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New User - Several questions

Thread solved

Howdy,

I have several initial questions for the community, lest I "choose poorly."  I will appreciate your helpful pointers!

I'm starting to use ATI 2021 (build 32010) after last using the 2009-2014 ATI versions.  I'm looking forward to it.  However, I'm not an expert at disk drives, WinPE (whatever that is), etc.  I've got lots of computer experience from hardware, firmware, and assembly code, to several coding languages, to designing billion dollar world-wide computer systems and telecommunications systems.  Just not disk backup technology.

My situation is very simple: one system.  Microsoft Surface Pro 3 with Windows 10 (build 19041) with UEFI and all updates applied.  8Gb RAM and 250Gb single SSD drive, about half full.  I have not tweaked the OS or system beyond stock setup.  I have a few USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 flash drives (8Gb, 16Gb, 128Gb) on hand and an external USB 3.0 1Tb drive.  Here are my questions (after reading a lot of the help articles and community threads).

A. I want to start ATI, make a backup, then stop running it.  I don't want it running constantly, backing up in the background, backing up to clouds, etc.  I don't even want it monitoring for malware and all of those fancy new features.  I just want an on-demand backup!  I installed ATI 2021 and ran it to make a full backup of the disk onto a thumb drive.  I verified that and all seemed to go well.  I made a Recovery thumb drive and it will boot okay.

I noticed that ATI shows up in my Windows list of running programs.  How do I turn that off?

I also noticed that the ATI status pop-up that comes up when I right-click on my Windows 10 list of running programs (show hidden icons) states that Zoom and Webex are protected, but I thought I had turned off the optional 3-month protection feature.

The same status pop-up states that the backup has been paused.  I thought it was done...

B. I read somewhere that ATI wont create bootable media (of various flavors) on drives larger that 16Gb.  Is there such a limitation?

C. I've noticed that there are several different types of backups that can be made and at least two different bootable drive technologies.  Here are some scenarios that I would like to be able to handle.  What are the Acronis/ATI functions I should use for each?

1. The content of my PC's C: disk gets ruined, but the drive hardware itself is okay.

2. My PC wont boot from the C: drive, but I think the data on the disk is probably readable.

3. My PC's C: disk fails and I had to replace it in the same PC.

4. My entire PC is lost or destroyed so I buy another Windows 10-based PC.

5. My entire PC is lost or destroyed so I buy a non-Windows PC

6. I have used a product called Carbonite for years.  I understand it backs up just data files, and does so all the time.  Should I exclude it from the ATI backup?  If I had to restore my files, would Carbonite be useful?

D. It is unclear to me what ATI functions will cost me money beyond the original license.  What would cause that?

Thanks everyone!!!

Dave Hejde
Fairview Heights, IL USA

0 Users found this helpful

David, welcome to these public User Forums.

A. I want to start ATI, make a backup, then stop running it.  I don't want it running constantly, backing up in the background, backing up to clouds, etc.  I don't even want it monitoring for malware and all of those fancy new features.  I just want an on-demand backup!  I installed ATI 2021 and ran it to make a full backup of the disk onto a thumb drive.  I verified that and all seemed to go well.  I made a Recovery thumb drive and it will boot okay.

I noticed that ATI shows up in my Windows list of running programs.  How do I turn that off?

I also noticed that the ATI status pop-up that comes up when I right-click on my Windows 10 list of running programs (show hidden icons) states that Zoom and Webex are protected, but I thought I had turned off the optional 3-month protection feature.

The same status pop-up states that the backup has been paused.  I thought it was done...

Sorry, but when ATI 2021 is installed it has a range of associated processes and services that will continue to run in the background.

If you really want an on-demand backup then you would need to boot your PC from the Acronis Rescue Media and do it from that media completely outside of Windows 10.

You can elect to turn off all the new Protection features 'permanently' but this still leaves all the background services and some processes running!  Many users have complained about this, including the MVP's in this forum!

You should check the status of your Backup task in the ATI GUI to see what that says?  In particular, check the Schedule options to ensure that you have not accepted the default settings which would have the task run daily!

B. I read somewhere that ATI wont create bootable media (of various flavors) on drives larger that 16Gb.  Is there such a limitation?

The restriction is 32GB max size for bootable USB sticks and is set by Microsoft not Acronis.

You can create an Acronis Survival Kit on much larger external USB disk drives such as your USB 3 1TB HDD drive.

C. I've noticed that there are several different types of backups that can be made and at least two different bootable drive technologies.  Here are some scenarios that I would like to be able to handle.  What are the Acronis/ATI functions I should use for each?

1. The content of my PC's C: disk gets ruined, but the drive hardware itself is okay.

2. My PC wont boot from the C: drive, but I think the data on the disk is probably readable.

3. My PC's C: disk fails and I had to replace it in the same PC.

4. My entire PC is lost or destroyed so I buy another Windows 10-based PC.

5. My entire PC is lost or destroyed so I buy a non-Windows PC

6. I have used a product called Carbonite for years.  I understand it backs up just data files, and does so all the time.  Should I exclude it from the ATI backup?  If I had to restore my files, would Carbonite be useful?

D. It is unclear to me what ATI functions will cost me money beyond the original license.  What would cause that?

Disks & Partitions backups are intended to allow the recovery of whole disk drives and would be recommended to use for 1. 2. 3. and 4.  This type of backup captures all the content of the source disk drive.

Files & Folders backups are intended to allow specific types of data to be captured, i.e. Documents, Images, Videos, Music etc.  This allows for different backup schedules to be used for user data as is appropriate.

Acronis does not allow for migrating whole disk backups to non-Windows PC platforms, and only offers the True Image application for Windows and Mac PC's.

I have no knowledge about Carbonite, but there should be no reason not to continue to use this alongside ATI provided that there are no conflicts over access to data.

If you have a perpetual license, then there is no further costs unless you choose to take the 3-month Trial of the new Cyber Protect feature which would then require a subscription to continue with.  Acronis Cloud is sold as a Subscription service and cannot be added to a perpetual license system separately.

Answer to question A:  You can start Acronis True Image and create a single backup and then stop True Image until you find it necessary to create another backup.  Unfortunately, even if you go into the settings of True Image and turn everything off the services and routines continue to run in the background.  The program isn't doing anything but the services are still running.  Even the earlier versions of True Image had stuff running in the background, but it was not as noticeable as True Image 2021.  The only way, that I am aware of, you can do what you are wanting to do is to install True Image 2021, make your rescue media, uninstall the True Image program from your computer, boot your machine up on the bootable rescue disk and then make your backup.  

Answer to question B:  I am not aware of any such limitation.  I have used 32GB flash drives all the way up to 128GB flash drives as bootable rescue disks and they worked just fine. 

Answer to question C:  1 thru 3 - If you create a partition backup then an image of your disk is made that contains all of your files, programs, bootable partitions, and most of the serial numbers on your programs.  All you have to do is to boot your machine up off of the rescue disk and restore the backup to the existing drive or a replacement disk if you had to replace the drive.

Answer to question C: 4 and 5 - If you are wanting to recover your data files from a previous image you need to mount the drive or browse the image with windows explorer and find the files that you are interested in recovering and cut and paste them from the backup to a folder on your new machine.  The new machine would have come with a working copy of an operating system so you wouldn't want to restore your entire backup to that particular machine.  There is a way, called universal restore, to restore the old backup, but I won't discuss it because it would effectively wipe out your new operating system and any programs on the disk.  As for the non windows pc you may have to copy the files onto a removeable disk that the other system can read and then copy the files over to the new machine.

Carbonite is essentially a file synchronizion program where any changes made to a data file are copied to the cloud and should be recoverable.  I have used True Image for many many years and I have no use for a program like Carbonite.  I basically have multiple True Image backups and can recover virtually any file that is saved to disc on my machine.  Now will True Image peacefully co-exist with Carbonite?  That I do not know.

Answer to question D:  If you purchased a perpetual license then there is no additional cost.  If you purchased a subscription license then once a year you will have to renew your license.  With a subscription license you have to be careful if you want to always use the same version of the software.  If you upgrade the program then you may overwrite your version with a newer version of the software. 

Steve Smith wrote:
The restriction is 32GB max size for bootable USB sticks and is set by Microsoft not Acronis.
@Steve Smith, Apparently Microsoft doesn't enforce their own restrictions or they have changed because I just created a bootable WinPE Rescue Disc on a 128GB flash drive using True Image 2021 and it booted up just fine.  I have an assortment of flash drives and when I need to create a Rescue Disc I just grab one without regard to the size of the flash drive and to date I have not encountered any issues.

Virgil, please see KB 58108: Acronis products: using USB sticks with more than 32GB capacity - which has links to information from Microsoft.  It can be a limitation with some BIOS firmware here too.

Wow you guys. Thank you so much for your expertise!

One lingering question is, for my situation, when would I create a bootable media vs. rescue media vs. universal restore?

Thanks again!

Dave

David, bootable media / rescue media are effectively the same thing, and ideally you should create this media long before you may need to use it for any recovery purposes.

Universal restore is only needed in specific circumstances when needing to try to migrate your OS backup image to a computer which has different hardware from that of the original PC, but even then, if both computers use the same edition of Windows 10, then AUR is not often needed due to improved hardware handling in the OS itself.

Rescue media can take several different forms, it can be a bootable USB memory stick or a DVD disc which can be created using the Acronis Rescue Media Builder program in the Tools section of the ATI GUI. 

Alternatively, you can create an Acronis Survival Kit on an external USB disk drive, where the drive becomes dual-purpose by being able to be used to boot your PC and also be used as storage for your backup image files, so able to be used for both Backup and for Recovery purposes.

KB 65508: Acronis True Image 2021: how to create bootable media

The option to create a Survival Kit is only offered when you are creating a new Disks & Partitions (or Entire PC) type backup task and are setting the Destination for the task to a suitable external USB drive that can be used for this purpose.
See KB 61639: Acronis True Image: how to create Acronis Survival Kit - for more information on the process.
Also KB 61738: Acronis True Image: Survival Kit disk partition for backups is limited to 2TB on BIOS-booted systems
And Acronis Article:  The Acronis Survival Kit