Fuill and incremental images

This is probably a novice question, but, well, I am a novice to this program. If I were to have a full backup and three incremental backups of this full backup and if I then wanted to restore one folder to my hard drive, would I have to restore the full backup first, unplug the virtual drives, then recreated the virtual drives and then install each of the incrementals sequentially? The way true image seems to operate, installing the incrementals separately seems unnecessary. It would seem that all I would have to do is go to the last incremental and drop and drag the folder in question over to my hard drive and by so doing, Acronis would copy over that folder starting from the full backup and including all subsequent incrementals. Is this the correct way to think of this?

Thanks in advance.

W. Clinton Terry

 

That's correct. If you want to restore a folder (or file) from a particular date, just mount the image corresponding to that date.

 

Hello terrywc,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

To restore a single folder or file you need to choose "Explore Image" tool and indicate any incremental image or full. Yuo will be presented with the list of possible dates and you need to choose the one you want to browse. Once the image is plugged you will get a virtual drive which you can browse with Windows Explorer and copy any file from it.

Thank you.
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Ilya Toytman

 

In theory, that is... In reality you better wait for an updated build of True Image where this very feature have been fixed

 

Thanks. I think I understood this already. What I want to understand is how the incrementals and full backup interact. In other words, if I choose a certain incremental backup and load a virtual directory and then choose a folder to copy back to my hard drive, how does Acronis treat the incrmentals prior to the incremental chosen and the full backup. I am assuming that that the incremental does not contain the entire folder, only the items in it that have changed since the last backup. So to get all the changes that have occurred, does Acronis look at the incremental backup chosen, go to the one prior to that to get more pieces of the folder in question, those that changed, and so forth until it gets back to the full backup where it gets everything else to restore the complete folder in question?

An alternate way to think about this is to create a virtual directory of the full backup and copy the folder. Then unplug that directory and create a virtual diretory of the first incremental and copy it and so forth until you have gone thorugh all the incrementals. This seems cumbersome, and I would guess not necessary. Because I could not get a direct answer to this question from the manual, I am asking here. Perhaps if I understood more about these things, I would not have to ask.

Thanks again for replying.

Clinton

 

Could you elabotate a little more on this comment. Are you saying that copying from a virtual directory is not accurate?

Clinton

 

Hello Clinton,

When you mount an image you choose the date of the system state you want to have. Let's assume you created the full image on Monday and the incremental on Tuesday. After that you wish to mount the image. In the "Explore Image" wizard you choose either full or incremental image (it doesn't matter at all). You will be presented with two dates: Monday and Tuesday (there will be dates actually, not only days of week). If you wish to extract the file in the state it was on Monday you will need to choose Monday. If you choose Tuesday you will get the version of the same file that you had on Tuesday. Acronis True Image represents the whole image on the virtual drive even if you chose not the first date.

As for the problem MiniMax mentioned, the problem is that currently the latest build (859) of Acronis True Image is unable to mount drives properly. We will fix the problem soon and currently we advise that you use previous (826) build to mount images.

Thank you.
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Ilya Toytman

 

Thanks again for your useful response. I am learning as I go along here. I am using an older build (774). Does it have the same problem as the latest build in terms of mounting. I have not found any difficulties.

Clinton

 

Hello Clinton,

The only build that has the problem with mounting is build 859. The reason of the problem has been found already and the issue will be fixed very soon. You shouldn't experience any problems with mounting with build 774 or any other except for the build 859.

Thank you.
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Ilya Toytman