Any suggestions whether to backup or clone

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truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
Beginner
Posts: 2
Comments: 8

I apologize if this is posted in the wrong thread.

I have Acronis T.I. 2009 and have never used it at all. It is still in the wrapper.

Here is what I am trying to do.
-Make a clean install of XP OS, and Sony recovery disc on new drive, without cloning, and still be able to return programs without having to install each program-appliaction with an install disc.

a) I am concerned that if I just clone the entire drive, and reinstall it on a new drive, then all the corrupted bits and pieces that accumulate over the years will come along with the it.

b) I want to save programs-applications (Word Suite, Epson Printer Program, and things like that) and their files, and then reinstall them back onto a new drive, without having to go through the process of reinstalling each program (about 15 of them) by each disc. I already have documents and photos sitting on the external.

Q 1) Is there a way of doing that? I mean if I backup those programs to an external, does it mean I will not have to reinstall the original program on the new drive.

Q 2) Or is there a way to instead of cloning the entire drive that I can clone specific programs and their files using acronis?

Here are my resources and current actions.
-XP Pro disc
-Recovery DVD that I just made from the laptop.
-External USB hard drive
-Acronis TI 2009
-All of the original program-application discs.
-The original drive had been defrag'd and check disc preformed, virus checked, and I have deleted all unnecessary junk that I can idenitfy.

Q3) Am I being too cautious about the potential of carrying back over to the new drive, corrupted or bad data bits and sectors from the old drive?

Q4)Should I just Clone the darn thing? Again I hate to do that if there is a reasonable workaround and then I can be assured of having a clean and fresh drive by doing a clean install.

Your thoughts, comments, suggestions or even direction to a link that addresses this is greatly appreciated.

I am just trying to get as much information now as possible before hand, instead of blindly doing this and scattering for a solution(s)

Best Regards

Sat, 10/09/2010 - 07:46
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truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
Frequent Poster
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Comments: 570

First some info on terminology as True Image understands it:
Clone - clone every partition on an existing (source) physical drive to another drive of equal or larger size (target). This is intended to be used when upgrading from an old drive to a new drive. Since you do end up with 2 "copies" it can be used as a backup.

Image - make an image of a whole physical drive, a partition or selected partitions. The image is written to backup media as a file or files and will only contain the information in the "used" sectors. It can also be compressed. This is the intended method for backing up bootable drives. Restoring it will provide a bootable disk and all applications will be operational since the related files and registry are part of the restored image.

Data backup, also called a files and folders backup. Backs up data files. Using this method will not result in a bootable disk on restore even if every file on the partition is copied. If you restore the folders for an application, the application will not run because the registry entries will not be restored. Strictly for data files only.

Restoring an image does not necessarily put the sectors back in the same location that they came from and the resulting restored disk may be reasonably defragged but there are no guarantees. It will honor any bad sector information the target drive has. The image has a significant advantage over a TI clone for backing up bootable drives - you can put as many images as will fit on the backup media so you can keep a history of installations, etc. The target disk from a TI clone only contains the clone of the source at that time. You cannot do more than one clone to the drive and it must be the entire physical drive - you cannot select individual partitions.

If your source drive for an image was deemed in good condition with chkdsk or whatever, then you should have no problems since the "used" sectors will be good. The unused sectors are not copied in a normal image. TI will only copy all the sectors in a partition if it cannot understand the format of the drive because it is unsupported or the disk file structure is seriously damaged such that TI can't recognize it. A new feature was added in TI2010 (IIRC), that allows the user to force an image of all the sectors in a partition. Such an image is very large and takes more time to complete depending on how many unused sectors there are compared to the used sectors.

Go with an image and you will be fine. Note that you should ensure you can recover with the TI rescue CD since it is Linux and sometimes the drivers aren't a good fit for some hardware. Best way by far is to do a test restore to a spare HD - spare in case it fails which means you will be left with a disk with a deleted partition.

Be sure to register your copy with Acronis and this will let you download the latest build for your version.

Sat, 10/09/2010 - 14:43
truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
Beginner
Posts: 2
Comments: 8

Wow. Thank you so much for the information. Terminology makes sense to me now, so I will probably go with the image. I will still have to reload the applications?

Thanks again

Sat, 10/09/2010 - 17:31
truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
Frequent Poster
Posts: 2
Comments: 570

If you have the applications installed on the PC's C drive (or whatever is your boot drive) then they are restored when the image is restored and you don't have to install anything.

You can make images of the state of the drive at various stages along the way such as a bare Windows install, Windows with some apps, Windows with more apps, etc. I used to do that but I found just keeping the last several images is what I really wanted. Going back to a bare Windows install and then having to update it with the patches and then put all the apps on wasn't that useful. Usually, if you are having trouble you are wanting a very current image that doesn't contain the "trouble".

There is another lesson here. Never keep only one image of your drive always have a history to fall back on for a couple of reasons. One, you may discover a virus or some problem and have to go back a few versions to find an image that doesn't contain it. Two, having a disk develop a bad sector is not unheard of and you don't want that to happen to your one and only image. I, in fact, encountered the bad sector problem on a laptop and had to go back about 3 images to find a good one.

Sat, 10/09/2010 - 18:35