backup/install

i have a laptop xp home
acronis TI 11 home
how to or can i back up the entire system so if my hd goes i can put a new hd in and install from the backup?thanks

 

That is what Acronis does. Make a backup onto any other disk of the disk you now have as boot disk and any other partitions on it if you wish. Then when your disk goes bad, install a new one in it's place, boot on the Acronis recovery disk (You will make one, won't you?), and restore the backup file to the new disk.

There are some choices along the way, but that's the main idea.

To save a bit of time, some folks choose to "clone" (different from backup or image) their current boot disk to another disk, and then remove it before restarting the system at the end. Then you would have that other disk ready to install, and simply swapping disks would put you back in order.

Your choice. Since I prefer multiple backups, (weekly in my case) I prefer the first step, because I can store as many images as the disk can hold. I keep the last four, and keep deleting the oldest.

Good luck

 

search for any message by groverh and check out the handy user guides linked in his signature.

 

i make backups to an external hd now but how do i make a backup to that external hd so that it is bootable or does the regular backup file i create do this??so that it can be put on a different hd?i already created a rescue boot disk.

 

can someone answer this one question for me ?
when i go to backup & restore-select backup-my computer-disk & partitions-select all partitions-and backup to an external hd,is this an image i can use to install on a new hd if this one hd goes bad?or do i have to backup another way to be a to do this?thanks

 

The image that you have created and stored on your external HD is the one that you would restore to another HD. You would use the bootable rescue disk you created to do this. If your HD crashes, you would boot from the CD into a scaled-down Acronis program on the CD. From here you would work your way through the restore process.

One tip I've picked up from others here is that you should use the rescue CD to create your backups as well as restore from them, if necessary. You should try to boot from the CD and create a backup to make sure you can.

 

ok,ive already booted from the rescue cd ,backed up and restored the image on the external hd,i just wanted to make sure i could also use the backups i create on the external to reinstall on a new hd so you answered my question so i guess i can do that.thank you appreciated