Recovering to the same disk and backup information.
Hello,
In the Acronis manual it mentions that to be safe you should do a test restore to a backup drive. This is all fine and good, however, if I had my backup information stored on a backup drive, and then recovered in the most basic case to this backup drive, wouldn't my backup information thus be destroyed on the disk I am recovering to by performing a recovery to that drive? If this is the case, it would make sense to use the recovery zone where you have the hidden partition which actually contains the backup information so that a restore doesn't actually overwrite this information.
Thanks.
Justin
Just another idea that gets "lost in translation" when they used the words "backup drive" in that context.
Also considering the probability that many users (me included) don't happen to have any "spare drives" laying about for "testing" purposes. I had a trial by fire since I had to do a complete, unplanned system recovery, which worked.
Restore to spare HD is definitely best but a good second is:
Boot up the TI rescue CD and create the archive using it. This will demonstrate that the CD will boot, the program will run and TI can see the source and target drives and then create the archive.
Validate the archive using the CD. This will show that TI can find the archive and read it from the storage device into RAM and successfully recalculate and compare all the checksums.
These 2 steps pretty well confirm the Linux recovery environment works on the PC and the archive is readable.
As a further test, you can proceed throught the recovery Wizard which will again demonstrate your archive can be found and all the steps necessary with any selections work. When you get to the screen where you have to click Proceed to actually start the restore, CANCEL out instead.
Most people who have a problem doing a restore when the TI CD has never been tested come unstuck because the Linux environment isn't working well on their PC; usually a driver issue. They have created and validated within Windows but the crunch comes when Linux has to be run. Yes, you can get around Linux if you have multiple SATA drives etc but that isn't what the book says to do.
1) Alright, well I have some more questions. What is the relative size usually between the actual data and the backed up data? In other words, if my data I am backing up is 500GB, will I typically be able to create a partition of 100GB to store that backup data?
2) Also, on my second hard drive, do you recommend creating a separate backup partition so that I can restore not only to my original hard drive but to the backup drive itself?
3) Last question, what is the point of Acronis Secure Zone if you could just create a normal partition and get the same functionality on the same drive?
4) If I restore onto a backup drive and say I have one partition of 1TB. But the data I am backing up has two partitions (data and system) will Acronis turn the one TB partition into two partitions on restore? In other words, I want to tell Acronis to manipulate and restore a HARD DRIVE onto the partition specified, and not mess with anything else.
Thanks.
Justin-
1. The compression you get depends on the data files. A typical C drive with some data and a lot of OS and apps will compress to about 0.7 of the original size (number from pre-2010 versions) but is very dependent on data. If the partition contains mostly jpgs, mpegs, rar, zip, compressed exe files then compression will be virtually zero and in some cases will actually increase in size.
2. No. Unless you think you might want to make the drive bootable for some reason. Actually, on my drives bigger than say, 320GB, I always make a 50G partition first and then use the remainder for data. This way I can easily use the drive for an OS drive if I want. Most of them are sitting around with empty 50G partitions though.
3. The SZ was a feature created in the days when HDs were expensive and most PCs only had one drive. It allowed the user to simply create another partition for use with TI. Since the partition isn't a standard Windows partition, it doesn't show up so it less likely to be deleted or fooled with - hence the Secure. If the drive dies, Secure it isn't!
4. When TI creates an image where more than one partition is specified, each partition can be restored independently or they both can be restored together. You cannot merge the partitions by doing a simple restore. If you restore the entire archive, both partitions, onto the drive you will end up with the 2 partitions. TI will delete the single partition before it starts a restore.
I see very little compression (I always use Normal) as Seekforever states, 0.7 is pretty valid for 2010 as well. I have a single internal hard drive 149 GB, about 80 GB on it, and I backup onto a 1 TB external USB drive. The external USB drive is one NTFS partition that I never messed with at all since it is strictly for disk image and data file backups. I always use full disk images, which consist of a hidden utility partition and my main system partition, as well as MBR/Track 0 - this is what is included in one TIB file. You can put multiple partitions in a single backup and they will be put into a single TIB file, although the partitions will be separate. That is why they are "images". So there is no direct relationship between the partitions you are backing up and the partitions on your backup drive. It is best according to the documentation to have a NTFS partition to store the TIB files so the TIB files can remain as individual files for a given backup - they don't have to be split, which can cause confusion.
1. The compression you get depends on the data files. A typical C drive with some data and a lot of OS and apps will compress to about 0.7 of the original size (number from pre-2010 versions) but is very dependent on data. If the partition contains mostly jpgs, mpegs, rar, zip, compressed exe files then compression will be virtually zero and in some cases will actually increase in size.
2. No. Unless you think you might want to make the drive bootable for some reason. Actually, on my drives bigger than say, 320GB, I always make a 50G partition first and then use the remainder for data. This way I can easily use the drive for an OS drive if I want. Most of them are sitting around with empty 50G partitions though.
3. The SZ was a feature created in the days when HDs were expensive and most PCs only had one drive. It allowed the user to simply create another partition for use with TI. Since the partition isn't a standard Windows partition, it doesn't show up so it less likely to be deleted or fooled with - hence the Secure. If the drive dies, Secure it isn't!
4. When TI creates an image where more than one partition is specified, each partition can be restored independently or they both can be restored together. You cannot merge the partitions by doing a simple restore. If you restore the entire archive, both partitions, onto the drive you will end up with the 2 partitions. TI will delete the single partition before it starts a restore.
Regarding 4) When I do a hard disk restore, if I have the separate partition with the backed up information, and then the 1TB partition sitting there, will restoring the "drive" remove ALL partitions on that disk? Can I tell Acronis to only restore in the 1TB PARTITION SPACE? I.E. let Acronis do whatever it wants, but only WITHIN that specified area? Thanks.
If you are restoring a partition to a disk that has multiple partitions, it will display the ones that are suitable to receive the restoration (big enough and don't contain the image being restored). The unsuitable ones should be grayed out.
You then select the partition you wish to restore to and carry on from there. You will probably need to tell TI to mark the partition as active if you want to boot from it. Read all the screens in the Restore Wizard very carefully.
TI should allow you to specify how much of the space you want to use if the space is larger than required to restore the image. You can use it all or some amount of it. The remainder, IIRC, will be left as unallocated space which you could turn into another partiton easily with Windows Disk Management.
You probably are seeing why it is a good idea to practice with a spare HD instead of the real thing!