How do I clone my entire hd ?

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by carioca, May 12, 2007.

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  1. carioca

    carioca Registered Member

    Joined:
    Jul 9, 2005
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    o_O
    Dear Forum companions/ Support Team,
    I am an acronis novice and I don't know how to copy my entire hd for future restorations. How do I clone my entire hd to a cd media ? Should I clone the hd to cd or dvd media? Could you let me know an easy step by step guide (not a manual)? I am confused how to make a windows xp restoration copy for eventual set up.I would appreciate If someone can help me out. I was almost giving up to go to the Norton Ghost 10.0 because I couldn't sucessfully clone my entire hd. Best Regards.
     
  2. DwnNdrty

    DwnNdrty Registered Member

    Joined:
    Mar 28, 2007
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    Location:
    Florida - USA
    Let's get the terminology straight as far as it applies to Acronis True Image.

    Clone and Image (Acronis actually calls this Backup) are two distinct animals. A Clone is an identical copy i.e. if the original is bootable, the clone is also immediately bootable and will wipe out everything else on the destination drive.

    A Backup is a compressed Image of the original and has to go through the Recovery process before it becomes bootable like the original. You can store an Image on another drive just like any other file and the process does not wipe the destination drive.

    With that said, it is not advisable to backup directly to optical media if the size of the image requires four or more discs. In addition to the process being slow compared to using another hard drive, if you ever have to restore from those discs, the recovery process will have you swapping those discs in and out like there's no tomorrow. :) With the image spanned across 3 discs there is still swapping involved, but at least it is tolerable.

    You'll save yourself a lot of future grief if you invest in a second hard drive, external or internal, and save your Backups to it.

    After you instal the True Image software, make the bootable Rescue Media cd (or whatever they call it now), boot with it and use the "My Computer" backup feature to backup your entire drive to the other hard drive. This backup Image will let you restore it in case of problems with your present hard drive.
     
  3. Acronis Support

    Acronis Support Acronis Support Staff

    Joined:
    Apr 28, 2004
    Posts:
    25,885
    Hello carioca,

    Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

    Please notice that DwnNdrty is correct and there are two approaches available:

    Clone Disk - migrates/copies the entire contents of one disk drive to another;

    Backup - creates a special archive file for backup and disaster recovery purposes;

    Please take a look at this FAQ article explaining the difference between Clone Disk and Backup approaches in more detail.

    Actually, Clone Disk approach is usually used to upgrade the hard drive (e.g. install a larger disk), while Backup approach is basically dedicated for the complete data backup and disaster recovery purposes. Since you are interested in backing up your hard drive for the disaster recovery purposes, we would recommend you to follow Backup approach.

    Moreover, there are several advantages of creating an image over the disk cloning procedure such as: you can create an image without rebooting your PC, image creation can be scheduled for the particular point in time, Acronis True Image allows you to create incremental and differential images, image archive contains only the actual data and so it has a smaller size, images are ordinary files and so they can be stored on any type of the supported media, etc. However, the final choice is always up to your needs.
    Notice that you can burn the image directly to cd/dvd media by choosing it as a destination. Acronis True Image will automatically ask for next media after the previous one is full.

    You can find more information on how to use Acronis True Image in the respective User's Guide.

    Thank you.
    --
    Marat Setdikov
     
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