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Drive imaging from inside Windows?

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At the risk of sounding a wimp, I always image my system partition from a bootable medium rather than from inside Windows. I just don't trust the imaging process to image the system partition while I am currently using it. This paranoia goes back years when it was simply not possible to image the system directory currently in use.

I really want to kick this paranoia. So can people reassure me that a system partition imaged while the system OS is running, is just the same as the partition imaged while running from an external media.

Thank you :)

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Kim, later versions of ATI than your listed 2014 version now use the Microsoft VSS snapshot service to capture locked system data for backup imaging and this works very well.

There is no problem with a little paranoia when it comes to having multiple different types of backup images and methods, so you could continue your existing process while also testing out the VSS snapshot method.  You would still need to use the bootable rescue media for doing recovery for either type of backup image created.

I've been having great success with windows live imaging via Acronis True Image backup and recovery. However, never put your data into one basket of eggs. Use the windows ATI backups for daily automated backups to avoid needing to worry about manually managing them for the most part. Hopefully all goes well for recovery time, which, in my case, has been great.

However, continue with the occasional offline backup as needed too, and preferably to a different disk drive. If done less frequently (in conjunction with your windows ATI backups) and to a different disk, you now have a supplemental backup, just in case, although, perhaps not quite as current as the most recent daily online windows backup.  But if this one  is only used offline and on a different disk, it may be the perfect situation to recover from if you ever are impacted by nasty ransomware or something like. 

You can never have too many backup types, frequency or backup locations. The more you have, the more options you have for recovery. Disks fail over time (the original data OS drive or the backup location drive) and/or are susceptible to corruption, malware, user error, bad luck, etc. If one gets messed up for any reason, hopefully your secondary or third option isn't impacted and can be your fail safe.

 

Thanks guys. I will take your advice and take both courses of action, and check out VSS. Belt and braces and all that.

Btw, I do have ATI 2019 on all my Win10 systems, only 2014 on my old XP system. Maybe the newer purchase doesn't show up under this account.

Thanks again.

Kim, just edit your Forum profile to add 2019 to your list of Products.  We don't have any access to your Acronis account information to see what products you have.