Creating New Backup

[RCope1]

Hello all, just a quick question, after my hard drive crashed, and after painstakingly reloading everything, I purchased Acronis, (It works great by the way) I have made one full backup and have 3 incrementals, now after getting my system running great with the upgrade to SP2 and all the other crap, I again would like to make a new backup from this point, do I delete the original and all 3 incrementals? or what? I just dont want all these backups floating around that arent what I want to reload anyway, someone give some direction here before I proceed! Thanks

[CatFan432]

The basic advice I could offer is never delete a backup or disk image until you have a new one that has passed the validation process. It does no harm to keep some older backups as long as space is not an issue.

[acro]

When creating the new Image select Full Image and not Incremental in the menu options.

This will create a new fully independent Image.

I use a separate partition on the HD to store Images and create a separate folder for each Image, including Incrementals, in advance.
When I select that folder, assuming its an empty folder, it will automatically default to Full and not Incremental Image in the Image creation sequence.

I'm not sure where you are storing the Images but if you can access them and delete them your latest Image will still be intact and available.

You could undertake a dummy run and go through the sequence of restoring your new Image to reassure yourself it is available and stop short of the actual restoration.

It pays to verify the Image of course but if you are storing them on a HD I've never had one fail yet.

The above applies to V8 and I assume the same logic will apply to later versions.

From your description it could pay you to keep the pre SP2 Image in case you need it.
It depends how much storage capacity you have and how cautious you are.
Its much easier to restore an Image than re-install the OS.

[seekforever]

I make my primary images to a second internal HD and keep the old ones until I need the space. I copy selected images such as the one you had prior to SP2 installation and the one after SP2 installation to an external drive. I might also consider burning them to DVD and then throwing them in an old spindle pack just in case I need it. Likely will never even put them back in the drive but who cares, they are a security blanket.

I always split my images so they fit on a DVD just in case I want to do a burn.

Pay close attention to what Catfan432 said!