bootable media test
could somebody tell me how I can test whether the backup cd I have created work.
The only way to be 100% sure will be to either make a clone using the CD or make an image and restore it with the CD - you'll need one extra spare hard drive for the clone or restoring options.
Colin,
Can you please explain (in lay terms, as much as possible...) what exactly is the difference, for practical purposes, between cloning a disk or getting a disk image?
Thank you.
Not Colin, but:
In TI terms, a clone is making a copy of an entire physical disk. All partitions on the disk are copied to the target(new) disk and anything that is on the target disk is overwritten. The main intent of cloning is replacing and old drive with a new drive - you make a clone and then remove the old drive and use the new drive as your disk. But since you have the original and the target drive, you have created a backup so some people use this method for backing up. However, since you can only have 1 copy of the old on the target, it is rather wasteful of the second disk for just one backup.
An image is a file of the data or the partition or drive you selected for imaging. You can select a single partition, several partitions or the whole drive when creating an image. The file is written to the target drive or even DVDs. Since it is just a file, you can have as many of them as the target drive will hold and this gives you a history of your backups allowing you to go back in time to restore your system to its state on an earlier date - handy if you realize some app you installed is suspected of causing problems or perhaps you got or suspect a virus. There is nothing special about an image file other than it tends to be very large compared to other files.
I mentioned writing an archive to DVD; it is possible but by far the preferred media is another hard-drive such as an USB drive which can be taken off-line for safe storage. DVDs are slower and if your archive consists of more than 2 or 3 you are going to drive yourself nuts doing a restore with them because TI does not read all of one and then ask for the next one, it requests the various disks in what appears to be a random fashion and the amount of swapping disks in and out can be great.
Besides images, TI can backup selected files and folders and it can do incremental and differential backups for both images and files and folders. You need to have an image to restore a bootable disk. I suggest you read the TI User Guide for more info or some of Groverh's guides - search any post by Groverh and you will find a link to his guides under his signature or look here.
Seekforever,
First of all, let me thank you much for your prompt, detailed and very clear reply to my question. Those had been two concepts about which I could never clearly tell the differences. Now I can. And I owe it to you.
That link you provided is already in my favorites as a reference for future Acronis questions. I took a glance at it and checked into a few links. I will be simply stating the obvious by saying it is just great. I already saw enough to say that it makes full justice to the title Groverh's chose for it -- "Index of Accumulated Wisdom by Many"... Indeed! I will be checking back quite often, I'm sure, to that repository of wisdom and information.
As final comment, I would just like to add that those are the kinds of things, little as they may look, that make one realize, once in a while, that the world ain't so bad, after all, as it sometimes seems to be...
Kudos for you guys!