Backing Up Before A Drive Format

Hello Tambra, it sounds as if you are doing the correct thing by doing the backup, then validating the backup image is good by testing some restores, so that should be OK.

The next question is a little more difficult to answer as we do not know your reason why you might want to do a complete format of your system drive and internal data drive, reinstall Windows and Acronis; plus we do not know the relationship that might exist between any of the data that exists on your internal data drive and yur system drive?

If your system is working correctly at this time, then taking a full backup of your entire system (system drive and data drive, including any hidden partitions) to your external backup drive would offer the greatest level of security and the option to put everything back to how it was at the time when the backup was created.

If you have problems with your system that are prompting the decision to do a complete format of your system, then you need to ensure that you have copies of all installation media (Windows OS plus all applications / programs etc) that will be needed to reinstall / rebuild and configure your system.  If such a problem only affects the Windows system drive, then do you need to format your internal data drive as well?  Or do you have programs installed on that drive that need to be cleaned up?

I would certainly recommend making more than one backup image of your family photos and videos to more than one external backup drive for safety, especially if these are the only copies you have of some things.

Tambra,

Wiping original data and restoring with a backup should be a last efort.

Acronis backups are very reliable - however, there is always the possibility that something could go wrong - even if 99.9% reliable.  Since these are your family photos and the only instance of them is on your main hard drive that is still currently accessible (plus an Acronis backup), I would highly recommend not deleting the contents of the original drive to replace with the backup unless you have absolutely no other options.  As reliable as Acronis backup images are, there's always a possibility that something could wrong (had the wrong settings when the backup was created, the disc the backup went to is on its way out and had trouble writing the backup, etc).  If the original drive is the only place where the original content is completely stored (other than an Acronis backup), to be on the safe side, could you use or purchase another drive to restore/recover to first?  Then, you could not only verify the restore is good, you'd have a nice new drive (probably a better/faster one too) and you'd have the original drive contents to hold onto and revert back to in case something bad does happen.  

In the grand scheme of things, a new, spare hard drive is roughly going to be $100-$200 depending on how much space you need.  However, what is the value of these family photos if they were wiped and your restore is not successful, especially if the restore could have been done to another disk in order to preserve the original and still currently available data?

the reasoning is because I've installed a new internal SSD drive into my laptop.  I've installed windows and Acronis onto it already and moved the product id to the new drive. 

my old 1 Terabyte internal drive will become my data drive.  It currently has the old windows on it and is divided into two partitions.  I don't need the original windows, the original restore points, and original restore partition and I want one partition.  therefore it will require a format and repartition of the drive.  which will wipe everything out.

good idea about two backups on different external drives(I'll do that today)

I just want to be sure there is nothing else needed except the backup files on the external drive.  is there a hidden pointer file that Acronis backup makes that I would need also?

thanks

You do not have to format your entire 1TB drive to get it the way you want it.  Normally, you can just use computer management >>> disk management in Windows and format the paritions you don't want and then extend them out.  However, that only works when the blank space is at the end of the disk and not before the existing parition (plus there will still be the hidden recovery partitions etc).  

Instead, you can use a free tool like minitoolparitionwizard to format the existing paritions other than the data one.  Then it can also extend the remaining data parition to use up the remaining free space at the front of the disk once that has been done.  This is a good free tool that will do what you want without having to format the entire drive.  Still good to have a backup (or 2) of the original data though - just in case!

Tambra, there is no need to reformat your complete old 1TB drive if all you want to do is to remove the old Windows installation and a recovery partition etc.  You could try doing this using Windows Disk Management to remove the unwanted partitions, but it may be easier if you either have a copy of the Acronis Disk Director product, or else download a copy of the free Easeus Partition Manager tool.  Either of these tools will allow you to remove unwanted partitions from a drive and then resize or move existing partitions to reuse the freed space.

Tambra Gutierrez wrote:

..... If I decide to do a complete format to my system drive and my internal data drive, then reinstall windows and Acronis.....

Its family photos and videos so I want to be sure I've done everything correctly......

If you are backing up irreplaceable content (ie content you cannot produce or buy again), I would not use Acronis to back it up as the sole backup. If you are going to delete the originals and you have no other standalone copy of these files, I would absolutely copy the files onto a separate disk before wiping the originals out.

Acronis is very reliable, but it is not buller proof. Archive files can get corrupted. When they are, all the backup content is lost. Then restore operations can go wrong because of hardware compatibilty.

Except if your restore the system data, there is no advantage of putting videos and photo files in the proprietary file format of Acronis. These non standard containers provide convenient backup management functionality, and data compression. Data compression is useless for videos and photos (because these files are already compressed). In your case, multi versioning of the backups is as well not necessary for a simple one time file transfer. A single file copy is all what you need and will de-risk the procedure.

Do a standard file copy of your precious files, and do also an Acronis backup of the entire disk that contains the system.