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Need instructions for creating OS backup to NAS and recover from NAS if Windows not loadable.

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I just purchased ATI 2018 to make a backup of my OS C drive SSD. This would be useful to anyone that has had a hard drive crash.

It probably seems basic, but I can't find in the documentation detailed instructions to backup my Windows C drive SSD with the ability to later recover from the NAS back up if my hard drive crashes.

Do I do a whole-drive back-up, or a clone? What options should I choose? Backup by sector? Place Acronis on media?

How do I recover the NAS backup if the drive crashes? Do I need to use a second computer to recover the OS drive backup? Can ATI 2018 access the NAS directly?

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Guy, there is a wealth of information available in the ATI 2018 User Guide which you can access locally via the ATI GUI by clicking on (?) in the bottom left corner of the GUI, then on Open Help which will open the guide from your disk drive location.

The other source of good information (besides these forums) is the Acronis Knowledgebase - for which there is a link at the bottom of every forum page.

See in particular the following KB documents:

KB 60142: Acronis True Image 2018: how to back up entire computer

KB 60144: Acronis True Image 2018: how to back up files or disks

KB 60131: Acronis True Image 2018: how to restore your computer with WinPE-based or WinRE-based media

KB 60091: Acronis True Image 2018: how Simple bootable media creation mode works

KB 60820: Acronis True Image 2018: how to create bootable media

KB 1540: Difference between Backup and Disk Clone

See also Acronis Article: The Ultimate Guide to Computer Backup and take a browse around the other articles published by Acronis covering similar topics

One important tip is to keep your backups as simple as possible, i.e. do not use Sector-by-Sector mode as this will make much larger backup files and is not necessary.  ATI will switch to this mode if any disk errors are encountered. 

Keep your backups to a single disk (and its partitions) at a time which will make recovery simpler by only having to deal with that single disk, not choose from multiple drives included in the backup.

Create and test your Acronis bootable Rescue Media a long long time before you will ever need to use it in anger!  Make sure you can see all your disk drives that will be needed for recovery.

Use Backup & Recovery in preference to using Cloning unless using cloning after having made a good full backup first!

Guy,  Steve has provided excellent links & guidance.  Here's some additional info:

When creating an OS backup, you must create a "Disk Mode" backup.  Select the OS drive top level box, then select full partition list and make sure all partitions are selected:

DiskModeBackup.jpg

It is your option whether to create full backups only, incremental backups, or differential backups.

In the event of an OS disk crash, accessing your NAS can be a challenge, especially if your NAS is connected through WIFI.

As Steve Recommends: "Create and test your Acronis bootable Rescue Media a long long time before you will ever need to use it in anger!  Make sure you can see all your disk drives that will be needed for recovery."

Sometimes, when using rescue media, you won't be able to access the NAS using the NAS name.  If that is the case, you should then try the NAS IP address.

Another issue is the login credentials for your NAS.  If you map your NAS share drive to a drive letter in Windows, when you boot with rescue media, you will have to manually input the NAS login credentials for the share drive where the backups are located. 

Additionally, if you encrypt and password protect the backup, then you will also have to type in that password when you perform a recovery.

If you have access to another computer that has access to the NAS, then the easiest way to recover is to use the other computer to copy the .tib files from the NAS to a USB drive.  Then attach the USB drive to the computer with with the failed OS drive.  Boot rescue media and perform the restore.   This is how I perform my restore operations.

I would like to repeat Steve's recommendation: "Create and test your Acronis bootable Rescue Media a long long time before you will ever need to use it in anger!  Make sure you can see all your disk drives that will be needed for recovery."

 

Regards,

FtrPilot