Split Archives

I am investigating Acronis True Image Home.

I think True Image is a good product. I really liked that it created a bootable CD for me without a lot of questions.

A couple of things are not clear to me, however. I have lots of disc space on an External Iomega USB drive (partitioned as Fat 32). When I go to make a backup of my Windows C drive (To the Iomega), even though there is lots of disk space on the drive I am copying to (the Iomega) the backup gets split into more than one file. If this is normal, fine but I need to understand it.

When you restore, which of the three splits do you select? Do you start with the first and restore each one? Do you start with the last and work your way forward? There doesn't seem to be a way to Cntrl-Click them all. Is Acronis smart enough to restore all of them no matter which one you click on?
What's up?

If you want to look at a file in a backup and the backup is split over three files, how do you know which split file to look in for the particular file? Do you hunt and peck or what?

If my USB external Iomega can be formatted to NNTP would this be better. I don't know if it can be formatted to NNTP, but if it can should I format it this way or does it make much difference? It came formatted to Fat 32.

How does one delete an old backup? Can you just use Windows Explorer and select all the splits and delete them? Does this cause any problems doing it this way?

After doing an image backup, I went into windows to check the backup. I could not tell what Acronis wanted me to do. There were 3 split files. I told it to check file 1. I couldn't tell if it checked just file 1 or if by telling it to check file 1 it was smart enough to know I wanted the whole backup checked. I did not know if then I needed to explicitely check files 2 & 3 or if checking 1 was tantamount to checking all three. It's hard to tell based on the documentation I've seen. Would you give some clarification?

Answers to these questions will make my life a lot easier.

Thank You

Woody

 

FAT32 can only handle files ~ 4GB. Any larger and the file will be split. This is a file system restriction, not a TI one.
You can select any of the three files. TI knows that they are all really parts of one larger file.
See above.
All my externals are NTFS, I don’t know diddle about NNTP.
They’re just files, so yes, you can just delete them.
As long as all the files were part of a single image, TI knows.

 

Just an addendum to deleting files:
If you have, let’s say, 3 files that were all created from the same task (they are really just 1 segmented file), deleting any one of them will render the rest useless.

 

Thank you for responding.

 

See above means “see the answer above” (the one concerning the 3 files).
NTFS is generally considered a much more robust file system. I, for one, can see no reason to use FAT in your situation.
“I further suppose I can take the Ti files that are presently on the Iomega … “
You could do that, but MS has instructions on how to switch from FAT to NTSF without moving anything. I’ve done it. You will still wind up with 3 segments for that image though. TI knows they’re 1, but the file system won’t.
When you check the image, you are just verifying the structure of the image itself. You are not verifying it against the drive from which it was created.

 

I was interested in the post by TheWeaz about FAT & NTSF file systems. My file system is NTSF on both my internal drives. The True Image program did not ask me which file system I wanted to set up for my Secure Zone. When checking Disk Management under Administrative Tools I notice that the file system on the Acronis SZ partition is FAT32. I have one Image File and one Differential backup on that partition. Why was this partition set up at FAT32 instead of NTSF? Did I do something wrong? Is there any way I can change it to NTSF and retain my backups? Or should I? I backup over 21GB of data.

 

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D'oh !!

***

 

Imogene, if you have more than one drive there is no need to use the SZ, unless you think you might accidentally delete the backup files. Files in the SZ can only be accessed by TI. And if you have the SZ on your C drive, what if you get hit by a virus or have a catastrophic failure. All your backups will be gone if you cannot boot up.

The SZ was a useful feature when most systems had just a single hard drive. But with the advent of usb and cheap hard drives, the SZ is a redundant feature.

 

Thanks "TheWeaz" & "Chutsman" for your prompt help! Now I understand why the SZ was created in FAT32 and not NTSF - not all systems can use NTSF! Fortunately, "Chutsman", I had created the SZ on my D drive to avoid the mentioned problems. I can see that I don't really need the SZ and will probably just back up to a folder on my D Drive (or my external USB drive). That will work out better, as I just received a reply from an Acronis Tech that you can't copy backups to DVD's from the SZ; only from other partitians.

 

Hi The Weaz,

Linux has no problem regonizing NTFS partitions. If it didn't, we wouldn't be able to backup and restore NTFS formatted disks after booting via the Startup Recovery Manager or from the (Linux based) boot rescue CD .

This <previous Acronis Support reply> provides a brief explanation as to why the SZ is FAT32 rather than NTFS.

Regards