Acronis True Image Question

In True Image, I chose Backup > Select what you want to back up: My Computer, selected all drive partitions, and saved the backup file to an external hard drive. Does it actually save your entire OS in a drive image like Norton Ghost does?

If so, why doesn't it need to exit the operating system and reboot in DOS in order to back up the operating system, like Ghost does?

 

Saves everything - inc MBR (seperately). A brilliant program, the first I install. Can't answer why no re-boot though. I'd be interested to know too.

 

Let's say I backup my computer. After that is finished, I click the restore button. Does it return my computer to the exact same state? Will there be a decrease in performance each time I have to restore the computer?

 

Yes, and no. Yes to the same exact state, and no to the performance hit. And it doesn't need to reboot into DOS to back up your drive because it's a better program than Ghost.

Something you might want to try is dividing your HD into two partitions - one for your data, and one for your OS. That way, if you mess up your OS, you can re-install/re-image it without touching your data partition.

 

Interesting. Included in the OS, though, is all the installed programs and settings, so I would have to restore them if I reinstalled my OS on a separate partition.

Is there a guide for dividing your HD into a data and OS partition?

 

Once you've got the OS on a separate partition, you could just image that partition, and whenever you restored the image, you'd have all your programs and settings of the OS restored (as well as the OS itself, of course) to the date you made the image.

To cleave your HD, you just need a program to create a new partition. It would do it by using the free space from your current partition, and shrinking it by an amount you determine. From there, you could start transfering your music, movies, data, etc from your old partition to the new one. Finally, you'd ideally have nothing but your OS on partition A, which you'd resize down appropriately, and all your data/fun stuff on partition B, which you'd have made much larger.

I use Partition Magic, but there are free programs out there, like the Gnu Parted Live CD. XP also has a built-in partition manager, but it can only make partitions larger, which is rather useless for this task.

 

I see. Thanks for the tip -- I'll give it a shot.

I've been using Ghost for the past 5 years. It just seems so weird that True Image can create the exact same type of drive image as Ghost but not have to exit the OS it is backing up.

 

I have a problem with splitting the hd into multiple partitions. First the registry is in the OS partition. Second most software reads and writes to the registry. I think it's very possible to get corruption when imaging just the OS.

Let's assume you you backup your OS on monday and delete a program on tuesday. If you have to restore your OS on Tuesday you will have invalid registry entries for a program you uninstalled.

Vista sets the start sector for a disk differently than other versions of Windows. If you Don't image the entire disk and restore there are instances where you won't be able to boot. The fix is a repair with a Vista OS disk, but is the trouble worth it?

Be safe. Image the entire drive, especially on a laptop. If you had more than one drive this would be a different story, but your data is more important than anything else!

 

I thought Acronis added a few services to Vista (three I think). Even when it wasnt running. Am I mistaken?

 

This isn't true. I speak from experience of having imaged both XP and Vista on multi-partitioned hard drives.

This isn't true either. If you restore your OS, it restores *everything* in the OS back to the Monday state. The program will still be there, because it was *not* uninstalled on Monday, which is the date you made the snapshot. The registry is *always* contained on the same partition as the operating system, because the registry is *part* of the operating system.

Again, false. You don't have to image the entire disk. You simply have to image the boot partition. This does not vary on any edition of Windows. The boot partition is the partition your computer boots from. It contains your OS. If this is imaged, your computer will boot from it upon recovery.

Please stop spreading FUD if you don't know what you're talking about. I've done this dozens of times. Imaging the entire drive is unnecessary if your drive is already split into partitions, and you wish to image the partition containing your OS.

 

So, Overclocker, what you're saying is that disk partitioning is essentially the same thing as adding a new hard drive.

 

Well, yes and no. Partitioning is just a way of splitting an existing hard drive into multiple parts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning

So you're still dealing with one hard drive, except you can have different parts of it operating independently (as if they were different hard drives).

If you want to boot two operating systems on one hard drive (say XP and Vista, or OSX and XP, or Ubuntu and XP...etc), you need to make at least two partitions - one for each operating system. Then at startup, a boot selector allows you to select which OS you wish to boot.

 

I guess what I mean to say is that the computer treats each partition as if it were a separate hard drive.

 

It depends. Many people create separate partitions for program files. Many programs also store data in other locations, such as My Documents, user defined temp folders, etc. BTW, I'm very aware that the registry is *part* of the OS, which is why my thought process is correct and safe.

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=173214 post #9

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=171579

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=180404&highlight=vista

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=180324&highlight=vista

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=179947&highlight=vista

Obviously I'm not spreading FUD. Please read the above threads and monitor their forum a little more closely. Maybe be a little nicer with your criticism.

I'm not saying *your* method doesn't work for you. I'm saying there is no real need to partition for most people, and the only *true* backup solution is a complete backup.

 

I use True Image 10, and it is great. It does add a lot of things to startup but you can disable all of it either through msconfig or deleting the registry entries. There's also one service, the scheduler, that you can set to manual if you don't want to run scheduled backups.

You don't need to create a separate partition. You can create a secure zone straight from true image. It will automatically resize the partition and create a hidden partition that stores the backup on. This ensures that no programs such as viruses can corrupt the backup. Also, you can set it up so that at startup, you can press F11 to start true image. This will come in handy if Windows is completely corrupted and you can't boot.

To clarify, True Image creates a complete image of the drive, including all files, registry entries, boot records, etc. It restores the image to exactly what it was like when you created the backup.