Questions about Acronis Home v.11

I just upgraded to Acronis v.11 today. Here are my questions:

1. Do I need to create a new boot disk because I have upgraded?

2. Is a new boot disk required every time I do an incremental backup?

3. Do incremental backups include changes like new programs installed or program changes; or do they only backup data?

4. I had done a full backup to an external drive with v.10. Unfortunately, the drive broke...so I just did another full backup to my new external drive with v.11. My new drive is set up as a Fat32, so it broke the backup into 4 parts. I want to validate the backup; do I need to validate each part individually, or will it validate all of them automatically?

5. Can I use v.11 to completely wipe my hard drive clean in the future?

Nancy

 

Yes, this is the only way you get the new features and fixes in the boot version. Also, The TI10 and earlier boot discs can't read the TI11 files since the format was changed. TI11 can read the files created with the earlier version though.

Not exactly sure what you mean but no. The boot disk contains the TI program and its operating system only. It doesn't care what you backed up.

In the case of images, incremental backups include everything that was changed since the last full or incremental image. For Files and Folders it is everything that changed since the last full or incremental for the folders you selected.

No, TI knows that each piece is part of a multi-file archive and will validate them all at once. Select any one and that will validate the whole archive.

I don't have V11 to I don't know anything much about Drive Cleanser which I think you are refering to.

 

Thanks for all the answers...but there is still something I don't understand about incremental updates. Will such updates incorporate new programs installed since the initial full backup? If so, that means that my original full backup plus my current incremental backup will fully represent my whole system today. Is that right?


-N

 

If you are doing Image backups (not files & folders "data" backups), then yes, the Incremental will include all changes to the drive since the last Full/Incrementals it is based on. This will included any newly installed programs, file changes, etc. A restore to the last Incremental will restore the drive back to the time the image was created.

If you do a restore, you only have to select the last Incremental. You don't have to restore the Full and each Incremental inbetween. You can also select which Incremental you want if you don't want to restore to the last one.

Drive Cleanser will wipe a drive. There are several different wipe options you can choose from. This is basically the same thing DD will do.

 

How is this possible? I guess I don't quite understand what "validate" means. From what you say (seekforever), it doesn't mean: "compare what what's on the system against what is in the archive" if it somehow validates the whole multi-file archive with only one piece of it (unless checksums, or whatever, for everything in the archive get written into each part).

I'm very concerned about verifying the integrity of multi-disk (DVD/R) images, and need some reassurances before I purchase TI 11.

 

TI knows that the full and incrementals are all part of a single archive so selecting one of the parts causes TI to "find" all the other parts and do its validation method as described below. This is also why you must have all of the parts of an archive in the same folder if it is stored on a HD.

When TI creates an archive of any kind it reads the data from the source disk, calculates a checksum for every 256K bytes and places them in the archive. This means there are 4000 checksums per gigabyte. When a validate is done, the archive file is read and every one of the checksums is recalculated based on the data read from the archive and compared to the values stored in the archive when it was created. If there is total agreement then the archive is good, if not, then it is declared corrupt. This is a pretty rigorous test since 1 bad bit in the 80,000,000,000 that are present in a 10GB archive will cause a validation failure.

Naturally, since this doesn't compare the data with the original it means that if there was an undetected error reading the source disk then it will not show up. TI and other programs do assume the hardware is working properly. While this checksum method has its weaknesses, it is about the only way you can validate on a system that is continually changing like Windows. If the backup is made outside of Windows and the disk is static, then the compare the archive to the source method would work but this isn't how it is done.

There is another issue to be aware of. The TI recovery environment which is present on the rescue CD and which your PC will boot into to do a restore of the active partition, typically C, is Linux - not Windows. When TI is first used, it is almost meaningless to do a validate in Windows without doing a validate using the rescue CD. Just because Windows has all the drivers to support your hardware it doesn't mean that the Linux environment does. This is where a lot of people who don't do testing when they first get TI come unstuck. They say they validated in Windows, all was well and now it is corrupted. You must do a validate using the rescue CD and the only way to be 100% sure you can restore is to do a test restore to a (spare HD is best in case it fails) HD. Once you have done this a few times the Windows validation is sufficient since you now know the Linux stuff works on your machine.

My personal opinion is that DVDs are not the best media for data archives, at least as the primary backup. I much prefer an exernal HD although in practice my primary is a second internal for the best speed. You will also find that if your archive spans more than 2 or 3 DVDs you will be spending a lot of time swapping them and it is quite slow. TI does not read all of one DVD then all of the next, etc. Joke is your DVD drawer will wear out before the archive is restored.

For DVDs (yes, I do make some), I make the archive on HD first with a suitable split size. After validating, I burn the archive files to DVD using Nero and I use it's "verify after burning" feature. You could also re-validate with TI if you wish but it is essential you do this because DVDs are not all perfect from the factory or you might have put a big fingerprint on the surface without knowing.

Never just keep the latest copy of your archive. Always have some to fall back on just in case. I let them build up on my external HDs until they run out of space and I throw the DVDs onto old spindle packs and leave them there forever.