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What are archives and do I need them?

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What are archives?

I made three full backups: one with a clean install of Windows and updates, one with all of programs installed properly, and a third with the system tweaked just how I like it.

I just made three full backups and saved them to a second partition on my hard drive, and then moved them to a network attached storage drive. Is it bad to move them?

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Archives are the files created by TI and yes you need them. What version of TI and what OS do you have?
I suggest you boot from the recovery CD and make sure that you can actually see the network attached drive. Its not bad to move them unless you can't get to them when needed.

So an image = an archive?

What's the attached screenshot want to know when it asks me about using a new or old backup archive?

It's TI Home 2010 on Windows 7 x64.

I have multiple backups, and could always get them from another computer if one were to crash.

Attachment Size
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Its asking if you want to create a new backup archive, a complete new image. If you select the other choice you will add an incremental update to the original backup archive.
I suggest you peruse Grover's True Image Guides http://forum.acronis.com/forum/3426 Section 1Q and Section 8 AH - AD for more detailed explanations and to understand the differences. I personally use only Full Backups each time when I run my nightly backup. I also recommend that you validate your backups to make sure that you won't have an issue when it time to recover from one of them.

So, if I have the space and only want to use full backups, I would tell Acronis to make a new backup archive each time?

Fulls are the safer than incremental or differential backups because they don't rely on anything else, right?

How do I validate therm?

I will check out the guides. Seems like there is a lot of info there.

Incremental backups depend on the entire chain being valid. If one in the chain is bad then everything after that will not be recoverable. Differentials are are the opposite. Each differential does not depend on the previous one.
Validation can be run from the TI interface or from a booted cd. Do read the guides Grover has compiled a lot of very useful information.