A few questions from a new True Image 9 User

I'm just looking for some advice from more experienced True Image users. I just purchased TI 9 and did a backup by splitting the file into pieces and then burning them to DVDs. Since I have promised myself that I am going to be more diligent about backing up regularly I am going to get an external hard drive to hook up to my PC and backup to that to avoid having to burn to DVDs all the time. I have a few questions though:

1. When I backed up my hard drive with 25 gb worth of data on it, I used the highest compression setting and the resulting files still totaled over 19 gb. I was under the impression that it should be more like half of the original size. Just curious why I didn't get more compression.

2. When I backup to the external drive should I just let it create one big file or split it up? Are there any advantages to either option?

3. I noticed that there are now two True Image items under the startup tab of msconfig. Do both of these need to be running if I am not doing any automatic scheduling of backups. I will just be starting the backups myself when I do it.

That's it (for now).

Thanks for your help,

Lew

 

Not all files will compress. Text files will compress the most, and video files will compress the least. If a file is already compressed, it won't shrink much more and sometimes they can get bigger.

I would split the files on the hard drive. It'll be easier to archive them to dvd, if you ever choose to.

Stephen

 

Conventional wisdom says to leave these "schedulers" running. They are not strictly for scheduling future backups and are used even when you manually start a backup. There is a post somewhere that explains this. There are also posts where people have disabled them and come to serious grief.

 

Hello Lew,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please take a look at the first part of stephenrc's reply above.

Please be aware that there is no point in splitting an image archive into a several parts if you save it to the external hard drive, unless you plan to burn this image archive to CDs\DVDs later.

Besides of the seekforever's advice, I would also recommend you to take a look at this previous thread explaining what schedul2.exe, schedhlp.exe and TrueImageMonitor.exe processes are and why it is not recommended to disable them.

If you have any further questions concerning Acronis software, please feel free to submit a request for technical support or post any of them on this forum. We will certainly try to help you in resolving any issues.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

 

Thanks everybody. I just wanted to be sure I was going about everything properly. I purchased an external hard drive, hooked it to my laptop and successfully created my backup image. I feel much safer now.

Thanks again,

Lew

 

Hi Lew,

If not already done, do yourself a big favour by booting from the TI rescue CD and verify (Image Check) the image on the external hard drive. Make sure the external drive is connected and switched on before booting from the rescue CD.

If it works as it should then you can be pretty confident that you will be able to successfully restore your system when the inevitable happens .

Regards

 

re: the acronis scheduler, etc

I started that prior referenced thread; I have a tablet PC, and waht it running as clean as possible.

The mentioned schedulers don't take up much, if any, CPU time (but, I still hate clutter).

There are some programs that can be used, at startup, to disable various background tasks; you can even set up various profiles to control different tasks.

I've worked successfully at turning these off/on/off, etc.

That being said, if you are not comfortable with how to restore locked-up systems, manipulate the registry, etc, do NOT attempt to disable these settings. Again, CPU is not affected much, and unless you are a game player (every ounce of power is needed), let well enough alone.

THAT being said, I still wish there were a way to NOT have ANY background tasks running with acronis, as I only want stuff turned on when I start my backup; I'm doing full backups, and don't need anything monitored on my system until that point

I've just installed version 9, and am working with it to try and restore to an encrypted disk. The FILE-method of backup may help with this task.

Acronis, keep up the good work.
Nick

 

Menorcaman,

Thanks for the suggestion. Although I had verified the image from within True Image, I hadn't tried to actually boot from the CD and verify it that way. However, I have now done as you suggested and everything checked out fine.

Thanks,

Lew

 

That's good to hear Lew. You would be surprised at the number of people who find out too late that their hardware isn't correctly supported after they boot into the Linux based rescue environment

Regards