Is this a viable method?

[courtsteve]

Please improve upon or shoot holes in this manner of backup.
Situation:
Small social club setting. OS is XP Pro. Usage is very light but on 24/7. Office tasks (couple of entries weekly) , key card system logging/programming with little or no software adds over original install. Need to be almost bulletproof with ease of recovery.
I have a machine set up with two internal single partition HDs (one with OS and software install and other a blank bootable formatted HD). Thought was to clone original install using TI9 and then disconnect backup drive leaving in case. Do weekly backups of data files (incrementally or differental) to removable media. Every month or so I would reconnect the backup drive and clone again. This way if disaster strikes I have them disconnect the primary drive, hook up the backup and reinstall the data from removable media. Is this a bad idea? How can I improve upon it?
Thanks for any advice.

[DwnNdrty]

Just to be clear, is your "blank bootable" drive the same as the "backup" drive or do you have an external drive as the backup drive? And by "removable media" do you mean optical media?

[courtsteve]

Yes the "blank bootable" is the slave internal HD . Same GB as master but different brand. Yes "removable media is either a DVD or a CD. Machine has both burners available.

[BillyPig]

After cloning, you must try booting to the clone - to prove that the process was successful.

Pig

[Acronis Support]

Hello courtsteve,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

Please be aware that there are two approaches available:

Clone Disk - migrates/copies the entire contents of one disk drive to another;

Backup - creates a special archive file for backup and disaster recovery purposes;

Please take a look at this FAQ article (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/faq/disk-clone-tool/) explaining the difference between Clone Disk and Backup approaches in more detail.

Actually, Clone Disk approach is usually used to upgrade the hard drive (e.g. install a larger disk), while Backup approach is basically dedicated for the complete data backup and disaster recovery purposes. Since you are interested in backing up your hard drive for the disaster recovery purposes, we would recommend you to follow Backup approach.

Moreover, there are several advantages of creating an image over the disk cloning procedure such as: you can create an image without rebooting your PC, image creation can be scheduled for the particular point in time, Acronis True Image allows you to create incremental and differential images, image archive contains only the actual data and so it has a smaller size, images are ordinary files and so they can be stored on any type of the supported media, etc. However, the final choice is always up to your needs.

You can find more information on how to use Acronis True Image in the respective User's Guide (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/download/docs/).

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

[courtsteve]

Thanks for the reply.
I was shooting for an easy recover since the technical level of the users is pretty low and I am not much better software wise. I also am not available always. Figured I could document step by step to open case, unplug primary HD, plug in backup HD and reboot to an operating system with programs already installed. Then it would just be a matter of migrating the data that had been backed up on a schedule to optical media onto the new drive.
I know that I am not using TI to anywhere near its full power this way and I will have to remember to clone every few months. Fortunately new software is never installed and the data files are few and small.
Will think again about what I want to do.