Backing up my operating system

Unfortunately, your capture does not provide enough information about your system to say yes or no. We do not know which which operating system nor how many partitions. For your own information, you should invoke the Windows Disk Management tool and use graphical view to see how many partitions you have and in what order. This will enable you to see what needs to be included inside your backup. The type of backup that you want is one that includes all the partitions displayed in the graphical view. TrueImage has 3 different ways of displaying the partitions to be checked. The all inclusive option or disk mode option is shown at the bottom of this illustration. You want to select the disk mode option ad check mark your system disk. That check will include all the partitions inside the backup. Having such a backup will provide you with the tools to do a restore to the same or another disk and have the target disk bootable and the same as your source disk.

Note disk mode at the bottom of this picture. Duplicate that setting and you will have the the type backup that you need to create a new disk--if needed. Picture applicable to 2012 AND 2011 versions.

Also note the help file under Useful links along the left margin of this webpage.

Hi GroverH,
Thanks very much for your response, it was very helpful and much appreciated.

I looked at the Windows Disk Management, and I have attached a screenshot of it. It seems that there are two physical internal disks (0 and 1), with the OS on Disk 0.

It seems that both disks have a 55MB partition and then another partition which hold C and E.

I back up the files on E separately and so only want to use Acronis to back up the operating system and the files contained on C. Following your advice I have now changed the configuration so that the whole of Disk 0 is backed up (screenshot attached). When I switch back to the partition view, none of the partitions are checked, but I assume that this configuration will lead to both of the partitions on Disk 0 getting backed up.

I'm not sure if I also need to check the "Image Creation Mode"->"Back up sector-by-sector" option.

I wonder if you could please let me know whether it is now configured correctly.

Thanks again for your help. I really appreciate it.

Your new configuration is correct. Once you click on disk mode and select disk 0, there is no need to return to any other partition mode. However, after selecting dixk 0, most likely, you will have to grab hold of the top borders of the window and make the window much much smaller vertically so that the final result will show the bottom parts of the main screen--much like you saw when you first opened the program as shown below.  By the way, what are your plans for type type of backups planned? Are all going to be full backups; or full plus incremental ; or full plus differential?  What seems to work best is custom backups where you select to keep x number of chains.

Thanks very much for confirming that.

In regards to the plan for backups, I was thinking of doing differential backups on the system disk.

The backup is for my home PC, and I plan to store a copy of the full backup offsite and I also want to be able to take the latest version offsite easily too. My idea is that I can keep a copy of the latest differential with me on an USB stick. When the differential gets too large, I will take another full backup, store that offsite again, and then start taking differentials again.

In the event of a disaster (e.g. fire), I'll have the original full version, and the latest differential version, and in the event of a crash, I'll have the full history (i.e. all the differentials) locally.

The assumption underpinning this is that the latest differential will be a lot smaller than a large number of incrementals. I'm not 100% sure that is a correct assumption, but it seems to be from the test backups that I have done so far.

Well, that is my plan at the moment. But if you have any thoughts or advice, I'd be very keen to hear it.

Thanks again for your help so far.

If your system is a dual boot system, my instructions may be incomplete to achieve a bootable replacement disk.

Immediately upon reading this response, I would strongly suggest that you assign some meaningful names as  your volume names to both your C and E partitions.  Currently, you have identical 160GB disks with identical type partition arrangements. With this configuration, it would be extremely easy to make a mistake and overlay the partition on the wrong disk.

To avoid such a mistake, having differing names on the C & E partitions plus knowing their USED SPACE would be very helpful either when restoring of cloning your disks.

Right click on Drive C and choose properties. Assign a name in the open window. I like to include Windows drive letter as part of the volume name. Some examples would be (11 characters or less and no spaces or periods) but  names are  your choice
Win7_C       or         XPPro_C

Repeat the process for Drive E:
Win7_old_E        or          XPPro_old_E       or       Data_E

The backup copy on the USB would need to have the full backup plus any differential you choose in order to be restored. Be sure  the differential is validated as part of the backup procedure.  Validating the backup after moving would probably fail but  most likely could still be restored. A standalone validation does  not seem to work when parts of the original backup are not present but the same files s can be restoreable. If restoring a differential file, the original full must be inside the same folder.

As a safety precaution, after you copy your backup chain onto an alternate disk for offsite storage, then use the bootable CD and do a validation process on the chain. For a test, try the validation first on just the full and then validation the full plus any chains you  have on the alternate disk. There are times when the copy process does not do a good job of copying which is one purpose of the test.

Below is an example of a differential type backup scheme. Adjust the 6 dif and 4 chains to your own needs.

Star Rock,

You should try the following to increase your level of confidence. Get your local backup to go with a few differentials. Then, with Windows Explorer, copy the full backup and the last differential to another directory. Then, right click on the copy of the last differential, choose archive, validate. See if ATI goes throught the validation without complaining.
If this works, do another test from the recovery CD. This time, try also to test what happens when the full copy and the differential copy are not in the same directory. If you can validate, you should be in good shape.

As far as I am concerned, I wouldn't take the risks you are taking: the simple copy of a TIB file can corrupt it, AND typically, ATI is fragile when you separate parts of a chain (although in theory, it shouldn't be the case for differential backups). My advice would be to keep the backup chains together. YOu could for example have 2 backup disks of the same size, assign a fixed drive letter to each drive, create 2 backup tasks, and alternate running the backups at will.

Pat L wrote:

I wouldn't take the risks you are taking: the simple copy of a TIB file can corrupt it,

Really? Is this a widespread problem? I've copied some of my backup images from disk to disk various times, and never had a problem restoring from them.

This is not a systematic issue, of course, because simple OS-driven are reliable, but not fault exempt. For most files, a marginal error in the file is not corrupting it. But for images, with their chksum embedded into them, the slightest data change will be picked up. So the best practice is either to use software that verifies the integrity of the copy, or to have ATI validate the copied file.