10 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2011
Backups are useful primarily for two purposes. The first is to restore a state following a disaster
(called disaster recovery). The second is to recover small numbers of files after they have been
accidentally deleted or corrupted.
Acronis True Image Home 2011 does both by creating disk (or partition) images and file-level backups
respectively.
By default, Acronis True Image Home 2011 stores an image of those hard disk sections that contain
data (for supported file systems). However, you can select an option that lets you include an image of
all of the sectors of a hard disk (a sector-by-sector backup). When you back up files and folders, only
the data, and folder tree, are is compressed and stored. If the need arises, you will be able to recover
both your system disk state and individual files.
Backup versions
Backup versions are the file or files created during each backup operation. If you do not use
consolidation feature, the amount of versions created is always equal to the amount of times the
backup is executed or to the amount of stored points in time.
So, a version represents a point in time to which the system or data can be recovered. To put it
another way, backup versions represent full, incremental and differential backups - see Full,
incremental and differential backups (p. 39).
There is one more type of incremental backup version. If you mount a partition in the read-write
mode, the program assumes that the mounted image will be modified and creates an incremental
version to capture the changes. This type of incremental version has somewhat different properties.
For example, it cannot be consolidated.
The backup versions are similar to file versions. The file versions concept is familiar to those who use
a Windows Vista and Windows 7 feature called "Previous versions of files". This feature allows you to
restore a file as it existed on a particular date and time. A backup version allows you to recover your
data in a similar way.
This could be useful when trying to find damaged or deleted files. Simply browse through the backup
versions in the Acronis Backup Explorer until you find the backup version containing the required
files. Additionally, you can recover different saved versions of the found files.
Disk cloning
This operation migrates or copies the entire contents of one disk drive to another disk drive. This
may be necessary, for example, when installing a larger disk. The result is two identical drives with
the same file structure. The "Disk Clone" tool effectively copies all of the contents of one hard disk
drive onto another hard disk drive. The operation allows you to transfer all the information (including
the operating system and installed programs) from one hard disk drive to another without having to
reinstall and reconfigure all of your software.
If you decide to use cloning, the best chance of success is to remove the existing drive from the
computer and install the new drive in its place. It should be connected in exactly the same way as the
old drive.
Acronis True Image Home 2011 does not provide for cloning a single partition. You can only clone the
entire drive.
You can also transfer all the information from your hard disk drive to another one by backing up the
entire old hard disk and then recovering the backup to the new disk.
