Acronis True Image 10 and Vista Ultimate question

Hi all,

I've been using Acronis a little while now to create backups onto an external drive but have always liked to do the following but I'm not too sure how.

Heres my set up, I have a 250GB main C: drive a 500GB D: and a 1TB external.

I'd like to be able to make a secure zone on mt 1TB external drive seeing as thats where I have most space plus it would be practical to put backups on there. What I would like to do is create a secure zone on my external drive and make a rescue DVD to boot from so that in the event of not being able to start my OS up or for whatever other reason I would be able to get everything back as it was before OS, settings, programmes, valuable media etc.

Would this be possible with Acronis? if so how. I have read the user guide but I'm still unsure.

Could someone post a little guide on how to do this please so I could refer to it and get myself acustomed that way it hopefully will become second nature.

Thanks.

 

Placing the Secure Zone on an external drive is not recommended and can cause quite a few problems. It would better to just setup a backup location on the 1TB external and schedule backups to it (or do the backups manually as needed). You will still be able to boot from the rescue cd (or a BartPE cd) and restore your backups if your system becomes unable to start.

 

I see, so this "Secure Zone" could be troublesom.

I have only ever made mirror image backups of my main 250GB C: drive onto my 1TB external drive (I sussed that out myself and it was pretty easy) however the whole making a DVD to rescue everything is where I'm stuck.

Previously when everything has messed up in XP I formated my C: drive, installed Acronis and then got the mirror image back off my external drive that way.

I'm aware however there is a way you can make a rescue disk when things mess up and you can not start up properly by putting a disc in your DVD ROM drive and booting up that way.

I'm not sure how it works though. Can you use DVD-RW discs for this boot disc?

Also what is the procedure for making one of these discs? Would I make a fresh mirror image backup of my entire C: drive as I have been doing and have to then make a new rescue disc each time or would I only have to make it once?

As you can tell I am stuck with this

By the way I do have Nero 7. I do have Acronis True Image Home 10 on CD, would I still need to make a rescue disc? I'm unsure how this all works.

 

The bootable Rescue disk is a CD not a DVD. Look in the Acronis menu for an item that says "Create bootable Rescue Media". The Rescue CD will have the Backup, Recover, and Clone features so if that is all you use you don't even have to have the software installed on your hard drive after you make the Rescue CD.

Yes, you still need the Rescue CD even though you have Nero and TI 10. Remember the Rescue cd is Bootable so in case something goes awry with your OS or even your hard drive, you would use the Rescue CD to Recover a Backup that hopefully you have on an external device. And you can Recover the Backup Image to a brand new drive.

 

There should be an entry on the main screen as well as under Tools perhaps that says something like Create bootable rescue media. Click on that an follow the wizard prompts. The contents of this disk aren't very large and are burned to a CD not a DVD. You can use a RW for this purpose to verify it works.

This creates a bootable CD that you can use to perform TI functions when your PC is dead. It is a very good idea to test this CD with your archives to ensure you can see them on the backup device, validate them and ideally, the best test, do an actual restore preferably to a spare HD. When you have succesfully done the latter, you can say your backup mechanism works with some degree of certaintly.

A new rescue CD should be created for every new version and build of TI so you have the latest fixes and features available to you when you use it.

There is a way of putting bootable files onto a DVD with an image and that can be found in the backup options. I never backup directly to DVD so I don't use it.

 

Hello, thank you for your replys!

Thanks for clarifying how it works I'm understanding it better now.

I see you can create Acronis Bootable Rescue Media following Tools-> Create Acronis Bootable Rescue Media.

I shall purchase some blank CD-RW discs then seeing as you say it's a small ammount of info on the rescue disc. I've only got blank DVD-RW discs at the moment you see.

Thanks for clarifying about if I will need to make a new "rescue disc" each time I make a new backup on my external drive. When I get some blank CD-RW discs i'll test this all to see if it works.

How long would you say it takes to restore say 250GB of data?

Previosuly when everything went pear shaped with XP what I did was format my C: drive, install Acronis True Image and went to the option where you can restore from a location. But with this rescue disc I see it would take away the need to even bother format as you could simply boot and go straight to where your backup is and restore it.

Previosuly it used to take about just over an hour to get 250GB of data back as it was on my main C: drive.

 

Hello Toney_Ericsson,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Please notice that, as stated in chapter 10 "Creating Bootable Media" of the respective User's Guide, you can use CD-R/RW blank, DVD+R/RW blank, several formatted diskettes (the wizard will tell you the exact number), or any other media your computer can boot from, such as a Zip drive, to create Acronis Bootable Rescue Media.
The restoration time greately depends of the specific computer configuration.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov