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USING CLONING AS SAFEGUARD

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Beginner
Posts: 3
Comments: 4

Is this correct:?

  1. Clone my current drive I now have to an external hard drive.
  2. If my current drive crashes then transfer from the external drive to the new drive/computer.
  3. Then recover the back up to the new drive/comput

Thanks.

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Hello, from your statements above, it seems that you are confusing cloning with backup and recovery.

A clone of a drive, i.e. your current OS drive, will create an exact duplicate copy of the source drive on a second drive of the same or greater size.

In the event that your current OS drive crashes - with a clone, you would remove the current drive, replace it with the cloned drive and be at the point you were when the clone was created.  

With Backup and Recovery, you do not make a clone of the source drive, instead you are making a backup archive image of the source drive, so the scenario works a little differently.

You would make an initial full backup of your current drive where the backup archive image (file.TIB) is stored on your external hard drive.

Over time you would create additional incremental or differential and/or further full backup images of your current drive and store these also on your external hard drive.

Now, in the event that your current OS drive crashes, you would replace the failed drive with a new replacement drive, boot from the Acronis bootable rescue media and restore the latest backup archive image to the new replacement drive.  You would then be at the point you were when the latest backup image was created, i.e. a few days earlier, a week or two ago, and not perhaps one year or more back when the clone was done.

The important point in all of this is that you should make and test the Acronis bootable rescue media <<before>> you encounter any disk drive crash and ensure that you can see both the current OS drive and your external drive to be able to perform a restore / recovery when that may be needed.

See article: 117004: Great Acronis "How-To" videos and other Acronis Resources for some further information and video tutorials.

Beginner
Posts: 3
Comments: 4

So. clone to the external hard drive, then if the current hard drive crashes, transfer the clone to the new hard drive. Then run the resuce media and restore the latest backup?

Sorry, but no!

You create a backup image on your external hard drive.

If your current drive fails, you replace it with a new drive.

Then you boot from the rescue media and restore the backup image from the external drive to the new drive.

 

Beginner
Posts: 3
Comments: 4

So, if I use the rescue media and restore the backup image, the same operating system, and applications are restored?

Yes, whatever was included in the backup image when you created it will be restored, so if you create a full backup of your Windows OS and all applications, then that is what will be restored to your replacement drive.

One word of caution: Please check the default Exclusions for your backup task, to check that no required data will be excluded that you may need to recover later, such as your Chrome or Firefox browser data or System Restore data which is all excluded by default by Acronis.  System Restore data is held in the System Volume Information folders.

Beginner
Posts: 3
Comments: 4

Is it better to have the universal restore on a flash drive instead of the rescue media as it seems more versitle and the back up image can be recovered onto a replcement harddrive/computer in the event my current one were to crash?

Thanks.

It is a matter of personal choice what media you prefer to use.  USB flash drives are more versatile and can allow for modifications but sometimes optical media is easier to use, especially if a system has difficulty in booting from USB devices.

Beginner
Posts: 3
Comments: 4

I have successfully installed the Universal Restore onto a flash drive. I rebooted and the Acronis Universal Restore booted up from the flash drive. I verified my latest backup.

So do I understand correctly...

If my current hard drive crashes, I boot up the Universal Restore then from there recover my latest back up?

Then all my operating systems and applications will function as they do now? Without need to reinstall any software/applications?

This can be done on my current computer/hard drive as well as any other computer hard drive?

Thanks.

Universal restore is only needed if restoring an image from one piece of hardware to another as it is used to generalize drivers and make the OS transfer bootable.

If you are restoring a backup image to a new hard drive (or the same hard drive) in the same hardware (motherboard) as where the original backup was taken from, you do not need Universal Restore at all.  You would just use the media creator option in Acronis and build it to a UsB drive (or .iso or disc - USB is preferable though in most cases).  YOu would then boot to that media and perform your restore with the launched Acronis application.

If you've not done this, I would suggest giving it some practice runs by taking a backup image of the original drive and restoring it to a DIFFERENT drive, then swap that drive into where the original was adn try booting to it.  IF that work, then just swap back in the original drive and you can either keep the second restored drive as a quick replacement drive, or just restore that image whenever needed since you know that it is working and has been restored before. 

Here are some videos that may help:

Create bootable media:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eed3nBc5jXw (the music is terrible)

Use bootable media to backup and restore a full disk image:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw-YoKl24G4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0KKeh-ue-Y