Acronis True Image Cloning

[ZFT]

A query with Acronis True Image 10 before I hit the OK button. Does the Clone Drive function make any changes to the cloned disc? (Some of the menus seem to indicate that this might happen).
My intent is to make a cloned back up disc on a remote drive but leave original in place after cloning following a recent laptop catastophic disc failure and all the associated pain to recover.
Thanks

[planecrazy.eu]

Having only used it to backup my acer restore partition i can say that it appears to copy everything as it is, and then restore it like it was... Cant answer with any more depth as i really dont know if it would change any data, but i wouldnt have thought it did...

[Saab Dastard]

I can't speak with 100% certainty, as my experience is entirely with Norton Ghost, but the process of creating a clone of a disk should be entirely read only.

Perhaps if you can post the menu items that you refer to someone might be able to assess the ambiguous meaning!

SD

[PPRuNe Pop]

ZFT,

I use Acronis all the time. It is a great app and as far as I am concerned it has almost everything you need. Just being able to save all e-mails is something I particularly like.

As for cloning a disc I do just that. I back-up my C Drive to another drive and its byte for byte. I am assured that if my C Drive went bust, as it has, you simply restore to a fresh HDD.

Your back-up drive should have plenty of space on it because each backup is going to be the same size as the drive you are cloning. But you can delete a previous backup when you have completed the fresh one of course.

Good stuff.

[ZFT]

Thanks for replies - Will hit the 'OK' button with confidence now.

[Wodrick]

I have my laptop regularly backed up using TI 9. My hard disc is now getting full. Although I do have external devices, I want to replace the internal one using TI to restore my data. If I fit a much larger disk, as is now available, what happens re partitioning etc, do I end up with C and D at about 50 Gb and E at say 400 Gb or am I given the option ? can I change from FAT32 to NTFS at the same time ?

[Sprogget]

+1 for tru image, I have used it to save the day in the past - one thing with cloning a disk, it makes sense to clone it once when you believe you have the perfect set up.

This way, if you have to restore, you get back to a perfect configuration, otoh, if you back up weekly, daily or monthly, you are getting the system in the state it is at the point of backup, so if it's falling over & you restore a recent backup, you may well be importing your problems once again.

[Bushfiva]

FYI, and only tangentially relevant here, if you're using Windows 7 the latest version of Acronis can also convert between its own clone image format and Windows 7 Backup clone image format.

[spannersatcx]

So is there any need for 3rd party software if W7 can do it anyway?

[Bushfiva]

ONly Professional and above can backup to network shares. The file format is VHD. On a local drive (e.g. USB), I believe the backup routine will manage space, but on a network share it won't. There are a couple of other oddities on drives that aren't NTFS but Microsoft and Wikipediai will have the details.

I'm a long-time Acronis user, but I am using Microsoft Backup and Restore Center on newer machines mainly because it's free. If you have a mix of NTFS and FAT32 drives, Acronis may still be better but I'm just guessing.