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do it the old, simple way?

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Hi folks,

I am new to Acronis 2017 and need help to find out the simple way to do backup and restore.

I was using an old version of Acronis on my Windows XP laptop. My XP laptop has two partitions, the C drive is for all system files and programs, and D for all my data files (which I backup every week). Before I install any software, I always use Acronis to create a full backup of the C drive on my D drive, and if anything goes wrong during installation, I simply use Acronis to restore the original C drive to its pre-installation status. I am a very non-technical person, and this has been working extremely well for me, and I don’t even have to read a manual!

 

Recently, I get my new Windows 10 laptop. I set up partitions like my old XP laptop. I also bought Acronis True Image 2017, hoping that I may continue to enjoy the safety of mind during all these setup and installation process. However, I find that  Acronis True Image 2017 is much more complicated than its XP predecessor, and its manual is somewhat confusing (at least to a non-technical like me). What make it worse is that while playing with this product, I created many backups and then deleted them.

 

My question is, can I do it the old way: create a single-version backup of C drive on my D drive (or an external drive), and use it for possible future restore, or do I still have to find out where is my original full-backup (which I really don’t know)?

 

Thank you for your patience, any help will be highly appreciated.

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Yes, you can make a one-off backup task - under the Schedule Tab select 'do not schedule' then once the settings are complete, mannually run the task (click ". If there a substantial changes to your system, you can run the task again (in this situation of would set up the task as a 'single version scheme' in the back-up scheme tab. Under the advanvce tab I would also select validation to be run after the task is performed and re-run once a month.

Ian

Hi Ian, thank you for your advice. And I did it as you said. And this file showed up in my D drive: My partitions_full_b5_s1_v1.

As I tried to see how it might work in restoring my C disk, I went to backup, then click "Recover disks", and what I see puzzles me:

the partitions tab is highlighted, under "Backup" is a long name (HFS**********), with Used space of 238 GB, and under it are three items to be selected: 

EFI System Partition, used space 42 MB;

Local Disk (C:) used space 44 GB;

Recovery Partition, used space 301 MB;

and the Backup version at the top right corner of the screen does show the time when I did the backup; however,

the name of the file that I just backed up on the D drive is not there. 

Now, if I just want to revert to the backed up C drive after a failed software installation, shall I select all the three items mentioned above, or simply the Local Disk (C)? Also, will this recovery action affect my data file on my D drive?

 

Thanks again!

HI Sam,

I would recommend that you do a full restore to a new/different disk to verify the backup and the contents.  By using a different disk, you can preserve the original disk and if things are not as expected, you just pop the original back in and try again.  If/when you do this, I woudl recommend you completely remove the original disk (just in case) and put the new/test disk in it's place.  Then do your recovery, boot back into the bios to make sure the boot order is correct and then boot the disk and see how it goes.

I would not recommedn doing any restores over the original disk (with the current data and OS), just in case - if things do go bad or don't end up as expected, you don't want to blow away your current data where you would still be in good shape and could work to get things correct. 

As for the recovery, if the disk is going into the same machine, recover the entire disk - don't even click on the parition option.  It will restore all paritions, exactly as they were backed up and that is essentially what you would want in your recovery anyway.  

Is your D: drive a seperate disk, or a partition of the main disk where C: also lives?  If it is on the same disk, and you are doing a full disk recovery, it should include all paritions, to include C and D.  If D is it's own disk, then recovering the hard drive with just C: would not impact your D: drive (unless you accidentally tell it to recover to the wrong disk and overwrite the D: disk drive instead of the main OS drive). 

Last, what type of file is missing in your backup?  There are default exclusions when backing up in Windows.  Also, some files are written to MEMORY and not to the disk until they are physcially saved.  PST's are often not backed up when they are open because they are committed to MEMORY and not the hard drive.