System image restore for dummies?
Hi. I bought ATI yesterday, and I must say that I was hoping that the product was easier to use than it is turning out to be. I am finding that instead of solving my problem (i.e. I want to create a cloned image of my laptop system with the system image on a specially-bought 2tb drive and bootable software on a specially bought USB stick), it is forcing me to take up a new sphere of activity which I don't have time to pursue.
I cannot find any simple, step-by-step guide to help me achieve what I presume is the reason most people buy this software: to restore a full system image from a backup.
All the guides are unhelpfully split among diverse pages in various places in the Acronis system, and the big 'BACKUP' section of the software itself SEEMS kind of dumbed-down, but actually isn't. You can shoot yourself in the foot by not observing the choices under 'options', whilst the 'Create a survival kit' link (which is present about half the time I open the interface) does terrifying things with no warning, such as reporting that it is 'Locking the disk' - which disk?
The truth is that the process seems to need study and research, yet this fact is hidden under the appearance of a wizard-driven UI.
Does anyone know of a link to single guide that can point out all the pitfalls and run the user (me) through the steps needed to create a backup and bootable media?


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Gotta agree with Steve. You should really read some of the initial tutorials and become familiar with the product. Backup / Restore is not something you just want to fly by the seat of your pants if your data is important to you. Overall, the processes are quite easy once you have familiarized yourself with them though.
YouTube can be really helpful too. These are all videos posted by other Acronis users - I'm not endorsing any of them, but referencing as I feel they have some of what you're looking for and can be nice references. There are tons of these types of videos on YouTube that can help you learn the product. Generally speaking... Anything 2017 or newer should be pretty similar in process (for instance the 2018 link below is the same process in 2019 for cloning).
Acronis True Image 2019 - Review | JoeteckTips
ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE 2019 - IN DEPTH | Joetecktips
How to Clone Your HDD to SSD with Acronis True Image 2018
Some of my own thoughts...
01) Create your rescue media and verify you can boot it on your system successfully. This is the key to restoring data and/or the Operating System (OS) if you you have a hardware or OS failure and need to do a restore to get back to running. Unfortunately, even though creating the media is simple, ensuring you can boot it on your computer may take some trial and error depending on the bios settings configured on your motherboard since manufacturers configure things like secure-boot by default in some instances.
02) Once you've verified you can boot recovery media, make some test backups of different nature (for instance, a small file/folder backup with just data, another of just the Operating system hard drive).
03) Test restoring files/folders from those backups in Windows to a NEW/DIfferent location (like an external hard drive) to make sure you can restore as expected.
04) If you really want to be prepared for a system failure, also test your bootable recovery media by completing a successful restore from a backup to a DIFFERENT hard drive than the original and see if you can boot it. Don't test over original data if you do not need to though as that could be an unnecessary risk!!!!!!) A test is critical to ensure it is working correctly and as expected before you find yourself in a situation where you need to recover and have no other option when the PC is not working.
05) Always create a backup, even if you plan to clone to another disk. A backup is a recovery point that can save your butt if things go bad for any reason. Cloning is "on the fly" and won't save you if something goes wrong in the process. (What could go wrong?... power failure at the wrong time... or, oops I cloned the wrong drive and wiped out both disks now).
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