Explore/Mount file and folder image backup

Hi Guys,

I'm running AI TI v9.0 Home for personal backups. Until now, haven't had any major problems that haven't been addressed via patches.

But can anyone confirm if it's possible to mount or explore a purely file and folder based backup?

Till now I have just done image backups of entire partititions but since I recently converted one of my partitions to a TrueCrypt partition, I no longer want to do an entire image (partition) backup for that drive since it will cause bloat for the backup. (ie. a 25GB partition will result in a 25GB tib file after backup because it's encrypted therefore compression is useless).

The problem I have is that when I use the "backup files and folders" option, it seems I cannot mount or explore the created image. So if I need to restore just *one file*, I'm going to have to restore the entire path to a temporary drive with enough space just to get at the one file I need to recover.

This behaviour is very different from mounting a partition image.

So can anyone confirm if there is a workaround *or* if this can now be done in v10 of the product. It appears that with version 9.0 Home I can't explore these kind of backups to recover one or two files only unless I recover everything.

Thanks for any suggestions/advice.

Later,
JC

 

Can't you just go through the Recovery Wizard and at the appropriate time be presented with a Folder tree which you can select the desired files to restore?

This is after you enter the Files and Folders archive name, and whether you want to restore to the old or new location. The next screen is Contents Selection and contains a folder tree on the left.

 

Thanks Seek.

There's no way I would have thought to try a restore without needing to. (me = slaps hand across face repeatedly!)

So although the option to mount is not apparent (or available!), individual file restore is possible. Guess I can live with it. Still can't quite understand why I can't mount it as a temporary exporable image but this serves my purpose so thanks again.

Bye,
JC

p.s: is anyone else finding that file/folder backup is about 50% SLOWER than a partition backup?

 

This is the case, a FF backup uses the file system, an image backup bypasses it.

 

Sorry I'm confused here. You have made a partition with TrueCrypt ? and you don't want to image that partition ? so why don't you just make images of the other partitions ?

 

Kind of true at one level, but there must be more to it that, because it deals with locked files. I tried this yesterday I held a file open in R/W Locked mode and did a FF backup on the file. It copied it. A standard filesystem API would not have been able to open the file.

Just for fun I tried the restore with the file still held open locked, and ATI asked to reboot.

F.

 

I make images of all my non-encrypted partitions (eg. OS, APP drive etc). The FF backup option is completely new to me which is why I didn't know how to explore it.

For the only encrypted one I have, I am doing file/folder backup instead for storage off-site (ie. removable media). I do not use TrueCrypt container files, the entire partition has been encypted and is mounted using that.

 

Thanks - I have never found a reason to do FF backups - just too slow. Better to keep things simple and just do full images.

 

By the way, FWIW, once you encrypt an entire partition with TrueCrypt you cannot *usually* backup an entire partition with TI. There is a way around this that is non-standard but the trouble is you still end up with an image that equals the partition size. There is no volume compression gain because the partition looks like random data. FF backup is the only way that I know of to benefit from compression for TC partitions being saved offline.

To be clear about this, in my case there is 9.5GB of free space on a 25GB encrypted partition. By using FF backup the resulting image set is 14.5GB versus 25GB using non-standard means to get TI to even see the drive.

My primary problem was being able to "explore" an FF backup, because by mounting it logically when using partition images I could just cut everything I needed and paste it to wherever I wanted even if that was multiple destinations.

Unfortunately doing the "restore" method is one for one which means I need to repeat steps. besides that, it wasn't even apparent for lack of trying that this was even possible. As I said to «seekforever» it's passable and a workaround but still not optimal. Inability to mount a FF backup is still a pain when it comes to recovery to multiple destinations. Not the same in functionality as partition image backups at all.

I appreciate everyones' help and insights here. Nice forum and the rapidity of answers is great!

Bye,
JC

 

Hello lamarmotte71,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Please note that using Acronis True Image 9.0 Home you can mount the archive only if it contains partition image.

The ability to explore file-based backup archives was implemented in the newer version of the program: Acronis True Image 10.0 Home. Exploring images and file-level archives lets you view their contents and copy the selected files to the hard disk. More information you can find in Chapter 12. "Exploring archives and mounting images" in the Acronis True Image 10.0 Home User's Guide.

We recommend you to download and install the free trial version of Acronis True Image 9.0 Home to see how the software works on your computer.

Please note that since you already own Acronis True Image 9.0 Home you can purchase Acronis True Image 10.0 Home at the discounted rate. Please visit Acronis online store in order to purchase the product.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov