Why cant this be more easy?

First Image on one PC and moved it to another to save. Tried to validate it and said it was corrupt. But I thought Macafee was turned off (used exit from sys tray) but when I first installed Acronis a box came up saying it was asking for access to the web. Why was that?
But anyway now I don’t trust it unless I can test it 100%. Don’t want to wait for a problem and have a 50% chance of recovery. Also want something 100% sure and easy. Without spending hours learning the ins and outs of the software and its possible problems and tweaking.
The only way I see to do this with imaging is to Buy and external hard drive and a new slave internal drives for each of my 2 PCs. Then images to the external hard drive and then restore to the slave internal drives and then boot to the slave drives to see if everything works. If I have to do all of this I most likely will just stick with just backing up my important Documents to my flash drive. I maybe different as don’t have a lot of data that if I lose would be a problem. I was only interested in Acronis to safe time if ever had a crash or problem. Since I have only had a few in 20 years it looks like all the trouble with using Acronis would not save me any time. I could buy a new hard drive and reinstall windows and start from scratch and have less time invested if I tested each image.
Just thought would put this idea out here for comments.
I am still not to sure, seems like I have 4 choices for what I want. Since I already bought the software.

1.Take a gamble that image will work when I need it and just get one external hard drive.

2. I could clone to a USB drive once a month and if I can boot from a USB drive would be easy to test and have a backup for my main PC.

3. Get an internal drive, which I know will boot from, and clone to that. Would be easy to test and have a backup for my main PC.

Also if I only have about 12 GB of data on a 250 GB main drive could I clone to a 200 GB drive if I make sure I do a defrag first.? From what I read sometimes its yes other times no.

Thanks for any more suggestions and letting me vent a little frustration here.

 

Sorry one more note that starting me think about this in the first place.
I had a problem early today were some setting got changed on one PC.
And I was thinking even if I had an image on an external hard drive. Would I be safer to try and just restore ( if untested could be more problems or would not work) or just try to fix the problem which took about an hour for me to fix.
With a tested clone then would have been easy.

Thanks again

 

I would suggest getting a second internal drive and creating a backup image to that (not a clone). Then restore it back to the original drive. This way you'll know it works. You could try the same with an external USB drive, though it's slower than internal to internal. If you don't want to risk your current "main" drive, then you'd have to install a spare drive and restore to that. Once you know it works, put the original back in and you're set.

Make sure you can see use the rescue cd to see your drives, or create and BartPE cd if needed. Sometimes doing restores from Windows is problematic.

I think TI is very easy to use. Right now I'm doing testing that would be a nightmare to do without it. If something goes wrong, it's just minutes to have things back like they were and I can try again. I have used other backup software, but this is the best so far, even with its bugs and quirks.

 

As you get more comfortable with TI and know it works well on your system, if you have a recent backup, you may very well find doing a restore is much quicker than trying to fix the problem. In fact, it's a good idea to make an image backup just before trying something that may potentially screw up the computer. That way you don't lose anything but a few minutes of restore time and you're right back where you were.

 

I did that. Full backup image to USB HDD. Hours later and within Windows, did a Restore. Worked first class and no glitches.

In order to work and be a able to boot, you would need to remove the internal drive immediately after cloning and install the new drive (the USB removed from its enclosure and installed as the internal drive) then boot for the first time.

You would need to remove the slave drive (the one you cloned to) and replace the master drive with the new one and do this before you boot the first time.

You seem to have more trust in cloning than in Imaging...

In my book if you wish to have piece of mind, you do Full Image backups from time to time to an external HDD. Restore works from Windows. In my case, it works from the Acronis Rescue CD but works best with the BartPE CD with TrueImage10 plugin (takes about 1/3 the time, compared to Acronis Rescue CD).

Of course, you need to do it to believe in it. I made the plunge and restored hours after I made my first Full Image Backup. So, I believe. You will probably say that I closed the barn after letting the horse out... yes I did and he came home.

 

Is it for sure that I could clone or also image restore to an extra internal drive if it was smaller if I was using only about 15GB.
Buy an extra internal 160GB to work with my 250GB or go aheaed and spemd extra money and get the same size
Thanks

 

The backup image file will contain only the used sectors from the source disk except it won't take allthe sectors for the pagefile and hibernation file since those aren't really needed for a restore and take up a lot of room. So yes, you cn use a smaller target drive than source drive.

 

You can Image your 15GB internal drive to a slave internal drive or a USB or SATA external drive of any capacity larger than the 15GB of data, if that is the volume that you have. In fact you could carry many backups on the same alternate drive, the only limit would be the drives capacity.

As for cloning, I would do that only if I would want to replace a small drive with a larger one. Cloning as a means to backup is not and will not be my choice method.

 

If I get an external for Imageing then the internal would be only for restoring the image to test the image and then keep on there as another backup. But can I get a smaller internal hard drive as the slave to restore to?

Also when I restore to the slave internal drive will it match and do the partitions for me or is this another thing have to worry about?
have
Partition Basic FAT Healthy(EISA CONFIG) 55 MB
Partition Basic FAT32 Healthy(unknown partition) 4.63GB
Partition Basic NTFS Healthy(SYSTEM) 228.13 GB

Its the way this new dell E521 came.
Thanks for the help, since I have gone this far just as well try to do it right.

 

All you need in an external drive is that it be large enough to carry the image.

I would format the slave drive for NTFS system so that the image gets contained in one .tib file. If you do a Full Image backup by clicking the box which identifies the drive, then the image will carry all partitions hidden or not.

In my case, it carries the OEM hidden partition to restore Windows XP.

 

But can I get a smaller internal hard drive as the slave to restore to?
As a way to test I could boot to this drive to test and gives me a second backup. Or clone to this as an extra backup. I guess I could just enter setup and tell the PC to boot to the slave drive just once to test things out. Checking prices and since I only use about 15 gb on my main drive something like a internal 120GB seems cheap enough. Also just got an external today and moved a copy of an image backup to it and it validated fine.
Thanks

 

Not that simple. A slave is a slave. After cloning to the slave, the process will ask you to restart. This is a critical point where you must decide if you want to try out the cloned drive. If you do, you must remove the Master, install the slave and change the setting to make it the master.

 

Yes, you can use a smaller internal drive as long as the used space on the 250 is less than the smaller drive.