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True Image Newbie Question Re: Full PC vs. Disc Partiton Back-Up

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Hi :-)

I just started to use Acronis TI 2017.

I am confused about the difference between a Full PC vs. a Disc Partition Backup.

What am I losing by only doing a Disc Partition Backup? Are all my installed drivers included in a Disc/P Backup?

I made a backup of my Disc. It is the only lettered disc on my HDD. The backup includes:

C: Which includes my OS (Win 1067 64X) my programs , docs, downloads etc. e.g., everything to operate my system.(I assume).

Recovery Partitions

EFI System Partition.

Is that all that I need ?

I ask because there is a nightmare story on another forum where a member made a Full PC Backup. When he tested Restore, he accidentally ticked the "restore whole disk" option, which automatically selected "restore MBR and first track 0". the restore resulted in a non bootable OS, not surprisingly, since his OS is a UEFI with secure boot system. (Acronis Support Rep. is participating in that thread.)

If he had not checked "restore MBR and first track 0", would he have done a Disc Partition Restore, or would it have included something additional?

In other words, if I make a Full PC Backup and on Restore I do not check "restore MBR and first track 0" but do check all the partitions named in my Disc Partition Backup, would I add anything to my restore other than I would by just doing a restore of my Disc Partition Back Up ??

Thanks for having taken the time to read this :-)

 

 

0 Users found this helpful

thunderhawk, welcome to these user forums.

If you only have the one installed disk drive in your computer, and have no other drives connected externally by USB etc, then there should be no difference between doing an Entire PC backup versus doing a Disks & Partition backup.

The key difference here is if you do have multiple disk drives connected (internally or externally), then Entire PC can mean exactly what it says - everything connected!

In terms of your listed partitions, the list sounds about right as you will need your hidden EFI partition along with your Windows OS partition at a minimum, you may also have a hidden Microsoft System Reserved partition that should also be included though there has been debate in these forums about the purpose of this partition and its placement.  The key when making a Disks & Partitions backup is to ensure that you are looking at the Full Partition List view - if you see Full Partition List shown at the bottom of the Source selection panel, then you are actually looking at the Short Partition List - this is a toggle, so clicking on this link will change to the view you clicked for.

The Recovery partitions you listed are created each time that Windows does an upgrade, i.e. the Windows 10 Anniversary Update (aka 1607) would have created a Recovery partition to allow for the upgrade to be rolled back or recovered, so the decision on whether to restore these partitions depends on whether you are likely to want to use such Windows recovery or repair features.

With regards to restoring the MBR and Track 0 depends on the type of recovery being performed - if you are restoring back to the same disk drive, then these are not normally needed to be restored, but if you are restoring to a new disk drive (unused, formatted) then they will be needed even for an EFI system, as the MBR will point to the EFI partition to enable the boot process.

Thanks Steve for taking the time to write such a thorough and clearly written explanation :)

Appreciate it.