38 Copyright © Acronis International GmbH, 2002-2012
3 Backing up data
True Image 2013 includes a wealth of sophisticated backup capabilities that would please even an IT
professional. They allow you to back up your disks (partitions), files, and e-mail. You can choose a
backup feature that suits you most or use them all. The sections below describe the backup features
in more detail.
In this section
The difference between file backups and disk/partition images ............ 38
Full, incremental and differential backups .............................................. 39
Backup file naming ................................................................................... 39
Backing up partitions and disks ................................................................ 42
Backing up files and folders ..................................................................... 44
Backing up e-mail ..................................................................................... 47
Using Acronis Nonstop Backup ................................................................ 48
Making reserve copies of your backups ................................................... 54
How to make bootable removable media with a backup ........................ 55
Backup to various places .......................................................................... 56
Adding an existing backup to the list ....................................................... 58
Deleting backups and backup versions .................................................... 58
Backup options ......................................................................................... 58
Validating backups ................................................................................... 75
Consolidating backup versions ................................................................. 75
Cloning backup settings ........................................................................... 77
3.1 The difference between file backups and
disk/partition images
When you back up files and folders, only the files and folder tree are compressed and stored.
Disk/partition backups are different from file and folder backups. True Image 2013 stores a sector-
by-sector snapshot of the disk or partition. This includes the operating system, registry, drivers,
software applications, data files, and system areas hidden from the user. This procedure is called
"creating a disk image," and the resulting backup is often called a disk/partition image.
By default True Image 2013 stores only the hard disk sectors that contain data.
Furthermore, True Image 2013 does not back up pagefile.sys under Windows XP and later and
hiberfil.sys (a file that keeps RAM contents when the computer goes into hibernation). This reduces
image size and speeds up image creation and recovery.
A partition image includes all files and folders (including hidden and system files), boot record, and
FAT (file allocation table). It also includes files in the root directory and the zero track of the hard disk
with the master boot record (MBR).
A disk image includes images of all disk partitions and the zero track with the MBR.
