill me.  

 

Thanks again and regards,
jnibori.

PS- I've only posted her once or twice, so if this question needs to be moved, perhaps a mod can do that?