Which type of disks will the Backup Capsule feature support?

I have 5 different Sata II and III Hard Disk Drives: 2 inside the PC Desktop tower and 3 more inside an external enclosure. Some of them have partitions (one has 4 already) and another has 2 partitions. The other 3 are not partitioned.
So I have 'logical, dynamic, basic and legacy' HDD types accordiing to the Disk management and Device Manager (Storage) information from Windows 7 Home. Also 3rd party disk management software tells me the same.
Which are the ones that will support a backup capsule creation, full backups and also differential backups in Paragon Backup and Recovery 2011 (Advanced Free).
Conversely which are the types of HDD that would not be useable with paragon for Backups?


I have read a number of posts about instructions how to backup by various forum contributors. I would want to have backups containing both the OS with all its settings plus the data; for those purposes do i need to create an 'image' of the HDD or 'clone' it. Is 'image' different from 'clone'? Is 'mirror' the same as 'image'? I have also read posts referring to the need to assign a drive letter to the 'Winre partition', what is that?
I would appreciate detailed instructions as im not a computer savvy person. And if you are kind enough also..how to be able to leave out of the backup things like Recorded TV shows.

Thank you kindly.

 

There are exclude options in the backup Settings.

For technical reasons - when making an image ( i'e not a file backup ) the files you excluded seem to have been imaged as well - they are just zero content markers .

An image is a compressed copy of the used sectors on your drive. It is relatively quick and saves space. It can be restored to any location larger than the used space you originally imaged.

Restoring a partition image will only affect the target space on the disk you are restoring to. It will not affect any other partitions you already have on that disk.


A clone could be used if you want to ransfer an entire HD to another ( must be the same size or larger than the source HD). Any previously existing partitions ( and data of course ) on the target HD will be gone.

Mirroring is associated with Raid arrays. It is not something a backup app. does.

You might have a small partition containing a bootable recovery application - if it is based on a mini version of windows it is called winre ( windows recovery environment ) . Usually that partition doesn't have a drive letter - to stop beginners trying to delete it as much as anything else.

However, it is often given a drive letter to make it easier to backup , or to set active/inactive, depending wht you are trying to do.

 

Thank you SIW2 for your quick response. Being a learner on these matters i have more questions now.
Partially quoting your response now in order to ask more about it

There are exclude options in the backup Settings
Question: I understand that the 'backup capsule 'is the safest way to do a backup of full disks. I also understood that if you create the 'capsule' and backup the incoming disk inside it all the rest of the recipient disk wont be affected (as in partitions). Am i wrong?

A clone could be used if you want to ransfer an entire HD to another ( must be the same size or larger than the source HD). Any previously existing partitions ( and data of course ) on the target HD will be gone.
Question: I am trying to do exactly this (in conjunction with placing the cloned disk inside the capsule). So if this cloning is possible inside the capsule would the partitions on the receiving disk still be gone?

Thank you again

 

Hi,

An image is a copy of a drive compressed inside a file. Apart from the fact it is quite big - it is like any other file- you can store it anywhere you can store any file .

Most people store image files on a completely separate Hard drive - if your original Hard Drive fails, you can get a new one and restore your image onto it.

You can also store images on a different partition on the same hard drive - the only problem is - if the drive itself fails mechanically - you can't access your backup image.

The idea of having image(s) stored on the same drive is for portability - you will be able to access an image file , either by using the paragon boot cd, or if you made a bootable recovery capsule - then you can boot directly to that capsule.

Cloning is different - it involves copying the sectors from one drive directly to another. There is no file. You cannot store a clone in a recovery partition.

Hope it helps.