Acronis 9 Setup Help

Sony Vaio, Windows XP MCE. 1GB Ram, 400 GB, with 29.0 GB being used. I will be using a Seagate 300 GB external drive, USB 2. I am totally new with this and would like some advice for using True Image 9.0. I want to back up my computer weekly to include everything, including the operating system. Can anyone give me pointers on getting this setup. When I tried I saw the C drive was 372.GB, but only 29.0 is being used, and the Seagate was 279.5. C drive is NTFS and the J (Seagate) drive is Fat 32 and is already partioned. Do I need to change the partition? Thanks for any help.
Sylvia

 

Re: Acronis 9 Sepup Help

I would do 2 things.
Format the external drive to NTFS just to make file monitering easier. It doesn't have the 4 GB restriction that FAT has.
Then run an image backup to the external drive.
I create a folder and name it the date I'm backing up.
Then do a total backup to that folder.
If you want to do a few incremental backups to that same folder weekly after that, fine.
I usually do a full backup once a month and incrementals weekly since not much changes for me.
I then usually keep the last 2 or 3 backups just in case.

 

Re: Acronis 9 Sepup Help

yea! what he said.

 

Looks as if I can't type either (sepup for setup). Thanks so much for the help and I will try this later tonight and post tomorrow if I am successful.
Sylvia

 

Partial success! I tried formatting my external drive but don’t think I was completely successful. Today, I tried backing up my entire C drive (28.9) to the new J drive and it showed that it has one partition (which is what I want, I think) and Fat32. I decided to go ahead and backup and I got the message that it had successfully completed the back up. I was a little surprised that it only took 34 minutes to backup the 28.9GB. My question now is, if I should have a hard drive failure will I be able to restore this back to my NTFS system or do I need to go back and try again to reformat my Seagate external? I had a little trouble following the instructions for reformatting the Seagate. Thanks!
Sylvia

 

Hello Sylvia,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are very sorry for the delay with the response.

First of all, please be aware that we recommend to always use the latest build of the corresponding Acronis True Image version (for Acronis True Image 9.0 Home the latest build number is 3677) which is available for downloading in the Product Updates section of your account at Acronis web site.

You can find the full version name and build number by going to Help -> About... menu in the main program window.

To get access to updates you should create an account then log in and use your serial number to register the software.

Please uninstall any previously installed build by following Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs -> Acronis True Image, prior to installing the latest build.

Please also note that each new build provides better hardware support and some minor problem fixes. We therefore recommend that you always create new Bootable Rescue CD after installing the update.

As for achieving your goal, we recommend that you create a disk\partition image of your entire hard drive on a regular basis (either manually or using a scheduled task) saving the resulting backup archive to your external USB 2.0 hard drive.

Note that there is no actual need to re-format your external USB 2.0 hard drive to NTFS as Acronis True Image 9.0 Home is capable of saving backups to both FAT32 and NTFS formatted hard drives. The only thing you should be aware of is that FAT32 file system has a 4GB maximum file size limitation. If the resulting backup archive is larger than 4GB than it will be automatically split into several parts.

In order to make sure that Acronis True Image 9.0 Home supports your particular external USB 2.0 hard drive please boot your computer from Bootable Rescue CD created using the latest build (3677) of Acronis True Image 9.0 Home and see how the program recognizes this drive, i.e. try browsing the drive by means of the Create Backup, Validate Backup Archive and Restore Data wizards.

In order to make sure that you will be able to restore the backup archive we recommend that you validate this particular backup archive by means of the Validate Backup Archive tool both when the latest build (3677) of Acronis True Image 9.0 Home is running from under Windows and when your computer is booted from Bootable Rescue CD created using the latest build (3677) of Acronis True Image 9.0 Home. If the backup archive validates successfully in both cases then there should not be any problems restoring it.

You can find the detailed instructions on how to perform the above actions in Acronis True Image 9.0 Home User's Guide.

You may also find Acronis True Image 9.0 Home FAQ page helpful.

We also recommend that you take a look at this article containing the illustrated instructions on Acronis True Image 9.0 Home installation and usage.

If you have any further questions concerning Acronis software, please feel free to submit a request for technical support or post any of them on this forum. We will certainly try to help you in resolving any issues.

Thank you.
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Alexey Popov