Backup of systen drive with True Image

Can I take a backup of system drive C with Acronis True Image when XP is running, or are some system\AV files blocked by Windows?

Are such copies only possible with a boot CD?

I have Acronis True Image 7.0

 

I've never used TI7 but I believe it is capable of making a full backup of your C drive while running Windows. I use TI9 and do it all the time with no problems.

 

Hello ako,

Most people experience no problems doing a "live" backup from within Windows (myself included). However, occassionally, TI is unable to lock the system drive correctly due to some program or other maintaining control and is therefore unable to take a valid "snapshot" of the drive contents. In this case, either shutdown the offending program(s) and associated services or create the backup after booting into the Linux based rescue environment via the Acronis Rescue CD. If you are interested, this <Acronis technical article> explains how TI manages to carry out "live" imaging.

Regards

 

Thanks for quick answers!

One more question, will I see somewhere (e.g. from the log file) if the backup has failed for some files?

 

After you create an image, you should verify it using "Check Image" under the tools menu.

 

This checks only the integrity of the image. But does it know if some files are missing?

 

No, because an image backup doesn't know anything (much) about files - it works at the sector level.

If it able to sucessfully complete the image it will not have omitted any files except for (depending on the version of TI) the page/hyber files or if you have chosen to exclude nominated files.

F.

 

So, the system files should then be always ok, if the image passes the integrity check?

 

Yes.

You should also complete the circuit (at least once with any given h/w) to ensure that your restoration process works too.

F.

 

The day I downloaded ATI 10, I wanted to be satisfied that it worked. So, I let the horse out of the barn and closed the door !

I made a full Image backup to a new USB external HDD. I then restored the archive to my internal disk and shutdown the computer. It booted on the first try.

Not suggesting that everyone should risk doing that but it worked for me.

 

Well that is a little difficult without risking like mfabien below , right?

 

My sense is that a validated Image of a drive as an archive should... must work the other way around. But the computer operator needs to ... one day decide.

Once, on a beach in Mexico, I looked at people riding under a parachute pulled by a speed boat and I wanted to do it so much. After an hour or two, I decided to go... ah, what a joy it was!

 

You have to make a judgement at the end of the day. However, unless you have done a restore there is no way that you can have any confidence in it working. If you don't feel the need to have that confidence then it questions why you would want to back your data up in the first place. Note you can always use a second diskdrive to restore to - though ideally it should be the same model as the source one.

Note that I am not necessarily suggesting doing a restoration everytime you make a backup - it is about establishing that your disaster recovery system works - end to end. When you have done it once, there is an excellent chance that it will always work unless you change your hardware.

An example of the type of problem you might hit, is where backups of the system partition are successfully made from within Windows, but since recovery of the system partition cannot be made from the disk based OS, you normally need to boot from the recovery CD. This forum is littered with reports of recovery CD incompatibilties with hardware. Imagine your system crashes, you dust off your recovery CD and boot from it only to find it cant see the disk with your backups on.

The very minimum therefore which should be done for a system partition backup in particular IMHO, is that a backup should be verified from both Windows and from the Linux recovery CD. Beyond that you could make occaisional test restoration. There are participants of this forum who aim for zero downtime, and automatically duplicate their working disks under TI on a very regular basis.

F.

 

Thank you for good advice. I will do this check immediately.