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Backing up multiple computers

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I have 7 Windows based computers that I want to backup onto an external WD 10TB harddrive.  Windows flavors include XP, 7 and 10.   

I do not want to install Acronis on each computer, so I was wondering if it is possible to connect the external drive to a computer, reboot the computer using the external drive as a Windows 10 boot drive that has Acronis already installed and then use that to backup the non-booted internal drives on the computer?   

 

If this is not possible, and I am forced to install Acronis on each computer, how does Acronis handle all 7 backup files?   Like, if one computer crashes, how do I easily recover that machine using my external harddrive?

 

Thank you for any advice and help with this. 

 

Chris Jones

Austin, TX

0 Users found this helpful

Chris, welcome to these public User Forums.

I would suggest considering the Acronis Survival Kit approach for your situation here but approach this with due care and consideration so as to protect any data you already have on your 10TB drive.

Some caveats here:

ATI 2019 will offer to create a Survival Kit FAT32 (2GB) partition on your 10TB drive when making a new backup to the drive.  This will be created using the Windows Recovery Environment files of the computer running ATI 2019, so will match the architecture of that computer, i.e. 64-bit WinPE from a Windows 10 system.

Your 10TB drive requires GPT partitioning to be visible / usable, so ideally all your computers should support GPT and use the same processor architecture.

I would recommend testing with a small spare USB stick (2GB min / 32GB max size) by creating the Simple Acronis Rescue Media and using it to boot each of your different computers.

If you still have any 32-bit computers, these will not boot from 64-bit rescue media but you may be able to use the Advanced option in the Rescue Media Builder tool to create a USB version of the Linux media for those systems to boot from on a space USB stick.

KB 61639: Acronis True Image 2019: How to create Acronis Survival Kit

KB 61738: Acronis True Image 2019: Survival Kit disk partition for backups is limited to 2TB on BIOS-booted systems

Article: The Acronis Survival Kit

See KB 61632: Acronis True Image 2019: how to create bootable media

See KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media