Several questions from a newbie

I just got TrueImage and am very impressed.

Two questions.

1. I intend to clone the HD to an external drive as my onsite backup. I also want to copy that backup to another external HD to serve as my off site backup. Can I just copy the image that Acronis made over to the other drive or, do I have to make a new image on that off-site drive using Acronis?

2. If I wish to take a copy of my drive with me to run on another computer (e.g. boot from it with all my OS, software and data) instead of the HD that is resident in that machine, how would I go about that?

With many thanks for your help.

GN

 

With ATI Clone means making the image on one drive the same as on another. Every time you clone, you get another copy of the original drive -- all you need is one harddisk per cloning.

Instead of cloning you can make a full backup of a drive. This copies all of the used bits on the drive into a file and you can have as many of these files on a disk as cna fit and you can copy them just like any other files, and store them in mulitple places, if you want. YO might get a dozen or so backup files on one harddrive, keep copies on an offsite drive -- a good alternative to buying a boatload of harddrives.

 

With Acronis Cloning and Backup mean different things. Be clear in your mind what they are. A Backup is also referred to as an Image.

 

You won't have much easy joy in trying to do that in Windows and probably in other OS's as well. The image has all of the drivers and any other configurations loaded that support your motherboard and hardware. Trying to force that onto other hardware requires a Windows repair as a minimum. You will run into Windows and other software that requires activation problems as well.

 

As an alternative, see if this link for a Hybrid Drive has the ability to accomplish what you want.
http://www.etailelectronics.com/Mer...ory_Code=ComputerDataStorage&Store_Code=etail

 

Thank you to all who posted replies. They are much appreciated.

Regarding my questions about running a mirror of my machine on another ... once you pointed out the pitfalls, I thought Duh! and walked around whistling the Impossible Dream for a while.

However, there is still work to do with the cloning/imaging idea. I've now gone through the manual twice and an just as confused on the issue as before.

What I want is a monthly backup of the full drive (OS, data, everything) on an external HD. I want this so I can recover in case of a failure of my primary drive in the machine. Do I read the posts correctly in understanding that imaging is the way to go? (Why didn't Acronis call it that to avoid the confusion between data backup and drive imaging).

The second part of that question was regarding using another external HD (yes, I seen to be awash in HDs) as my OFFsite backup (in case of real disaster). My question should have indicated that I want to know if I can merely copy the image from my Acronis-produced image to this other HD, or, do I have to use Acronis to create that image as well.

A third question has arisen due to the day's operations with ATI. I successfully imaged my main drive to an external target. I have a second internal drive that I use as temporary storage for huge wave and graphic files. When I tried to image that auxiliary drive to the same huge external HD, trouble began ... the whole image creation process for the aux drive locked up twice with no indication from ATI concerning why. Both stoppages left incomplete image files of the aux drive on the target external drive.

Several questions ensue ... what would cause such a lock up (one at 22% completion and the other at 76%)?

Second, I removed those incomplete images with delete in Windows Explorer before I knew that there was a utility in ATI for such matters. Would the use of WinExplorer on that target drive corrupt the first image on it (e.g., should I clean that target drive off and re-image the main drive that was completed). That's another way of asking why ATI has a special utility for deleting images instead of just allowing one to do it with WinExplorer.

FINALLY, I still haven't figured out what a clone is and why one would use it. I used to know what cloning a drive meant ... but apparently definitions have changed. Any help?

Thanks for your patience, good people.

GN

 

Yes, imaging. I'll try and define the 3 basic types of "backup" TI provides.
1. Imaging - makes a copy of the "in-use" sectors to the backup archive. Bypasses most of the file system so is very quick. Can be compressed. Does not backup pagefile (swapfile) or hibernation file since they contain no useful data; puts a few byte placeholder in the archive for them. If the restored drive is to be bootable, imaging needs to be used. The MBR is also backed up as a separate entity and can be restored if desired.
If TI can't determine the type of file system on the disk it assumes it is unsupported and will backup every sector on the disk which will result in very large backups (since these days there usually is a lot of un-used space in a partition). I believe TI11 now has a command to force the complete backup of a partion if desired.

2. Files an Folders backup - Method to backup selected data files. Even if you backup every file on C and restore them the restored volume will not be bootable. Uses the files system and is much slower than an image.

Methods 1 and 2 allow Full, Incremental and Differential type backups.

3. Cloning - just like the sheep. Makes an identical copy of the source disk on the destination disk. For this reason the destination disk can contain only 1 "clone". Compare this with images which allow as many image files as will fit on the backup media. Cloning is really intended when replacing an older disk with a newer disk. It also has options to accommodate the usually larger size of the new disk. Some people like to make a clone disk as a backup because they can swap it in quickly if they have a failure. Others regard the practice as a waste of space since you can only have 1 backup.

If you create the image outside a TI Secure Zone you can copy it to any device you wish as long as it fits. You can also delete the files using Windows Explorer - afterall, they are just files although they tend to be very large. Some of us set the split-size in the options to have the archive split into file sizes that will fit onto a DVD should we ever wish to copy them to DVDs. Even though I split them into such sizes, I avoid DVDs and use external HDs.

Can't really help you. Were you doing the imaging within Windows or did you boot up the rescue CD and do it from it?

The only utility I'm aware of (but I'm not running the latest versions) is to delete images from the Secure Zone. The Secure Zone is a special partition for storing images in. You do not need to use the Secure Zone and in fact images contained in it cannot be deleted or examined outside of the TI utilities.

I hope I answered that above.

No problem!

 

Blessed are you, SeekForever.

Your explanation should be in the Acronis manual. Ie have printed your answer out and included it in my printout of the official manual.

They really need a table in there that says, if you want to do this, you use this method (and why).

I'm now ready to gradually get all out of this program.


Thank you for taking SO much time.

GN