How to burn an Acronis image to CD/DVD?

Hello,

My question may sound silly but it's the first time I'm using Acronis and since my laptop hard drive is dying, I don't have much time left to learn how to use Acronis True Image Home 11 by myself.

I was going to buy a new hard drive and clone the old hard drive into the new one with a caddy but I was told since my laptop could still burn cd/dvd that I was better of burning an Acronis image to CD/DVD and then recover that image to the new drive after it is installed.

My problem is that apart from making a backup with Acronis, I don't know how to use it and especially how to create an image of my laptop and burn it onto a CD/DVD. Also does it means that this image will restore Windows XP onto my new hard drive. I don't have a Windows XP installation, I got my laptop with ACER and they are crap, they don't give you a Windows XP recovery CD.

Thanks for your help.
Alexandra

 

If the size of the used space on your hard drive is such that backing up the Image directly to DVD will take 4 or more discs you would be better off backing up to an external hard drive. If you don't have an external drive then the optical disc backup would be better than nothing.

Here's how to backup directly to DVD and have it bootable to the True Image menu. Look under Tools/Options/Default Backup Options/Media Components then the Advanced feature.

If you put the Backup Image on an external drive, be sure to make the Bootable Rescue Cd as you will have to use that to do the Recovery proceedure to the new drive. In either case you should make that Rescue CD to have in case of emergency.

 

Before you do anything, at least read my beginnner guides and name your drives. Links below.

Use XP Disk Management and look at your disk to see if you have any hidden partitions, etc.

You could follow the procedures in my guides and store your image on an external drive. Then you could restore the image onto your new drive.

You definitely need to have an independant storage location for your backup archives. An external drive works very well. If you do not own one, I would certainly recommendt that you get one--unless you have some other alternatives such as network drives, etc. External drivew are connected only when in actual use--not 24/7.