Best backup strategy using Acronis TrueImage?

[btrcp2000]

Bought TI weeks ago, just now installed it. I like to live on the edge.

Only looking to image the OS drive in caase of disaster, which is a separate physical drive from my recordings drive. I already have a separate process to copy versions of sage.prop and wiz.bin. In the task setup, it asks if I want a full image, or the other option is something that will do drivers, state, etc., but not "working files".

Can I get away with option 2? Or would things like sage.prop and wiz.bin be considered "working files" and therefore not get backed up? I assume the full image option would include the entire drive, which is 149gb, 9.8gb is actually used? I would like to simply be able to image a new drive with the backup, and pop it in, and get right back in sage business.

[davephan]

I use Ghost 9.0 to image my SageTV computer. I install programs on my bootable C drive, but keep most larger files on other drives. My C-drive normally has about 10 - 13 gigs used disk space. I don't store too much on the C-drive to keep the image size within a reasonable size. I take periodic full images of the C-drive and store the images on a USB hard drive, which is disconnected from the computer most of the time, to protect the image files. I have found that taking images directly to CDs or DVDs is very slow and recovery is far less reliable than using image files stored on a hard drive.

The full image can quickly restore the your bootable drive if it should become unbootable or corrupted. If you want to demo trial software, you can take an image before installing the trial, then recover with the image to totally remove the trial software.

Dave

[Conejo]

I use TI on a lot of computers. It beats having to reinstall an OS, Drivers, Software and Settings after a major glitch. I also use it when a beta test goes bad to roll back into an image.

You can partition your boot drive to make it smaller, but even if you keep it full size TI only images the live sectors of the disk.

I also like the fact that TI can reserve a hidden partition on the drive to store compressed versions of the boot drive. This makes it fast and easy to create images on a regular or scheduled basis, and even easier to roll the system back into the last image. TI has saved me from my own stupidity on several occasions.

PS: I don't work for Acronis, but I have paid them a lot of money and I'm hoping they'll send me an anonymous Christmas gift. Please.

[Lucas]

I also use Acronis True Image for 3 years.

It has saved me countless hours. My boot drive WinXP has never been reinstalled.

I have a schedule to do a full image(your option 1) of my C drive to another disk every Tuesday and Saturday.

Every time I am about to install any software, I also take an image.

I recommend you also do the same so that you have peace of mind. If something goes wrong, you have something complete to go to.

[davephan]

If you transfer the images to DVDs for long term storage or off site storage, I recommend using smaller image segment sizes instead of one segment per DVD.

I ran into a problem when I used to put only one large image file segment on a DVD. I made two copies of the image set. Both copies of DVD number 2 were bad.

I reduce the image file segment size to a smaller size, 100 megs. If there is a bad spot on the DVDs, then it is less likely that all your DVD image copies will have a bad spot in the same physical location on each DVD disk.

Dave

[KarylFStein]

I use True Image on all my computers; it has paid for itself in my view.

I take daily snapshots to an Acronis "backup location" on a NAS-type server. The backup location holds 8 files and the daily snapshot task on the host is set to take incremental backups with a new full backup after 7 incremental ones. I then use GoodSync on the NAS to sync all the backups and my other data files, (pictures, music, etc. that are on a data disk not covered by True Image), with a removable disk. (This is just an SATA disk in a removable tray.) Every week, I pull the removable disk out and take it to an off site location where I swap it with the disk I took there the week before. I take last week's drive back home and slip it in the server.

If my house burns down, I lose up to a week of data. If a hard drive dies, I lose up to 24 hours of data.

Before I do any software upgrades, I take a temporary full image and keep it around until I'm satisfied that things are working OK. From what I understand, the latest version of True Image has a "try before you commit" feature built-in, but I haven't upgraded to it yet.

[Menehune]

I use TI10 to do weekly incremental backups of my "C:" drive and monthly complete backups of the drive as well.

I also do a complete backup of the whole "C:" drive before installing any updates, program upgrades, etc.

[1234567]

Originally Posted by btrcp2000

In the task setup, it asks if I want a full image, or the other option is something that will do drivers, state, etc., but not "working files".

Can I get away with option 2? Or would things like sage.prop and wiz.bin be considered "working files" and therefore not get backed up? I assume the full image option would include the entire drive, which is 149gb, 9.8gb is actually used? I would like to simply be able to image a new drive with the backup, and pop it in, and get right back in sage business.

I would bet that sage.properties and wiz.bin are considered working files.

I am curious, does Acronis use a bootable medium like Bart PE or something like that? Or, does it back things up running from your existing windows? We are talking about windows right?

[Conejo]

Originally Posted by 1234567

I am curious, does Acronis use a bootable medium like Bart PE or something like that? Or, does it back things up running from your existing windows? We are talking about windows right?

Acronis TI can be installed as a Windows application (and back up with running apps / open files) or booted from an ISO CD that detects hardware and networks (probably Linux based).

For more information, please refer to their website: Acronis

[stevech]

I've used it for a year or more. Changed from Norton Ghost (what an improvement!)
I do two things with True Image (TI):
1) On the Sage Server, it runs daily at 3AM and does an incremental backup of the C: partion (no video files). Once a week I roll these to cause a 3 week set. I think True image can do this automatically but I haven't figured it out.
2) Every two weeks or so, I run True Image and backup the C: drive on my office PC and my laptop.

I have twice used TI's bootable CD rescue disk to roll in a backup image via the LAN and create a new bootable disk. These were due to disk drive head crash failures - new virgin drive. It is so nice to roll in the image in 15 minutes and boot and there you are again, where you left off.

I also use SecondCopy to dupe important files (wiz.bin, financial) automatically. It even does my entire office PC's desktop, mydocs, mypictures, etc. To a USB drive. Encrypted. During the recent fires here, I just grabbed the USB drive when evacuating.

My video files are in a pair of 500GB drives in a RAID1 config.

[btrcp2000]

Man you people are smarter than me! I'm keeping it simple for now, my full image only amounted to 5gb, so I'll go with the incremental daily/full weekly plan. For now, I'm just storing it on another drive in the sage server. My main worry is the OS drive dying. If the house burns down, the pictures and other irreplacebale stuff are already backed up elsewhere, and i won't have time to watch tv anyway.

thanks for the replies, very educational, keep it up!

[srothwell]

I've been using Acronis Workstation to backup Sage for 3 years now. Works perfectly.

It just runs every Sunday morning and makes images. Never had one single issue.

stacy

[korben_dallas]

Could I use Acronis to move my XP partition on a 2-partition IDE drive to a new bare SATA drive? Would it require manual changes to the XP boot files or would Acronis take care of that also?

[ke6guj]

Acronis is pretty powerful, so I don't see why what you want to do would not be possible.

Heck, with Acronis (using Universial Restore)you can even restore an image to a different computer with dissimilar hardware and Acronis will automatically reconfigure Windows to run without having to do a Repair install.

[jominor]

I use Casper XP. I have Sage on an 80gig drive. I have another internal 80gig in a USB enclosure. Casper backs up this drive every other day. If something goes wrong, I can just pull the drive out the enclosure, stick it in the server and I'm back in business.

The same strategy for weekly backups has saved my desktop several times.

[hemicuda]

ok, I think I caught Acronis doing something inefficient/stupid this morning while applying rule sets. I don't use a "secure zone" partition, just a folder on a USB drive. Rules are set for a max # of backups and space used; with a full backup after X incrementals. Seems that when any of these rules are violated and the s/w decides to delete old files it copies the ENTIRE set to temp filenames in order to delete the oldest incremental and rename the rest sequentially. Considering incrementals are on the order of 1GB this can take quite a while. It had been doing this for 3hrs when I walked in on it this morning. I tried to cancel the task, but it just kept on working to delete old archives. Had to leave it to its madness and go to work.

Any suggestions? Or is this just the way of things?

[dvd_maniac]

I have XP on a 3*320GB raid-0 setup and was wondering how to create an image that can be copied to a non-raid disk?

[phelme]

For those using True Image, what DVD media are you using? I try to use TI to do incremental backups of my network encoder/clients, but I swear 50% of my backups fail because TI says the media was bad. I have Pioneer DVD drives and use name brand media like TDK, Memorex, Fujifilm etc. so I'm a bit confused while I get so many failures.

And I must say, while I like the power of TI, its language used in incremental, removable media dialog prompts can sometimes be confusing... at least for me.