PPRuNe Forums - Acronis True Image

LHD -

Acronis has created a complete image of your hard disk split over the three .tib files - they total about 10Gb altogether, so (given the fact that Acronis normally compresses the image by about 50%), I would guess that you have used about 20Gb of your hard disk.

It creates three files so that you can (if you choose) burn them to DVD (three DVD's to be precise) which makes recovery a bit easier - if you have a DVD drive in your XP system -- but your Freecom external drive (presumably connected via a USB port?) will do job as well, if not better, than a DVD drive (I still don't entirely trust the reliability of DVD drives or DVD themselves!).

The bootable CD disk you have created isn't going to help you much if and when the crunch comes - you need to have created "Acronis Bootable Rescue Media" (which you will find in the "Tools" panel on the left hand side of the Acronis screen). You should choose media that the system can boot from (stiffy disks - if your system has a stiffy drive! - or CD-ROM, or you can even put the files onto a memory stick provided that you can boot from it - systems bought within the last couple of years usually allow you to get into the BIOS and select the boot device as a USB memory stick). It is probably best to put the recovery boot files onto a CD-ROM (I put mine onto stiffy disks because at that stage my CD Writer had croaked - it took about 5 diskettes - so the rescue files for my system total about 7Mb).

OK - you have now created an image of your hard disk (and it's safely stored on your Freecom disk - away from your main system). You have also created your rescue media - on stiffy disks or CD-ROM.

One fine morning you wake up - but your system doesn't.

It rather depends on how badly the system has crashed as to how you proceed next - absolute worst case is that your system is absolutely dead (or even not there at all because some barsteward reached through the window and nicked it). Or there may be a single corrupted file that stops the system from booting (and sometimes Windoze will even tell you which file is corrupted).

At this stage you haul out your rescue bootable disk(s) and insert them in the appropriate aperture. You then switch on the system and get into the BIOS to boot from the drive that your rescue media is sitting in - usually by hitting the "Del" key pretty soon after the system starts booting.

Then boot the system (let's assume from the CD-ROM). Acronis will load a basic windows operating system and a subset of itself (that it manages to do this from a 7Mb file is pretty remarkable when you think about how much space windoze takes up ...). Most importantly, it will also load a driver for the USB device (Freecom portable device) where your back-up is sitting.

You now have a choice of (a) just recovering a single file from your backup (usually - in my experience - a .dll file), or (b) you can recover the entire contents of your hard disk.

To recover a single file, choose "Explore Image" from the righthand side of the Acronis screen. This will mount your backup as a "virtual" drive, after your CD-ROM Drive and your USB (Freecom) drive. You can then use Windows Explorer to access an uncorrupted copy of the damaged file from the backup and insert it into the correct place on your misbehaving hard drive. Then reboot the system - get back into the BIOS and reset the boot device to your hard drive - and hopefully you will be back in business.

If your hard disk is well and truly stuffed, then you will probably (possibly) need to re-format it, or even replace it, then go through the process as above, but instead of "Explore Image" choose "Restore Image", and your entire system will be restored.

IT DOES WORK! I know - I've had to restore a system after being caught by a lightning strike (which managed to get through two lightning protection plugs AND my UPS (totalled the UPS). BUT (and a BIG but), it's only going to restore your system to the point where you where when you last made a backup - and no-one (repeat no-one) backs up just before their system crashes. So you will lose some work. But you will have a working system!

Sorry this has been rather a long post - but a couple of other quick points: (1) once you have made an image of your hard disk, you don't have to make a completely fresh image each time you make a backup - you can just make an incremental backup - which just records the changes since you last made a backup. Much quicker -- but you tend to use up quite a lot of space on your backup disk over a period of time.

Secondly, the ability to "Explore" your backup image is incredibly useful if you accidentally delete or overwrite something - you simply crank up Acronis and copy the deleted files back to your hard drive. Saved me a lot of heartache on numerous occasions.

From the above - you might be able to deduce that I am one satisfied Acronis user!

Hope that helps ...