Backup Entire PC or just C:\
Here I am again. New to Acronis.
I must say the that the Acronis User's Guide is quite confusing.
If I want to make a backup of my Laptop so that I can restore it fully; there seems to be two options.
1. I can click on "Entire PC" and then select my USB Hard Drive as the destination. If I do this then it appears that its going to backup 1T of disk space whether or not there is data there.
2. If I drill down to select just the C:\ partition; then it seems to be doing the same thing.
The actual disk usage is 69GB of 1T. In the progress bar at the bottom of the screen, it looks like its going to do the whole thing. I stop it.
Why can't I just get a normal backup for of about 69Gb that will include my EUFI partition?
I have a Windows 10 laptop with Acronis 2017 Build 5041 installed.


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srs, if you want to make a backup of your laptop to enable you to restore it fully, then you will need more than just your C:\ partition - there are other hidden / system partitions that are required to allow for a successful recovery, such as the Microsoft System Reserved, EFI and potentially any laptop diagnostics and recovery partition.
You can use the 'Entire PC' option but I would only do so if you only have internal drives in the laptop, as this option can include any other connected drives for when the backup is executed.
My personal preference is to click on 'Entire PC' and then select the option for 'Disks & Partitions' then select all the partitions on your internal drives.
Regardless of the total size of your internal drives, ATIH will only backup the used data from those drives unless you take the option for sector-by-sector backup which is not necessary.
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This is a great forum.
OK I see that. But when I do that I don't see the UEFI partition which is definetly there (Disk Managment).
I don't have "sector by sector" checked but the progress bar at the bottom of the screen still shows about 3 hours and the Gbyte total keeps climbing to well above the disk usage size 60GB/1T ?????
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Nor does it see the recovery partition
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Opps, Yes I see that I did not select the "see full partition" at the bottom of the screen. Thanks Bobbo. So its confusing the first time around and I appreciate your advice.
Steve
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Steve (srs) - glad you got it sorted out now! Yes, would be nice if that was at the top of the screen where it would be more easy to see. I have to scroll down to get to see it, but have found that as long as you check the main box next to the drive, it will include those automatically in the backup by default. You just don't see them unless you expand the "see full parition" at the bottom - which gives peace of mind to be able to verify that it really did select everything!
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So I did a backup per your excellent instructions.
My 1T disk is partitioned as such
1. EFI 500MB
2. OS (C:) 918GB (42GB used)
3. Healthy Recovery Partition 450MB
4. Health Recovery Partition 11.87GB. I believe this is the "Restore PC to factory setting partition"
******************************************************
My image turned out to be 68GB with nomal compression (this setting is "grey-out" for some reason).
Does that seem normal to you.
Also, the Acronis Users Guide says they recomend "Entire PC" for Source. For reasond that I stated earlier, I don't think that works very well since it appears to be wanting to back up 1T of disk space even when i don't check "Sector by Sector". Strange
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Steve, glad that you have made your disk backup OK.
68GB seems like there was not a lot of compression used given the sizes you have quoted - I would have expected a little smaller than that normally with around 20% compression achieveable.
The compression settings cannot be changed once the backup task has been executed - this is only available for new backup tasks.
See the ATIH 2017 User Guide: Performance of backup operation which has the final word saying:
You cannot set or change the compression level for a pre-existing backup.
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So the next step is to test the image by trying ot recover a file or directory. This seems straigt forward. I wll use the recovery CD that I created with the Media Builder. It appears that I can see the entire disk structure in the image, with all the directories.
So just pick a small directory or file and drop it into say a newly created folder. Then restart and see if that file is where I droped it?????
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That sounds like a plan Steve. You can do this from Windows Explorer to open the backup file and copy & paste files or folders to a temporary location for testing purposes.
If you boot from the Rescue CD then make sure that you do not restore files & folders to their original locations unless that is what you want to do, but only do this for your own user files, not for any OS programs or data.
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Yes, I will try that now. I believe the defualt is for a different location anyway. I messes up before and did use a system file. Then I had to blast throuth the "enuemerated objects in container" error and finall was able to delete that.
So I will try that now.
Thanks Steve.
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OK, so that seemed to work. I drilled down to "Documents" in the "user/steve" and droped those into a new forlder on the C:\ drive. They all showed up.
So that good. Any suggestions on what else I could do to test that image besides buying a HD and taking my computer apart?
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I guess the remainng question is "Why is the image significantly larger than the disk usage size? (with normal compression)
I thought it would be about the same size or less than the disk usage size.
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Steve, difficult to say why the image size shows as larger. You could try mounting the image to drive letter(s) and then using a utility such as TreeSize Free to check where the largest amount of data size is within it?
The only real test of a backup image would be to restore it, ideally to a spare drive of sufficient capacity (which doesn't have to be the same size as the original 1TB drive, so long as it is large enough to hold the used amount of data with some headroom).
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Thanks,
I think I will try restoring the image to dis-similar hardware. That might work.
Thanks for all you advice.
Do you know ir I need this pesky driver called Iastoricon.exe. (Intel Rapied Storage Technoloby). Noone on the web seems to have a straight answer?
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Steve, if you restore to different hardware, then you will also need to create and employ the Acronis Universal Restore utility boot media as this is needed to prepare the restored OS to work on different hardware. It does this by using mainly generic device drivers for the hardware included in the OS so that when Windows boots on the new hardware it will detect and select the best drivers for that new hardware, though it may also require that you provide some specific device drivers if AUR cannot identify generic drivers for it. This would tend to be motherboard chipset and disk controller drivers.
The Intel Rapid Storage drivers provide support for RAID devices which is becoming more common on modern systems with NVMe SSD drives which use RAID to benefit from improved performance.
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Hello Steve,
In my case i only selected drive "C".
Could you please check my attachment.
I assume that ATI 2017 is taking a full Backup of my "C" drive (55,90 GB) ?
Thank you again for your appreciated assistance.
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Berny, please see the images in post https://forum.acronis.com/forum/129547#comment-409743 of this topic and make sure that you have the hidden / system partitions selected for your drive C: backup image. They should be given that you have selected the top box for the Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB drive but best to double-check!
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Hello Steve,
Thank you for your reply ...
Please see screenshot when i configure a "Full Backup" job.
Also, please see attached "windows_disk_management" screenshot.
[Off Topic : Full Backup takes +/- 6 minutes ... i was amazed !]
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Berny, the screen images only show that you have 3 hidden partitions - you need to click on "Full partition list" at the bottom on the source selection screen to show that these are selected for your Samsung SSD 850 EVO drive.
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Hello Steve,
This looks OK now ... ?
I am new with ATI , thank you for your great help and also for your patience
Best regards
Berny
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That does look OK Berny, all the required partitions are selected to be included in the backup image.
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Hello Berny,
One important note about the 60GB Sandisk removable drive. According to the screenshot, it is formatted in ExFAT. If you want to store system backups there, you need to format it in NTFS, otherwise the recovery environment of Acronis would not be able to access the backups. If you do not store Acronis system backups there or store just files/folders backups, it is perfectly fine to have it in the ExFAT format.
Regards,
Slava
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Hello Slava,
Thanks a lot for this important notification.
Actually my Backup targets are "D" and "J" but to play safe i wil follow your advice and reformat drive "L" in NTSF.
Best reagards
Berny
EDIT : After format drive L in NTSF
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