When/Why do people mount

I am curious as to when/why-for what purposes people have a need to mount. I have my entire hard drive backed up to an external hard drive weekly and do incrementals on a daily basis. I need to recover a file or folder from time to time but have yet to imagine when it might be most beneficial to mount instead. I am sure it serves a valuable purpose but just not sure when it would be best for me.

Thanks

 

Sounds like your backup is a Files and Folders backup which allows you to selectively recover files when needed.

Many people only make images of their drives which has the advantage that you can restore your bootable C drive in total and it will boot and run. Images are also a lot faster to create and restore.

The only way to restore files from an image rather than restore the entire partition is to mount the image. Edit: This is not correct, you can restore files from an image without mounting it

If your desire is to be able to quickly restore your Windows HD should it fail, you need to be using images.

 

Sounds like I need to check what I am doing. As I undersatood myself I am making an image of my entire hard drive to a dedicated seperate external hard drive (only used for backup) so that in the event of total failure I could do a full restore of the entire OS including all files folders applications-everything- and if necessary boot from disk in order to do so. I assumed that if the master hard drive failed then I could simply install a new hard drive do a full restore and be back in business.
When I do a full back up I am backing up nearly 50G which is what explorer shows if being used on the 120G hard drive.

Maybe I have fooled myself!

A few days ago I did the following. On my desktop there was a .doc file. I renamed it. I went thru restore to get to ths incremental drive where I knew it should be. I restored it to the same location (desktop) using its original name and then compaired it to the renamed identical file (which I had renamed) and both were identical.

Historically, I thought people mounted to do the same as I did above but have not seen the need for myself. That is why I have been curious about when/why people mount. Now it seems I must be doing something wrong but I am still uncertain as to what it is. I liked the way it was working for me but it seems I need to change my way or face a potential future disaster. If I do a full restore I want OS and all.

Thanks

 

By all means recheck your procedure to make sure you are making an image BUTmy posting was incorrect!!!

You can indeed restore a file by opening an image and recovering without mounting as you described; I just did it.

You can add me to the list of those wondering where the mount is required.

 

Thanks for responding! I am glad to dicover that I am not completely wrong. Some moths ago, with the way I think I am still doing it, I had to do a full restore and everything came back just fine. I have tried to mount,a few time without sucess, and wondered if I am mounted why did I do it and what would I want to do if I could.

Very pleased to know that others, like myself, are not certain about when/why to best use this feature.

 

Mounting has been around for a while although I believe it was called plugging in versions prior to 9. Also, with version 9 came the ability to do a Files and Folders backup so it might be the Files and Folders recovery method permits files to be restored from images as well. Just a guess.

 

I use the "mount" feature because that is the only thing I can do using TI 9 from windows. When I try to backup an image or files, my computer just "hangs" when I get to the last window and click on "proceed". I have seen a few threads where others have had this problem, but alas none of the fixes work for me, and I have given up trying. I am happy with TI the way it is.
I have to use my rescue disk to recover or make an image, which is fine with me, but, if I need to restore a file from an old image, I mount the disk and then copy and paste the file.

 

How?

F.

 

Image backup allows files to be recovered.
Files and folders backup is not useful as you cannot restore a system from a files and folders backup.

And, at least as of TI 9, TI was not able to backup all files using a files and folders backup. See http://www.standards.com/index.html?CreateFileFailure.

 

Using Recovery.

 

Hi there foghorne,

For TI 9.0/10.0, use the Restore Data Wizard to select the appropriate Disk/Partition image, check the "Restore specified files or folders" radio button and then click "Next" .

Regards

EDIT: Oops! sorry Kapiti. You're obviously a faster worker than me .

 

Just different time zones.

 

Thanks Kapiti and Menorcaman.

I'd never noticed you could do that. I'm obviously stuck in my ways with mounting my data backups.

F.

 

I obviously didn't notice either. Roger Macon thought he was doing it wrong and ended up enriching our minds!

 

For me:

Mount in read/write mode to "add or delete" files or folders to/from the image. I use quotes as the old file is not deleted and a new imaged is created with your changes much like an incremental TIB file. If you need to restore you treat it like any other incremental and select the date of your retore.

You can mount an image on a server and share that mounted drive or perhaps just a folder in read mode only for a group of users to access archival project documents.

If you have a image that you are repeatedly retrieving/restoring files from; leave it mounted in read only mode and just go get the old file(s) with a drag and drop. If you are doing Q&A ( which Acronis seems not to understand too much - nudge, nudge ) many testers can access test against the same common data and the test data is secure. Sure, a lot of this could be done with read only permissions on a share with read only files but if you have them in a image already - just use it.

 

Worth bearing in mind that you can only Mount a Disk/Partition image whilst running TI in Windows mode. Therefore, if your Windows installation has crashed and you need to restore some essential system or data files then you can boot from the rescue CD and carry out a specified files or folders restore. HOWEVER, TI 9.x has some issues when restoring files or folders in the Linux based boot rescue environment (see this <previous thread for details>) and I have no idea whether this is fixed in TI 10.0 Home.

Regards

 

one of the main reasons that I mount is to allow me to compare.
I use Beyond Compare 2 www.scootersoftware.com.
having made an image and then burned to DVD I can then mount the image on the DVD and let Beyond compare check the the files on the DVD are the same as those on the computer (data drive or partition).

I should point out that I never verify when I make an image. Over the years I have only have a couple of bad images and that was because of a bad Acronis build and when imaging to a suspect USB.

 

Maybe I am not to far off as a result of not using MOUNT. It has been helpful to read how some use MOUNT. I see that TSE and Long View have specific methods of use that is beneficial to their method of operation. I look forward to hearing how others use MOUNT. I am sure it is an asset.

Maybe Acronis will step in and explain other MOUNT benifits. I would like to fully understand its value so I can take advantage of all which it has to offer.

 

Roger,

You can rest easy, you're not doing anything wrong.

Prior to version 9, you had to mount to get individual files back from an image. Back then we only had full partition or full disk images. Version 9 introduced some new features including Files/Folders backups and the ability to restore specific files from a full partition image. The mounting feature was retained.

I find mounting faster than going through the restore wizard to get back individual files. But then, I only make full partition or full disk images (never incemental/differential). Maybe mounting would be slower for you. Having many incrementals may be why you are having difficulty mounting. I don't know for sure. I also trust mounting and copying more than restoring individual files from a full partition image. There were some issues with file creation dates and security setting in the past. I think most of them have been worked out now.

Everyone uses the program differently. It's nice to have options.

 

I previously pointed this out somewhere in these forums, but I'll rereat it here because it is very, very important.

Suppose you discover that your files have been infected by malware.

Mounting allows you to:

1. Inspect the files in a backup archive to determine whether they too have been infected.

2. Disinfect/remove malware in the archive.

With TI 9 you can do both of the above.
Ditto for ShadowProtect.
Not so with, say, Ghost 10, as Ghost 10 does not save changes to mounted volumes.

For the above reason alone, I would not use any backup program that did not allow mounting of volumes, so you could at least inspect the mounted volumes. And I would ALWAYS do image-based, not file-based, backup.

 

Good point Howard.

Correct - provided you select the "Mount in read/write mode" option. Likewise for TI 10.0 Home.

 

I don't see a read/write selection when I mount my image. Can someone take me by the hand and show me where it is. I just mounted my image twice and don't see a place to select read/write. I looked through the options also I do remember seeing it quite a while ago, I thought it must have been in an older build. I am using version 9.0 build
3.677 Is it selected by default? I have had no problems mounting my image and copying and pasting. Have I been lucky?

 

Go into the Mount command Wizard. After you select the image, and assign the drive letter you will get a screen asking if read-only or R/W. When you copy and paste you are just reading the archive and pasting to your HD. The R/W allows you to modify the archive. The modification is not done to the original but by including the changes in an incremental.

 

Read/write means that you can change the image, it's got nothing to do with your regular drives.

Watch the screens carefully and you will see a screen that offers you a choice.

P.S. If you are using windows 2000, the TI mount option of read-only is a fiction, as Winows 2000 does not supportread only, instead TI just ignores the changes and makes you believe that it is read-only.

 

Is this the window that you are refering to? The next window asks me if I want to proceed.