New User, 3 Questions
I have tried to get thru to customer support using chat and web form, no luck!!!
I would appreciate any help that someone can provide. Still learning computers.
I have three questions:
- What I would like to do is have a backup of my complete hard drive that can be used if I have a complete hard drive failure. I want to be able to restore the complete drive at once with all programs, hidden files and everything. I want to have it up and running with out having to reload Windows and other programs again. Is this possible? If I use the Sector-by Sector option, (do I also need “backup unallocated space”) does this give me the same thing as an ISO file? From what I understand, an ISO file would be able to do this. Is this correct.
- When I check Sector-by-Sector, the “size to backup” increases to the full capacity of the hard drive. But when I check normal compression, the size shown there is the same if I have the sector-by-sector checked or not. Is this because it only copies the files and not the empty sectors? Would my backup file be the size that the normal compression shows or would it be the size of the full capacity of the hard drive? Does my destination disk have to be larger than the full capacity or can it be smaller than that as long as it’s larger than what the compression shows.
- Acronis is installed on my main server. I want to be able to run some test and trial runs to make sure it’s doing what I want it to do. But I cannot have my server down that long. I want to install Acronis on another computer to run tests on. Will I be able to install this and run it with the same license number I have. If I need to get additional licenses, what is the cost of that?
Thanking all in advance for any help you can provide.

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well if you are looking for a way to back up a server and its workstations/clients then Acronis have other products which i am sure you can look at
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Just the hard drive on the server. Not the workstations. I may not be using the correct term. It's not a true server. It's a system that has our main accounting, order entry, inventory etc program on and we use the windows workgroup to network back to it. So all workstations work on that main program but each work station has it's own programs for other things. We just store all the files we use on that one system so that it the only one I have to back up. Is there a better program I should be using?
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is a serious system to back up but TI can do it I am sure. If i put myself in your shoes then I would be looling into lots of options, TI would be one but there are others.
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I'm open to any suggestions you may have. I've got a lot to learn about all of this. If there is something that works a lot better, I would be happy to know about it. I havn't spent that much on this yet, so I can so make a change if needed. Thanks
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OK - if your 'server' is running XP,Homeserver,Vista or W7 then TI 2009/2010 will do what you need. If you are indeed running Server2003 etc then you will need to purchase/use one of the ABR10 products.
To answer your questions generally.
1. A complete disk image will produce a tib file that contains everything that is on your harddrive with the exception of unused space, hibernation and paging files - Windows auto creates these if enabled. You will need another drive to place the images. - TI doesn't produce ISO files for images, though with 2010 you can choose to make zip files, but can't see the advantage in that.
You will need to either:
A) Make a TI Rescue CD to be able to restore your image.
You would normally only choose Sector by Sector imaging if you want to image partitions that contain a non Windows operating system or you know you have a severly damaged hard drive and TI has been complaining about bad sectors. Note if you do this the bad sectors will be carried over to your restored image, though a run of checkdisk should solve that problem.
A sector by sector image will be much larger, almost complete drive size, where as a used sector image (the default) will use compression and obviously only image the sectors that have live information in them.
Technically, evey computer that you have TI on requires a licence - whether if you were to remove it from your 'server' and then install it on a PC in your posession this would break the 'moral intent' of the licence I leave to Acronis and yourself to determine.
As far as I am aware, you will need to pay full licence fee if you have just a couple of computers, but if a large environment then I imagine the sales department may be able to offer you a better deal.
Actually going off tangent, Acronis marketing might like to look at 3 or 5 licence pack deals as Microsoft are about to offer a Family licence pack, Apple already do and a number of other companies offer variations on the theme - my firewall and file manager allow one PC, one Laptop per licence.
B) Activate the Acronis Recovery Start Up Manager, which is like have the CD reside on your hard drive except of course, if the hard drive is stuffed, then so also is the ASRM.
C) Take the plunge and follow Mudcrabs guides on making a VistaPE boot CD which will use Windows drivers and so is slightly more reliable and faster than the Linux Drivers - but try the TI Rescue CD first.
2.
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Just great - where does it have a maximum reply limit stated in this forum :(
Sorry got to leave for work, I'll retype points 2 and 3 later.
I've just realised, points two and three are in the post above, but somehow the formatting has gone to pot between my typing and pressing the save button.
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well SAR i am not the best to ask cos basically I have no idea lol. I been disabled for six years and not been in the business since! I know a bit but of course time takes its toll but there will be people who know better if the post is kept at the top
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Thanks bodgy. It seems you have answered all my questions. Since I am running win XP Pro, This looks like it will do what I need. Since I don't need the sector by sector, I can do this backup image to a USB Flash drive. Just what I wanted. That way I will do a full with Diffs each day after. Will need to see how many I can get on Flash Drive, then just swap out every so often and keep other one off site in case of fire. I already have the bootable rescue disk made. So now I will take a blank hard drive and do a test on my other computer and make sure it works the way I think it will.
Thanks for all your help, both you and bin
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