backup information

Hello
I have been reading the post's on Acronis and have decided to purchase. I have never used "any kind" of backup and hope that some of you will be kind enough to "walk" me through what is/will be required from the very beginning.
Example:
What do I need to do/learn about my system "windows xp home sp1" (will install sp2 after I backup current system), it is working real good.
I have the following on my computer:
-Windows xp home sp1
-pentium 4 2.8 ghz cpu
-512 mb ram
-IE 6.0
-OE 6.0
-motherboard- gigbyte ga-8pe1000-g
-1 20 gb hd samsung sv2044d ultra-ata/66, 5400 rpm
-1 80 gb hd wdc800bbfja0 ide, 7200 rpm
- sony dvd rw dru-530a (multi format)-+rw/-+R, cd/dvd recorder plus other
-sonic recordnow, mydvd
-cd rom
My OS is currently on the 20 gb hd, which has the drive letter D: (instead of drive letter C:, the tech that did my upgrade to xp put it this way by mistake, and a lot of other mistakes). So (1) reason I want to use acronis is to correct this and to save my current system config.
What is/are the procedures for "backing up Hard drive", will I need to reformat, partition both drives, what goes on each drive, should the OS be on a seperate drive/partition, should IE and other programs/applications and files be on a seperate hdd or partition.
Will Acronis TI work with my sony dvd/cd and with sonic software.
Is there any other hardware/software I "may need" for Acronis to work correctly.

Thanks to any who may help
Bill

 

Hello again, It seems as if I have an additional problem Here.

Was my post so poorly stated that it drew no interest from someone with knowledge of the requirements of Acronis.
Was it posted in the wrong forum.
Was it too vague.

Well I thank the ones who did view it even if they did not care to reply.

Bill

 

Um yeah. Those things

A bunch of it isn't Acronis related, (philosophical questions of how to partition drives for windows etc.) and the rest, I thought, would be obvious when you read the manual or ran the product. Acronis TI is pretty straight-forward.

Then there was the whole D: issue and I had no idea where you thought Acronis fit into that.

I'd start with the Acronis manual, which you can download before buying.

 

Yes definitely read the manual. After reading that, especially any tasks you know you want to do with TI, then come back here with specific questions.
The answer to most of your questions so far is "It depends" LOL.
There are also much better resources on the net for things such as hard drive / file system structure philosophy. I would suggest doing some googling to learn about those items.
Keep in mind that you can't just image your D drive then restore it as a C drive and expect your software to work. All of the shortcuts, registry entries, etc that were created during system and software installations will not have changed and everything will still think itself is on D when it's on C. IOW, it won't work. If it was that easy, you could just right click "My Computer", choose Manage, click on Disk Management, and change the D drive to the C drive very easily. Like I said, don't expect anything to work though. You really will just need to do a fresh full windows install. And then reinstall your software. The best you could do with your image then is recovery specific data files, etc using the Explore thing in TI.
Good luck!

 

Hi Zintar
Thanks much for your responce and advice.
I have never used any backup device and just wanted to know "How" a more knowledgeable person went about "backing up a system.
I guess some of it was a (philosophical question'(s). Even though I thought that all in all they were related to "Acronis".
**
I have my d: drive (OS), programs/aplications and files in optimum order and and I am ready to "use" Acronis TI8.
Prior to doing so I wanted to know if "after doing the backup" I shoul/need to "format and partition" both hard drives.
What to put on each drive.
If I could put The OS (which is currently on the d on a drive (20 gb) and make the drive letter c: INSTEAD of d:

Does this make any sense
Thanks
Bill

 

jimmytop

Thanks for your advice, I have been reading through google on different aspects of "what to do/How to do" and am learning quite a bit. Apparently my thoughts on using Acronis or any other backup software (never having used any type) is/was totally wrong.
So, I will follow your (and Zintar's) advice and go ahead and purchase Acronis (and hope I will get a refund if dissatisfied) and do the backup.
**
Thanks again
Bill

 

As for backing up, I just read the manual and followed the Acronis backup wizard. Backing up is just making a copy of what you have. All this other stuff like formatting, (re?)partitioning, moving your system from D: to C: are other issues. I NEVER format or reparition after a backup, but you're doing other stuff as well. All that "other stuff" is out of the realm of backing up and I'm still not clear on exactly what you plan to do. For example, I once installed XP and it automagically decided that my ZIP drive was C:, the DVD writer was D: and the system drive was E: My solution was to just pull the ZIP/DVD cable and just reinstall Windows XP. That gave it no choice but to use C: and took about 30 minutes.

It was a fresh install so I had no data to loose. I'm not sure if you do or not.

Are you expecting Acronis to restore the backup of D: onto C: and have that "just work"? (I don't think so - not without more work at least.) Or is the idea to backup - just in case - and then do a reinstall with the hope of never needing the backup?

 

If you change the drive letters from D: to C: (and vice-versa) any registry entry, INI file or shortcut referencing a file on either drive will be wrong. I would be supprised if anything worked after that. I seem to remember Partition magic had a utility which would allow you to change a drive letter, it would then scan through all the files on all disks and change all references of C: to D: (or whatever was required) however I was never brave enough to try it.
I would just live with the windows installation being on the D: drive if I were you. However using TrueImage to swap the windows boot partition to the faster 80GB drive may give you a bit of a performance boost (as long as you labeled it D: of course).