Backups

[sqad617]

I can understand how external backuos work, but how on earth do "internal" backups work i.e Acronis which are backed up on the Cdisc of the hard drive and icons on the desk top. Surely if the hard drive crashes, the desk top is cleared of icons and the hard drive is wiped clean, including your backup.

[fo3nix]

I'm not sure what you mean by 'external' or 'internal' backups, but any backup of a drive should be made on another drive, for exactly the reasons you give.

[sqad617]

By external drive I mean something attached and removed from a USB port i.e memory disc. This backup called Acronis seems to be downloaded onto the PC hardrive, with icons on the desktop.

[Whickerman]

Not quite. The pc I'm writing on has built in back up on the hard drive, by partitioning part of it.

However, this is useless if the house catches fire!

[ACtheTROLL]

basically it's a two part process
you make the backup (image) of the HDD to the HDD
as you work through the options you set the compression, media type etc.

From that point on its your choice.
I use this type of backup (powerquest drive image in my case) in a training environment ... at the end of each course the machine is re-built from the original image ... for speed an image is kept in a hidden partition on the hard disc when possible.

however ... if the training involves re-formatting the HDD - the hidden partition method isn't safe ... so I also have a set of bootable CD/dvd backups.

Either way the restore takes approx 15 min per machine ... and using PQdi the process can be scripted to delete/recreate partitions as well as restoring the image.

At home when I built my machine .. I took an image .... then loaded all my basic software and took another ...

The drawback is the number of updates you need to download even if an image is only a few months old.

Acronis allows incremental backups ... so you can regularly up date your images.

to do that easily you need to keep the "master" image on a HDD (for comparison) and then transfer the latest update to CD.

[sqad617]

Thanks Troll, I think that I will stick to external back up systems, CD or memory sticks and accept their limitations

[Confab]

Acronis � and I presume you mean Acronis True Image is a very useful piece of back up software. It gives you many options including making a full backup up of your hard drive (including all settings, drivers, software, ect) on to either your internal drive, say your existing C drive, or another internal drive (if you have more than one), an external drive (say a usb drive) or external media (CD�s or DVD�s)

So what�s the point of backing up to your C drive you say? Well Acronis can create what it calls a secure zone on your C drive. Its really another partition on your drive and its hidden from Windows so it can�t be seen in Explorer. Say your PC becomes infected with a virus or drivers become corrupt, you can re-create your existing configuration using the backed up image in your hidden secure zone on your C drive. There are many ways Windows or installed software can become corrupt. Most crashes have nothing to do with the C drive itself so your secure zone remains safe.

Acronis also gives you many ways to access your back-up. You can click on the Acronis icon in windows and restore your PC from there. If you can�t get into Windows then you can press F12 when the PC is booting up and Acronis will load so you can get to your back-up. If your PC won�t even boot from your hard drive then you can insert an Acronis bootable CD or DVD (created earlier using Acronis) and boot from that. I know that if something goes wrong with my PC I can press F12 and restore it to exactly how it was when I made the back-up. The whole process takes about half an hour with no fuss or mesing around with finding software, discs, drivers and re-downloading updates.

There are many many more ways which Acronis can back up for you, too many in fact to list them all here. I keep one compressed backup on my C drive in the secure zone and one on an external USB hard drive. I do a full back-up every couple of weeks but you can just do incremental back-

[Confab]

Continued

ups if you want to save time.

Confab

[sqad617]

Thanks Confab, you have changed my mind now I understand the system. Don't suppose you work for Acronis do you?.Just a joke.
Thanks again abd for all the other answers.