Adding HDD Images In ONE TIB
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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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
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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.
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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
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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'.
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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.
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