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Adding HDD Images In ONE TIB

Thread needs solution

Dear Sir or Madam

I am your customer since the past couple of years.

Right now I am using Acronis True Image 2016

I have a 4 TB Seagate External HDD.

Inside this 4 TB Seagate External HDD I have couple of images of different HARD DRIVES that were created using Acronis True Image 2011

Here is my question:

I am trying to create an image of 4 TB HDD to further preserve and backup my data.

Will there be any issue creating a 4 TB Image in which there are already *.TIB {HDD Images} that were created using Acronis True Image 2011 Home

Those images were created using the maximum compression because a couple of years ago the cost of HDD was very high therefore I have used the maximum compression to use the disk space accordingly

Waiting for your reply

Sincerely

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Nadia, thank you for the information you have provided along with your questions.

The first point I need to make here is about backup archive compatibility.  
Please see KB document: 1689: Backup Archive Compatibility Across Different Product Versions which shows that ATIH is not considered to be compatible with your older ATIH 2011 backup files - so my question here is to ask if you have tried to access these 2011 backup files recently?  If you double-click on the .TIB file in Windows Explorer where your ATIH 2016 is installed, does it display the contents?  Or can you mount these images to a drive letter?

If not, then you would need to have the Acronis 2011 Rescue media with which to boot a computer to access these old image files.

I personally would not try to backup your existing image files into another Acronis backup, but would rather just make direct copies of these files to another drive if they are still of value to you.  You should be able to do a copy and paste in Windows Explorer, or could use file / folder synchronisation software to do this.

Thanks for replying back.

I don't use the installed version on windows to create images.

Whenever I create an Image of a HDD I just use the bootable CD or now in this case a USB drive to bootup the Acronis Software

I thought I was using Acronis 2016 but I have just checked the version. It is Acronis True Image 2017

I will be using Acronis True Image Home 2017 to create the IMAGE

Here is the version info:

Acronis True Image 2017 Build 5554

I didn’t try to use Acronis 2017 to open the images I used 2013 to open the images. I always stay with one version so that there won’t be any problems but recently we have deployed Acronis 2017 due to new hardware compatibility and increasing HDD sizes.

I am not creating a backup plan.  I am just creating a FULL Backup of the 4 TB HDD which contains about 12 TIB Files.  The whole idea is to backup the entire HDD in to one TIB File

So before I do this I just want an advice from the expert because in the future I don’t want to run into trouble where the one BIG TIB file which I am planning to create ends up giving me problems to recover the TIB files inside it.

Here is the scenario.

I have an external 4 TB HDD.  It has images of other hard drives that were created in Acronis 2011 about 3 years ago. I have checked the images and they seem to work fine. I am able to open the TIB files by double clicking on them just like any other file in the windows environment.

Now if I create the image of 4 TB HDD which already has 12 images of other HDDs {*.TIB} format then I will be basically creating a ONE big image TIB file of the 4 TB HDD

My question is:

Is there a going to be a problem while creating an image of 4 TB harddrive which already has about 12 *.tib files

So basically the one big image TIB file will contain 12 *.TIB files

Is this safe to do that.

How about compression levels?   I am planning to use the MAXIMUM Compression to create that one big TIB from of 4 TB HDD.

Waiting for your reply

Thanks

Nadia, I understand your question but would not advise you to create one large Acronis .TIB image file that then contains your 12 .TIB files from earlier versions of the product.  Acronis does not guarantee backwards compatibility between ATIH 2017 and your earlier files from 2011 as stated in the KB document I referenced in my last post.

There is no benefit to try to do this as you are then mixing two very different versions of the product and will need to use the different rescue media to work with the contents of these .TIB files.  There is also no benefits in terms of compression here as you have already used maximum compression when creating the 2011 .TIB files, so they will still take up the same disk space and the resulting ATIH 2017 .TIB file will have a size equal to 12 x the original .TIB file sizes, i.e. the sum of all those 12 file sizes.

Having a much larger .TIB file will carry additional risks should any disk problem arise, especially a bad sector that holds some of the .TIB file data.  There are no tools available to recover a corrupted or damaged .TIB file as other users have discovered and reported in these forums.

My recommendation here would be to keep all your .TIB files as separate entities, each able to stand alone in its own right, and thus able to be recovered if needed without needing to be extracted from the large container.

Make copies of these 12 .TIB files on another drive to give you the backup protection you need to safeguard these image files.  You should also regularly either run a CHKDSK for the backup drives or monitor the drive SMART data from the drives to get maximum warning of any impending failures.

 

Hi

Thanks for replying back.

What is the best HDD Image software out there.

I undersatnd that anything can happen to TIB file specially if a bad sector develops resulting a file unreadable

So what would be the best solution incase if a bad sector develops then I would still be able to recover data from the HDD Image file.

What do you think about DriveImage XML

Its free and small software only about 2 MB and here is the link.

https://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm

Thanks

Nadia, sorry but I cannot answer your question as to what is the best HDD image software - this is very much a matter of working this out for yourself as there are plus and minus points for all backup software products if you starting testing and comparing them.

Recovering disk drives and data from bad sectors is a completely different issue as there are too many variables that can be at work here.  Sometimes a bad sector can be recovered or reassigned, other times a bad sector is fatal for either the drive or for the data that spans that sector.  The same issues would apply to any application that had data stored in a bad sector.

The only real protection that can be used to offset the risks of disk drive failure, bad sectors etc, is to have multiple backup generations, i.e. Grandfather, Father and Son, and have these stored in different places, on different media, and ideally with one copy being kept offline in a different location.

The risks to data are not just limited to drive failure or bad sectors, there is a lot of malware in the 'wild' on the internet who target backup data with encryption routines aimed at making it impossible for ransomware to be recovered without 'paying the ransom'.

Personally, I would recommend multiple backp softwares, multple backup types with each, and storing them on multiple backup drives.  There is no pefect backup sofware and you don't want to put all of your eggs in one basket.  By diversifying products, backup schemes and storage locations, you give yourself several options to attempt restores from.  

I've used driveimage xml.  It seemed to work - but was slow and proprietary as well.  It was much slower than Acronis and other competing products.  When I did use it, it was on an older legacy (bios) only motherboard as well. I don't see any mention that it supports UEFI bios or GPT disks in the documentation so am not sure if it it does or not.  I'm inclined to think not though... look at the FAQ - which references "my drive will not boot" and specificlaly mentions VISTA which is quite old. 

https://www.runtime.org/driveimage_faq.htm#boot

I also don't think it is capable of doing incrementals or differentials, but really can't remember as it's been so long.  The FAQ doesn't mention these as options either though.