Backing up image to external drive

I've spent hours studying the True Imega guide and trying to create an image of My Computer or the entire C drive to a Seagate 750G external drive (H. I've downloaded/installed the latest build for TI 10, but this program is difficult for me; not as horrific as Norton Ghost was which crashed my machine, but still confusing. I very simply want to create an image (not just copy to) preferably My Computer or, if not possible, then my entire C drive to the H external drive. I've set a backup location for the external drive and click on C: and H: when setting it up, thinking that it would copy from C to H drive but keep getting the message: "You chose to save you archive file to the same partition that is being backed up. It is highly recommended that you copy this archive to a different partition or removable media later. Otherwise you will not be able to restore your data in the event that the partition becomes corrupted. There's a lot of free space on the Seagate 750G drive to backup to. Sorry for this lengthy post. Thanks for any help anybody can give me. ec

 

Have a look at the guides listed here:
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=168165

I don't use the latest TI so I don't have backup locations. However, they are not necessary for the product to work so I would suggest just making an archive directly to the external drive. You can then get fancier as you get more familiar with TI.

 

Hello 2northwoods,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please notice that on the "Partition selection" screen of the Backup Wizard you only need to select the drives/partitions you want to back up (in your case, C. Then, on "Backup Archive location" screen you need to choose where your archive will be saved (in your case, H. If you want to use Acronis Backup Location feature, then choose one from the separate menu near the top of the tree (you need to create a Backup Location first).

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

Using Backup locations:

Vers 11 User Manual: Chapter 3.5 and Chapter 8
Note particularly the last paragraph under Ch 3.5 Setting rules for backup locations which reads:
"When creating a backup task, be sure to select the backup location from the Backup
Locations list, near the top of the directory tree. Doing so will enable the above processing
of backups. If you select a backup location as a normal folder, the processing will not be
performed."


Create and Configure Backup Locations Incremental.txt
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=172470#13

Download the text file by CatFan432 mentioned above.
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=189433&d=1177754188

Sample Picture of my backup locations March 27
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=198860&d=1206669836

Picture of my backup folders (when not using backup locations).
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=193151&stc=1&d=1188786467

 

open true image
1. pick "backup"
2. select what you want to backup "my computer" press next
3. check the box of the partition you want backup "c" drive press next
4. on the backup archive location screen, browse to your 750gb external drive where you want to store your image. press next.
5. on next screen choose "create a new full backup archive" press next
6. choose "use default options" , press next
7. write comments if needed or leave blank, press next.
8. press "proceed" and your backup will begin.

Don't bother reading the directions, it has too much information that doesn't pertain to doing a simple backup. Basically just choose the default settings and you should get a good backup everytime. Don't bother backing up the MBR or doing validations. Also don't bother doing incrementals or differentials it's more confusing to keep track of, just do your weekly image backup, any files you need to save on a daily/hourly basis just copy and paste to your external.

As long as your backup completes with no errors, it's good. If you want to check it, just mount it and browse through it. That's quicker than doing a validation.

 

This is not so, unfortunately, and some folks have found out the hard way, when trying to do a restore ATI could not see the backup soruce or the target drive or both or was unable to reliably read/write one of the drives.

Regardless of whether creating a backup generates errors and regardless of whether a backup validates, you should, at least once attempt a restore or at least go so far through the restore wizard that you pick the source drive for the backup file and the target (the drive to be restored) -- if you can get that far (and you had no errors while creating hte backup image, then you are 99% certain that the ATI restore disk will work onyour hardware. Short of htat, it's a crap shoot -- there's lots ofhardware that this or that backup program will not work on when doing a restore even though it works when creating a backup. This is because most of the backup programs use linux for the os when restoring and even though the program works under window (when you create the backup) it might not work under linux on your hardware.