Back up physical drive or partition?

Moving the iTunes and Photoshop Elements to another partition would be a good move.

I am a solid advocate of having full disk backups but that does not mean every backup has to be of that type. I mix them up but I always have one full disk backup available.

If I need to replace my disk, I use the full disk backup and then supplement the recovery with the latest from C. I have several tasks set. One to backup my full disk and other tasks to backup my full disk and do incremental backups to get the newly changed data into backup.

To each his own but having a full disk backup available means it makes reproducing that onto a new disk becomes much easier. Not everyone feels as I do and some do partition backups only and the later version of TI do include MBR. I have also read that Photoshop has disk identification involved but I am not a user of it. Maybe they were talking about the full Photoshop rather than the Elements version.

My system disk is a 3 partition disk as well. Most of my personal data is on partition 2.

For those having lots of pictures, video's or audio files, many of the forum contributors also simply additionally copy these files onto another disk for additional safe keeping and do not regularly use TrueImage for a continual backup of this type files.

GroverH,

thanks for the reply. When you say "Moving the iTunes and Photoshop Elements to another partition would be a good move.", you mean from where they are to the unused space on the 'C' drive or off of the physical 'C' drive?

I think you're saying put them on a different partition on the physical 'C' drive and do a full physical drive backup to have around. Then on an ongoing basis, have separate backup routines for the 'C' partition and the other partition on the 'C" drive (with iTunes and Photoshop).

Finally, you're saying that Acronis TI Home 2010 WOULD back up the MBR even on a partition backup so I would be safe in having just a 'C' partition backup if I needed to restore my boot partition.

Thanks again!!!

A partition backup of C includes the MBR.

I partition my disk as OS and Apps in one partition, big games (eg Flight Simulator) in a second and data on a third.

Normally it is a good idea to keep the OS and apps in one partition because installing writes to the registry and various files are scattered around C. For this reason I do not advocate putting OS in one partition and apps in another.

Having said that, big games and some other apps, never change once they are loaded and they do take a lot of space. Nowdays space isn't much of an issue but it does slow down imaging the C drive. There isn't much of a need to back them up because the installation CDs are available if there is a disaster.

The other way of looking at it is that on a modern PC imaging a GB takes less than a minute more.

I never keep important data files on C and I would certainly include pictures and purchased music files in that category. I like to be able to blow away the OS or never be concerned if it has a problem because my data files are there.

Mike wrote:

Finally, you're saying that Acronis TI Home 2010 WOULD back up the MBR even on a partition backup so I would be safe in having just a 'C' partition backup if I needed to restore my boot partition.

Perform your own test. Create a backup of only your system partition (C). Then simulate doing a restore. I believe you will find that the MBR/track0 is one of the restore options from that backup. Unless you are restoring your system partition to a different disk, restoring the MBR is usually NOT necessary. A backup of only the system partition is meant as a supplement. You still need the occasional full disk option backup. A disk option backup provides the best safety net for a complete recovery to a new disk. Not all backups need to be a disk option backup but some of them should be of this type. If you have a separate boot partition, I would include this in every backup.

As for the iTunes and Elements: What I am saying is that any of your data which is static and rarely changes could be moved to a different partition such as a Data only partition and have its own drive letter. It rarely make sense to backup the same data over and over when that date rarely changes. Get the data on a backup (or 2) onto a separate disk (if possible) and then either move them or use the exclude feature and exclude them from being included in the backup. You may need a couple different tasks to fill your needs.

All type variations is possible and personal preferences does enter the procedures.

Thanks for all the great comments and insights!

One more question that's a little off the core subject but I thought I'd ask as it would probably benefit a lot of others as well.

It sounds like nobody is real concerned about installing applications on the same physical hard drive as the OS. I have always heard/thought that you'd get better performance putting them on separate physical drives. I like the backup strategies put forth here and being able to back up the OS and apps as part of a single physical drive backup.

So, my question is: Is it worth putting the apps on a separate hard drive from from the OS or (in your experience) is the performance hit so negligible as to not worry about it? I am talking Windows 7 here.

Thanks again in advance!

My unscientific opinion, unscientific because the only way to know is to measure it in your personal setup and method of working. Take any benchmarks and other user's experience with a grain of salt - you have to measure on your own system. The measurement has to be done with a stopwatch or equivalent timing measurement since most people cannot accurately judge anything under about 10-15%. Also, you have to measure more than once because of caching.

Even though you install the app to another drive, it still writes entries into the registry on C. It also may write configuration/workfiles onto C and you may or may not be able to easily move them.

Windows over the years has been optomized for accessing commonly used apps.

The things you want to worry about the speed are things that are frequently accessed which is why putting the pagefile on a separate drive is a common recommendation. Do you really need to worry about starting up Adobe Elements or whatever a couple of times a day?

I used to run around moving the pagefile, shutting off services that aren't required, defragging frequently and I came to the conclusion for the way I use the PC it just wasn't worth the trouble. If I was a highly competitive gamer I might think differently but for my use, no. My ony interest in installing very large apps that virtually never change like games on another partition/drive is to reduce imaging time and space.

It is very doubtful you would experience any significant increase in performance and would be very dependant on the application. If the application and windows needed almost constant heavy disk access then may be you would see some benefit but that is not often the case. It is far less messy to have the operating system, (especially Windows) and the applications on one partition.

For info - I have 8 partitions on Disk1; C:System, D:Data, E:Downloaded Software, F:TV, G:Photo, H:Video, I:Music, J:JunkStuff, plus an ASZ, and Disk2 is just for Backups.

My Data partition contains My Documents and my Outlook Folders, so my C partition contains only the system and applications apart from what windows has to maintain under Documents & Settings on it.

I use Winzip backup jobs to backup any settings and configs I want to keep on the C drive on a daily basis and backup all partitions seperatley and manually.

This way I can restore any System (C) and use the Zips to update any settings so that the system appears pretty much up to date no matter which system I have restored from.