Completely new to Acronis and Unsure how to proceed

Hello,
I am trying to backup (full so that I can completely restore my system in event of a disaster) my system (a Shuttle AMD 64 based system) running XP home and connected to a 350 GB Buffalo Drive Station HD for backup). I have tried doing a backup with the preinstalled software and it came out in FAT32 format (I do not want to keep this one). I used a trial version of BackUp MY PC (StompSoft) and while that is in NTFS format, I am not confident that this worked. So, what I want to do is start over.....format the Buffalo drive as NTSF and then use Acronis 9...

Could someone please instruct me as to what I need to do to have this happen?

Thanks
David

 

There may be other responses but this is what I've done in the past.
Right-click My Computer and click Manage.
Then highlight Disk Management in the left pane.
Highlight the external drive in the right pane.
Right-click on the selected drive, choose Format:
Then go through the settings choosing NTFS.

Also, the backup software has nothing to do with the file system of the drive.
I'm assuming it's currently FAT32 and you want to format it to NTFS.

 

Thanks! I think' will be just what I needed!

David L

 

After upgrading to the latest version, I did what you suggested and was able to reformat the backup drive, and complete (and verify) a full backup of my system....worked without a hitch!

Thanks
David

 

Hello there. Make sure you validate the archive. I was also very happy when I backed up my Laptop HDD to an external HDD using TI9 3666. But when validated I found the image is corrupt. Not able to resolve the prob.

 

Further to

the only time you will be sure that your image is not corrupt is when you attempt to restore it. Unfortunately there have been many users who have validated the image and then found that it was corrupt when they attempted to restore it.
This is not meant to be a negative comment but rather a suggestion to be cautious. I have been fortunate not to have had any problems with my TI created images.

 

The answer to the conundrum is to get a spare hard drive before disaster strikes. You will now be able to take out the existing hard drive and restore to the spare in complete safety. This is the best way to completly test and prove out your backup procedures.

Xpilot.

 

I wanted to thank you all for your comments re Acronis backup procedures. I did indeed validate my backup, yet the advice to obtain a new had drive in advance of needing one is a good plan ......or maybe using an older system as a target for testing the backup....at the moment I have neither option but I think I will do some looking around, pricing etc....

Thank you once again!

 

The spare drive needn't be new nor as large as the original source or target drives, only large enough to hold all the used sectors. IF you had 8 gB on your source drive, then the spare drive only needs to be that size or a bit larger.