Will Acronis do a system backup for both XP and Vista, dual boot separate hard drives

Hi folks i'm a bit of a noob so apologies if i ask a stupid question.

So my new PC has XP32 on one HD, and Vista64 on the other. I have to select which drive to boot from at the start by pressing F8. Otherwise i have it set to default to the Vista64 HD. But both drives can be accessed from either operating system via explorer/my computer.

I have 1 copy of Acronis True Image 11 and was hoping thus:

If i install Acronis to my Vista drive and select the full system backup to create a bootable DVD for emergencies, will this also backup my XP drive and restore it to a bootable state if my system does fail on me??

Or would i have to install Acronis twice; once on each HD and do 2 seperate system backups??

Your help would be much appreciated

 

Make the bootable True Image Rescue Media cd, boot with it and choose Backup. In the window where you have to select drives to backup see if it will let you select more than one drive. My guess is that it will only let you backup one drive at a time.

 

Hey drty, thanks for the quick reply. I was thinking along the same lines. So i guess the best way to find out is to try it. Hopefully, there are some detailed readme's on the ATT11 dvd, as the pamphlet with it only has 2 pages . Cheers.

 

Well you wouldn't have to actually do a backup ... only go as far as selecting the drives to backup.

 

You may back up many drives in a single job, and select either the whole drive, or whatever partitions you choose for each. It doen't much matter what the operating system on the drive is if there is one. I back up both Ubuntu and Vista and for awhile both were on the same drive with a different version of Ubuntu on a second. Three operating systems on two drives. It works just fine.

 

Thanks wandering2, thats great news. Now i've just got to buy a huge stack of DVD's to write to because i'm thinking about doing the 'all sectors' approach (paranoid about losing anything ). Also printed out the 120 page manual. I hate working from instuctions in a window, it's always nice to have the printed text. So should all go to plan now

 

You are right about being paranoid! A sector by sector approach is entirely inappropriate, that is unless you want to waste a lot of time and storage space when making your backup.
It is far better to make a whole disk image. Un-used space is not copied and only place holders for hibernation and page file/s are included.

I am also sorry to say that using DVDs also may not be the most user friendly way to go. If your backups require more than two or three DVDs you will have a rude awakening when it comes to validating backups or making a restore. The amount of disc swapping can be enough to challenge a professional juggler.
Investing in a seperate backup hard drive is a much better proposition in the future.

Xpilot

 

@xpilot: Heh. You may be right about that. I've just done the math and all sectors of a 250g HD and a 500g HD = A lotta DVD's (well not really math but common sense). Looks like i will have to think twice about backing up all sectors, and buy another HD for archives. Although i'm not sure if a i can use a portable USB Hard Drive for backup/restore archives?

 

I think you'll find that most of us here do use a USB hard drive for keeping the Backup Images. You just have to get one with enough capacity for you.

 

Thanks again drty! Think i'm almost sorted now

 

Icklewabbit,
Many of us have multiple USB external drives so we can alternate our backups. Hard drives are known to fail due to a variety of reasons--out of your control.

If you have important data, then multiple backup drives can provide for more safety in data preservation.

Note: the external backup drive is only connected when in actual backup use--not 24/7.