Can Acronis 2012 be set to automatically clone on a schedule?
What I'm looking for is a program that can clone a hdd automatically on a schedule, can 2012 do this? I've used 2010 before & know that I can manually clone the hdd, but what I really want is automation.
Thanks,
Steve
I think this is a reasonable thing to wish for--if you could automatically clone your primary HDD on a schedule, then if you had a failure it would be a simple matter to boot to the clone. Backing to a .tib file means "work" to restore.
Makes sense to me--ATIH won't do this? Gosh it does a lot of things I DON'T need it to do...!
No. Please, no. Don't use Clone for this.
Don't use Clone. Do a full disk Backup, selecting the entire disk, and a Restore. The end result will be the same as Clone, but with many advantages.
A full disk backup, selecting the disk checkbox rather than individual partitions, includes everything. It includes everything that a clone would include.
The difference is that while a clone immediately writes that information a single time to another drive, a backup is saved as a compressed .tib archive. As such, multiple .tib archives may be saved to a single backup drive, allowing for greater redundancy, security and flexibility.
Once a full disk image .tib archive is restored to a drive, the result is the same as if that drive had been the target of a clone done on the date and time that the backup archive was created.
Clone is riskier because we've seen situations where users mistakenly choose the wrong drive to clone from and to, thus wiping out their system drive.
Not to mention, if you want to run on an automated schedule then you presumably are leaving the clone attached to the PC. But once you boot with both the original and the clone attached, one of the hdisk will no longer be bootable -- this is a windows things -- you can't have too bootable windows disk attached at boot time or it will mark one of them not a system disk.
To opt for cloning over doing backups is to forgo all the advantages of backups for the time you'll save on the rare occasion of needing to do a full hdisk restore. It fits some users needs but should be chosen only after careful consideration.
Thank you for your insight regarding my question.
I agree w/tuttle and SH, but I was thinking in terms of an ADDITIONAL backup (cloned drive) and NOT to make it the sole backup for a system. I assume Scott that you are right about making a 2nd (bootable disk clone) being problematic for Windows, although I'd expect Acronis to figure-out how to make it an "alternate boot" just as I alternate between W7, WXPx64Pro, and ATIH (iso).
I don't know sttubs how much you know about backups; I suppose it would be dumb for Acronis to make "auto/scheduled cloning" an option as some people might rely on it as their sole backup, which negates the many advantages of multiple .tib files on externat drive(s).
No, it's a windows thing. It won't allow two windows boot disks on the same machine.