PC cloning or Back up entire PC using Acronis?

Snow,

CLONING a disk is used if you are replacing a hard drive. For example, if your current drive is getting too small for your needs (ie. you are running out of disk space) and you want to install a new and larger drive, you would physically install the new disk into your tower and then you would use Acronis to CLONE your existing hard disk to the new disk. You would then remove the old disk, connect the new disk to the old disk's connector and boot the machine. You would now have a newer larger hard disk with exactly the same information (including the OS) as the old disk.

 

If you are not planning to replace your hard drive and you simply want a backup in case your current disk crashes, you would perform a complete disk backup with Acronis. If you have more than one partition on your drive, you will select all of the partitions when this option is presented. Then, go ahead and make the backup. I usually make backups to an external USB drive. These are much more reliable and less troublesome than backing up to DVD's. If you haven't already done so, create an Acronis bootable CD. Then, at some point if your disk does crash, you simply boot with the Acronis CD and restore the image from the external USB drive to your hard drive. That's all there is to it. You don't have to reinstall the OS. The image restore will restore your hard disk to exactly the same state as it was when you originally made the backup. It's a good idea then to create a backup at least once every week so you won't lose too much data if your drive crashes and you have to restore it from the backup.

 

Hope this helps.

External USB drive - an external hard drive in it's own enclosure and plugged into a USB port on a PC.

 

"

Thank you very much indeed.

Very helpful.

snow

Hi Rebel9,

Ok that is clear.

 

By "External USB drive" do you mean an external hard drive attached to the USB drive?

 

I have just created Acronis Bootable Rescue Media cd.

Is it the same as "Acronis bootable cd"? you have mentioned in your reply?

 

Snow

What version of Vista, If business or Ultimate see my response here  http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=vista&thread.id=43090

 

 

If you do not have Business or Ultimate, yes you need a backup solution like Acronis

 

Here is a lengthy discussion about Acronis here  http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=vista&thread.id=42961

some of it is fodder but worth reading.

 

Here is the Acronis 10 user guide, it answers many of your questions and more.

http://download.acronis.com/pdf/TrueImage10.0_ug.en.pdf

 

1. Use the media builder, built into Acronis program to make the Acronis bootable rescue disc.

 

When using Aconis on a Dell always do a full disc (all partitions) image when backing up.

Don't use the "clone" feature.

" so if I upgrade to Ultimate, I can save money and not buy Acronis?"

 

Yes and No, the built in Vista Complete PC restore is not a versatile as Acronis, but works well.

 

1. It cannot restore the image to a different size partition. I shrunk the C partition and tried to use the restore image, it would not let me. Not sure if you can go to a bigger partition.

 

2. It only backs up the C partition, but does that rather well.

 

3. It does do multiple backups to one image file, kind of like incremental backups in Acronis.

 

3. Is not portable like Acronis, you can use Acronis on more than 1 PC for personal use.

 

Don't think you will save money considering the price of an Ultimate upgrade.

No not trying to save money;  I am merely trying to avoid over-populating my applications.

I already have Ultimate ready to upgrade to from Premium, Free!

 

OK, the moral of this story: I am still buying Acronis 10   11

 

Thanx Mombo, great info as always, and nice avatars too, I still like Laurel and Hardy ;)

 

Peace

 

 

Thank you for that DELL-Bill B.

What is the difference between these two:?

-      ultra ata 400gb $   ultra ata 400gb 16mb

 

snow

Hi Bill,

I understand.

I put in the wrong info.

Thanking you.

snow

Bill,

I hope you can help me.  I just purchased 37 latitude d630's and I want to image them with Acronis 9. I downloaded the latest version from their website. i get to the screen to create the image and select what I want and while it goes to the progress bar screen, it doesn't move. 

Will Acronis 9 (the latest version) work with the d630's?  the last batch of laptops were d620's and it worked then.  Can you help me thru this.  I'm getting desperate. I have people waiting to get this!

Thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide!

I have seen this before, If I remember right, several reboots solved the issue, not sure why.

Hi DELL-Bill B,

I am after an external USB hard Drive for back up.

I will be using it with VISTA OS.

 

I found this [BUFFALO DriveStation Combo 500GB] on Dell's site. Before I order I wish to know if it will work in my computer. I ask this because on the description of the product you will see -

 

Drive interface: SATA?

 

[Dell Part:A 1219295. Manufacturer Part: HD-HC500IU2-1]

 

What does that mean. I thought I will be connecting to my computer through a USB or FireWire?!!

 

http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sna/category.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=bsd&cs=ukbsdt1&category_id=5722&~ck=bt

 

snow

Hi Bill,

Thankyou very much for the answer.

The one you have mentioned is the one I was talking about.

If you look at it on the description of the product the last line says something like SATA.

What is that SATA is about.

 

Please would you advice

snow

I can add some personal experience regarding Acronis performance in a Windows Vista environment with a dynamic disk configuration.  As of December 19th, 2007 - they had not solved the recovery problem in either the cloning or image restore mode - they can do it, howerver, if you still have a functioning Windows system.  I have a RAID 1 mirrored disk configuration and they can clone or save a backup image to an external USB disk (it works in the save direction).  However, when you try to fully restore the RAID 1 configuration, the restore software either lists two internal disks (instead of the one mirrored image) or the restore operation corrupts your BCD registry/NBR so that you are forced to do a Vista reinstall.  My backup plan at present (and I've had to do this twice in the last 6 months!) is to keep vital user files on a 4 GB USB flash drive.  I reinstall Windows Vista from the Dell factory image on the Recovery Partition.  Then I reinstall user applications and backup files.  The whole process takes about 6 hours.  I use my external 250 GB HD as backup with some Paragon cloning software, which unfortunately does not do a restore either!!  However, I can recover files, folders, etc. using windows.  My primary counsel is that if you are running Vista with a dynamic disk configuration - be very fearful of Acronis.