Question about a full backup with TI

I have Acronis TI installed in a WinXP SP2 PC. I want to do a full partition image of my C drive to a 2nd internal hard drive. In MY DOCUMENTS I have about 70Gb of music and videos which I don't want to include in the backup. Is there a way to tell TI not to include certain files or folders (in this case the MY MUSIC folder) when performing a Full Partition Image? Also, is it safer to perform this partition full backup image with the Acronis Boot Disk rather than doing it from within Windows? Thanks.

 

One solution would be to move your videos and music out of the C partition. This could be to another partition on the same HDD or a partition or folder on the second hard drive.
Then a C partiton image could be prepared.

There is no difference between a image created in Windows and one made using the rescue CD.
As you will be imaging to another internal drive I would suggest that you run it from within Windows because it will be faster, no rebooting will be necessary and you can schedule it to run automatically.

 

Yes, I know I could do that. But my question still is, if a certain file or folder is part of a certain partition that I want to fully backup with TI, can I sort of "flag" this file or folder so that TI ignores it and doesn't include it in the full backup? This would be a nice feature, because I wouldn't have to create a new partition or move any file/folder before the imaging process, specially when we're talking about big filesizes like 70Gb.

I don't care about rebooting as long as it is safer. And I always try not to have any automated process in my PC, I run everything manually. I always thought that running TI from the boot disk is safer since there's no other application running in the background that could possibly interfere with the backup/restore/cloning process.

 

If you are creating an image of your C: partition, you have no option to exclude anything. If you create a "files and folders" backup of your C: partition you can pick and choose, but a restore from such a backup will not protect your operating system and will take substantial time on a 70GB backup. I completely agree with Xpilot that moving your data to a separate partition is the best solution. You might want to read through the posts on this thread, https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=164175, for some ideas on backup scenarios.

If you search you can find several threads on this issue, I think all of which boil down to personal preference. I don't recall any that indicated a problem with either method. I create my images from Windows and have never had a problem.

Regards, CatFan

 

Thanks for the link. If I create a 2nd partition in my main drive to store the "My Documents" folder as suggested, then I will end having 2 partitions in my main drive. Does TI allow to do a full backup image of one of these partitions (the OS one) to a 2nd internal drive? If so, when I restore the image to a blank hard drive, it'll end up having a single bootable OS partition? Thanks

 

Yes, you can backup single partitons like the OS partition or you can make an image of the whole disk.

If you restore a single partition on a new drive you get a single partition but you can control the size and have the original size of the OS partition or something different as long as it is big enough. If it is smaller than the drive size then you will have unallocated space which can be partitioned in XP.

 

Hello alegator,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Please notice that a disk/partition image is created on a disk sectors basis, not filesystem. Therefore, separate files cannot be excluded from a disk/partition image.

You can learn more how to use Acronis True Image from the respective User's Guide.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov