Some newbie questions

Hi

I'm a new user, I have the paid version of TI10 running on Vista32. My backup medium is a 120gb mobile hard drive. I bought the TI product because I was disappointed with the Vista backup software.

I've found in the past, that I rarely need to make a full image recovery, more often I may need to restore a certain directory (for instance the payroll). Even if there's a complete failure, if this happened in say, 2 years time, I would probably upgrade my hardware, clean install the apps & then restore the data from backup. An image is useful though & this is the reason I chose TI as I think I can choose to restore the image or just selected files.

I'm finding the UI a little complex with many options & not enough help (for me). I'd appreciate some hints & tips about the software.

I ran a test image last night which seemed to work well, although it did not seem to verify. I was able to mount the image & browse folders & files.

I am happy to make a full backup once per week. I then keep the mobile drive off-site. I prefer to run the backup on demand, rather than to a schedule.

Choosing the backup seems to take a while as there are many options & I have to run through a wizard, is there a way to just save a backup job config & run a backup (on demand) with only a few clicks?

With an image backup, do I need to make a recovery or boot disk? There seems to be some options for this, but I don't know which to choose.

How do I include a verify in the backup run?

When I run the image backup, there is an option to include the TI software in the backup. Should I choose this? What are the advantages?

Sorry for all the questions...

 

I'm still a beginner with Acronis, so I can understand your problems. I'll try to give some hints:

Simply create a task without a schedule.
(I'm using a german version so the exact wording in the english version might be different)
.) Select Task (in the lft side menu)
.) Start the Wizzard to generate a new task
.) On the last screen selct "do not schedule" (as oppsoite to every day etc)

Then you can start this Task manually by selcting it in the Tasks display.

I could not yet find a way to start sych a task from Outside acronis (i.e. by running a command)

That depends. If you want to restore to a unbootable system it could be a god idea to have an acronis boot set. But of course you could (re-)install windows + acronis and restore your bachups then.

First of all: Verify verifies the integrity of the backup - NOT that the data in the backup is identical to the data on the disk. (Please someone cvorrect me if I've interpretetd this wrong)

The option to enable a verification is hidden under
-> select Backup Options
--> Choose manual and not atomatic
-> in the options explorer select "extended options" (last entry)

If you are backing up to discs it could be handy to have a machting software version to restore. Espcially if the disks are older, the software changes etc. Of course you can store the Software seperatly too. (I can image form my way to store things, it could be difficult to find the software later ) )

McM

 

McM

Thanks for your helpful reply.

About the image backup. As far as I know, the main point of an image backup is to run a bare-metal restore. So if I'm running an image backup, I should have the facility for this. How do I set this up please?

B

 

To do a bare metal restore, you have to make the bootable Rescue cd from an installation of True Image. The Rescue cd will have the basic Backup, Recover, and Clone features on it.

 

Thanks Ralphie

Do I use the Bootable Rescue Media Builder option from the start menu?

 

Yes, or start TI and select it from the Tools menu or from the panel on the first display screen (TI9, don't know how they've layed out TI10 but the idea is the same.).

 

Thanks

So the idea is that I have a bootable CD from where I can repartition etc & run TI to load the drivers to mount my mobile drive. Does it support Firewire 800 please?

 

The way I use it is to boot with it. I never run it from the Start menu. I don't know if it supports firewire.

It will only let you prepare the drive with a single partition.
Be aware that after it prepares the drive with the single partition, when you go through the Recover process, TI will recognize that there is already a partition existing (the one it just made) and will ask if it is okay to delete it. You have to agree to this for the recovery to procede. I always thought this to be a bit puzzling.

 

Ok thanks Ralphie