Acronis True Image Home - 2009 User's Guide

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction.........................................................................................

1.1 What is Acronis® True Image Home?...............................................................................10

1.2 New in Acronis True Image Home 2009............................................................................10

1.3 System requirements and supported media.......................................................................12

1.3.1 Minimum system requirements ..................................................................................12

1.3.2 Supported operating systems.....................................................................................12

1.3.3 Supported file systems..............................................................................................12

1.3.4 Supported storage media .......................................................................................... 12

1.4 Technical support............................................................................................................13

Chapter 2. Acronis True Image Home installation and startup ............................14

2.1 Installing Acronis True Image Home.................................................................................14

2.1.1 Installing boxed version ............................................................................................14

2.1.2 Installing Acronis True Image Home from Acronis website............................................14

2.2 Extracting Acronis True Image Home................................................................................15

2.3 Running Acronis True Image Home .................................................................................. 15

2.4 Upgrading Acronis True Image Home ...............................................................................15

2.5 Removing Acronis True Image Home................................................................................ 16

Chapter 3. General information and proprietary Acronis technologies ................17

3.1 The difference between file archives and disk/partition images ........................................... 17

3.2 Full, incremental and differential backups.......................................................................... 17

3.3 Acronis Secure Zone™.....................................................................................................18

3.4 Acronis Startup Recovery Manager ................................................................................... 19

3.4.1 How it works............................................................................................................19

3.4.2 How to use ..............................................................................................................19

3.5 Viewing disk and partition information .............................................................................. 20

3.6 Try&Decide™..................................................................................................................20

3.7 Acronis DriveCleanser, File Shredder, and System Clean-up................................................21

3.8 Support for Zip format.....................................................................................................21

Chapter 4. Getting to know Acronis True Image Home ........................................22

4.1 Acronis One-Click Protection ............................................................................................22

4.2 Program workspace.........................................................................................................24

Chapter 5. Creating backup archives ....................................................................29

5.1 Preparing for your first backup.........................................................................................29

5.2 Selecting what data to back up ........................................................................................29

5.3 Performing backup..........................................................................................................30

5.3.1 Selecting data for backup..........................................................................................31

5.3.2 Selecting the target archive location........................................................................... 32

5.3.3 Scheduling...............................................................................................................34

5.3.4 Backup method ........................................................................................................ 34

5.3.5 Source files exclusion................................................................................................ 35

5.3.6 Selecting the backup options.....................................................................................36

5.3.7 Setting automatic consolidation..................................................................................37

5.3.8 Providing a comment................................................................................................37

5.3.9 The operation summary and the backup process......................................................... 38

5.4 Fine-tuning your backups.................................................................................................38

5.4.1 Archive protection.....................................................................................................38

5.4.2 Source files exclusion................................................................................................ 39

5.4.3 Pre/post commands..................................................................................................39

5.4.4 Compression level..................................................................................................... 39

5.4.5 Backup performance.................................................................................................40

5.4.6 Archive splitting........................................................................................................40

5.4.7 File-level security settings..........................................................................................41

5.4.8 Media components....................................................................................................41

5.4.9 Error handling ..........................................................................................................42

5.4.10 Additional settings...................................................................................................43

5.4.11 Backup reserve copy settings................................................................................... 43

5.4.12 Creating a custom data category for backups............................................................44

5.5 Making reserve copies of your backups.............................................................................45

5.6 Archive to various places .................................................................................................46

5.6.1 Why you need this feature.........................................................................................46

5.6.2 What makes it work.................................................................................................. 47

5.6.3 Using backup to various places..................................................................................47

Chapter 6. Restoring backup data.........................................................................51

6.1 Restore under Windows or boot from CD?......................................................................... 51

6.1.1 Network settings in rescue mode ............................................................................... 51

6.2 Restoring files and folders from file archives...................................................................... 51

6.3 Restoring disks/partitions or files from images................................................................... 55

6.3.1 Starting the Restore Wizard.......................................................................................55

6.3.2 Archive selection.......................................................................................................55

6.3.3 Restoration method selection.....................................................................................56

6.3.4 Selecting a disk/partition to restore............................................................................ 57

6.3.5 Selecting a target disk/partition..................................................................................58

6.3.6 Changing the restored partition type .......................................................................... 59

6.3.7 Changing the restored partition size and location.........................................................59

6.3.8 Assigning a letter to the restored partition .................................................................. 60

6.3.9 Setting restore options.............................................................................................. 60

6.3.10 Restoration summary and executing restoration ........................................................ 60

6.4 Setting restore options .................................................................................................... 60

6.4.1 Files to preserve during restoration............................................................................60

6.4.2 Pre/post commands..................................................................................................60

6.4.3 Restoration priority...................................................................................................61

6.4.4 File-level security settings..........................................................................................61

6.4.5 Additional settings ....................................................................................................61

Chapter 7 Try&Decide ...........................................................................................62

7.1 Using Try&Decide.............................................................................................................65

7.1.2. Try&Decide options..................................................................................................65

7.2 Try&Decide usage examples ............................................................................................. 65

Chapter 8. Scheduling tasks..................................................................................67

8.1 Creating scheduled tasks.................................................................................................67

8.1.1 Setting up once only execution..................................................................................68

8.1.2 Setting up upon event execution................................................................................69

8.1.3 Setting up daily execution .........................................................................................70

8.1.4 Setting up weekly execution......................................................................................71

8.1.5 Setting up monthly execution.....................................................................................71

8.2 Managing scheduled tasks ...............................................................................................72

Chapter 9. Managing Acronis Secure Zone ...........................................................73

9.1 Creating Acronis Secure Zone...........................................................................................73

9.2 Resizing Acronis Secure Zone........................................................................................... 75

9.3 Changing password for Acronis Secure Zone......................................................................76

9.4 Deleting Acronis Secure Zone...........................................................................................77

Chapter 10. Creating bootable media ...................................................................78

Chapter 11. Other operations................................................................................81

11.1 Validating backup archives.............................................................................................81

11.2 Operation results notification..........................................................................................83

11.2.1 Email notification....................................................................................................83

11.2.2 WinPopup notification..............................................................................................84

11.3 Viewing Tasks and Logs................................................................................................. 84

11.4 Managing backup archives .............................................................................................86

11.5 Consolidating backups...................................................................................................88

11.6 Removing backup archives............................................................................................. 91

Chapter 12. Searching, exploring archives and mounting images .......................93

12.1 Searching.....................................................................................................................93

12.2 Google Desktop and Windows Search integration.............................................................95

12.3 Mounting an image...................................................................................................... 101

12.4 Unmounting an image ................................................................................................. 104

Chapter 13. Transferring the system to a new disk ............................................105

13.1 General information..................................................................................................... 105

13.2 Security...................................................................................................................... 105

13.3 Executing transfers...................................................................................................... 106

13.3.1 Selecting Clone mode............................................................................................ 106

13.3.2 Selecting source disk............................................................................................. 106

13.3.3 Selecting destination disk ...................................................................................... 107

13.3.4 Partitioned destination disk.................................................................................... 108

13.3.5 Selecting partition transfer method......................................................................... 108

13.3.6 Cloning with manual partitioning............................................................................ 109

13.3.7 Cloning summary.................................................................................................. 111

Chapter 14. Adding a new hard disk ...................................................................112

14.1 Selecting a hard disk ................................................................................................... 112

14.2 Creating new partitions................................................................................................ 112

14.3 Disk add summary....................................................................................................... 113

Chapter 15. Security and Privacy Tools...............................................................114

15.1 Using File Shredder ..................................................................................................... 114

15.2 Acronis DriveCleanser..................................................................................................115

15.3 Creating custom algorithms of data destruction.............................................................. 118

15.4 System Clean-up.........................................................................................................119

15.5 System Clean-up Wizard settings.................................................................................. 120

15.5.1 "Data Destruction Method" setting.......................................................................... 120

15.5.2 "Files" setting....................................................................................................... 120

15.5.3 "Computers" setting.............................................................................................. 121

15.5.4 "Drive Free Space" setting..................................................................................... 122

15.5.5 "Commands" setting.............................................................................................. 122

15.5.6 "Network Places Filter" setting ............................................................................... 123

15.6 Cleaning up separate system components..................................................................... 123

Appendix A. Partitions and file systems..............................................................124

A.1 Hard disk partitions...................................................................................................... 124

A.2 File systems................................................................................................................124

A.2.1 FAT16.................................................................................................................. 124

A.2.2 FAT32.................................................................................................................. 125

A.2.3 NTFS................................................................................................................... 125

A.2.4 Linux Ext2............................................................................................................ 125

A.2.5 Linux Ext3............................................................................................................ 125

A.2.6 Linux ReiserFS...................................................................................................... 126

Appendix B. Hard disks and BIOS setup .............................................................127

B.1 Installing hard disks in computers.................................................................................127

B.1.1 Installing a hard disk, general scheme.................................................................... 127

B.1.2 Motherboard sockets, IDE cable, power cable.......................................................... 127

B.1.3 Configuring hard disk drives, jumpers..................................................................... 128

B.2 BIOS .......................................................................................................................... 129

B.2.1 Setup utility.......................................................................................................... 129

B.2.2 Standard CMOS setup menu.................................................................................. 130

B.2.3 Arranging boot sequence, advanced CMOS setup menu........................................... 131

B.2.4 Hard disk initialization errors.................................................................................. 132

B.3 Installing a SATA hard drive ......................................................................................... 132

B.3.1 Steps for installing a new internal SATA drive.......................................................... 133

Appendix C. Hard Disk Wiping methods..............................................................134

C.1 Information wiping methods’ functioning principles......................................................... 134

C.2 Information wiping methods used by Acronis.................................................................134

Appendix D. Startup Parameters.........................................................................136

Chapter 1. Introduction

1.1 What is Acronis® True Image Home?

Acronis True Image Home is an integrated software suite that ensures security of all information on your PC. It can backup the operating system, applications, settings and all of your data, while also securely destroying any confid ential data you no longer n eed. With this software, you can back up selected files and folders, Windows applications’ settings, settings and messages of Microsoft e-mail clients — or even the entire disk drive or selected partitions. Should your disk drive become damaged or your system attacked by a virus or malware, you can restore the back-up data quickly and easily, eliminating hours or days of work trying to rebuild your disk drive’s data and applications from scratch.

Acronis True Image Home provides you with all the essential tools you need to recover your computer system should a disaster occur, such as losing data, accidentally deleting critical files or folders, or a complete hard disk crash. If failures occur that block access to information or affect system operation, you will be able to restore the system and the lost data easily.

The unique technology developed by Acronis and implemented in Acroni s True Image Home allows you to perform exact, sector-by-sector di sk backups, including all operating systems, applications and configuration files, software updates, personal settings, and data.

Acronis True Image Home helps you protect your identity as well. Simply deleting old data will not remove it permanently from your computer. Acronis True Image now includes Acronis DriveCleanser that permanently destroys files and wipes personal information from partitions and/or entire disks, as well as a wizard that cleans up your Windows system of all traces of user activity.

You can store backups on almost any PC storage device: internal or external hard drives, network drives or a variety of IDE, SCSI, FireWi re (IEEE-1394), USB (1.0, 1.1 and 2.0) and PC Card (formerly called PCMCIA) removable media drives, as well as CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, magneto-optical, Iomega Zip and Jaz drives.

When performing scheduled backup tasks, Acronis True Image Home automatically selects a backup mode (full, incremental, differential) in accordance with the backup policy set by the user.

If you are going to install a new hard disk drive, Acronis True Image Home will help you to transfer information from the old one in minutes, including operating systems, applications, documents, and personal settings. After migrating to the new hard disk you can destroy all confidential information on the old one securely. This is the recommended procedure if you intend to donate, throw away, or sell the old hard disk drive.

Wizards and a Windows Vista-style interface will make your work easier. Just perform a few simple steps and let Acronis True Image Home take care of everything else! When a system problem occurs, the software will get you up and running in no time.

1.2 New in Acronis True Image Home 2009

• One-Click Protection – During the first start of Acronis True Image Home after installation, the program will take stock of your computer storage devices and if you have enough free space on one of the hard drives or in the Acronis Secure Zone; it will offer to immediately protect your system by backing up your system volume and Master Boot Record to the storage location of its choice. In addition, Acronis True Image Home will

offer you to refresh such backups regularly (by default, once every seven days). So you simply need to click Protect and your system will be protected from a disaster.

• File search using Google Desktop and Windows Search – If you use one of these search engines, you will be able to search for files through multiple archives by name or by a part of the name and then restore individual files easily and quickly. In addition, they provide Acronis True Image Home with the ability to perform full-text indexing of the files in tib archives, so you will be able to perform searches of the files content.

• Making reserve copies of your backups - You can make reserve copies of your backups and save them on the file system, a network drive, or a USB stick. You ha ve a choice of making a reserve copy as regular (flat) files, a zip compressed file, or a tib file.

• Support for Zip format – Now you can create file-level backup archives as zip files. Zip is one of the most widely used and popular archiving formats. In addition, Microsoft Windows has built-in support of this file format making it possible to extract files from backups created by Acronis True Image Home without using the program itself.

• Consolidation of backup files – you can create a consistent copy of an archive while deleting selected backups. This allows deleting the backups you do not need anymore from any archive without harming that archive.

• Automatic consolidation - you can set limitations for backup archives, namely maximum archive size, maximum number of backups, and maximum storage period for the archive files. In case any of the preset limits are exceeded, Acronis True Image Home will combine the first full backup with the next incremental one into one full backup which will be dated the later backup date. Then, if necessary, this backup will be combined with the next, until the occupied storage space (or number of backups) decreases to the preset limit. Thus, the archive integrity wi ll not be affected, in spite of the fact that the oldest backups will be deleted. This procedure is called automatic consolidation. In the previous versions of Acronis True Image Home a similar procedure was used for automatically managing backup archives in so called backup locations, but now automatic consolidation is available for all archives except those stored on CD/DVDs.

• Automatic computer shutdown after backup or restoration finishes – you can now perform a backup at night and go to sleep without bothering about turning off the computer – the program will do this on its own.

• Automatic backup to a USB flash drive - if the archive storage location is a USB flash drive, the backup will begin automatically when the device is plugged in, but only when a scheduled backup has been missed. The flash drive must be the same as the one used for all previous backups; if you plug in another flash drive, the backup process won’t start.

• Archive to various places – you can save full, incremental and differential backups of the same data entity (for example, a partition, disk, E-mail) almost anywhere you like. In the earlier versions of Acronis True Image Home all backups belonging to the same data entity could be stored only in the same place. Now you have ultimate flexibility in choosing a place for backups of the same data entity – a network share, C D/DVD, USB stick, FTP-server, any local internal or external hard drive, etc. Furthermore, you can now give meaningful names to incremental and differential backups, for exa mple, something like "SystemDiskbeforeRepartitioning".

• More user-friendly – Completely redesigned user interface and usability enhancements make Acronis True Image Home easier to use than ever before.

1.3 System requirements and supported media

1.3.1 Minimum system requirements

Acronis True Image Home requires the following hardware:

• Pentium processor or higher

• 128 MB RAM

• CD-RW/DVD-RW drive for bootable media creation

• Mouse or other pointing device (recommended).

1.3.2 Supported operating systems

Acronis True Image Home has been tested on the following operating systems:

• Windows XP SP 3

• Windows XP Professional x64 Edition SP2

• Windows Vista SP 1 (all editions)

Acronis True Image Home also enables the creation of a bootable CD-R/DVD-R that can back up and restore a disk/partition on a computer running any Intel- or AMD- based PC operating system, including Linux®. The only exception is the Intel-based Apple Macintosh, which is not supported in native mode at this time.

1.3.3 Supported file systems

• FAT16/32

• NTFS

• Ext2/Ext3

• ReiserFS

• Linux SWAP

If a file system is not supported or is corrupted, Acronis True Image Home can copy data using a sector-by-sector approach.

The Ext2/Ext3, ReiserFS, and Linux SWAP file systems are supported only for disk or partition backup/restore operations. You cannot use Acronis True Image Home for file-level operations with these file systems (file backup, restore, search, as well as image mounting and file restoring from image), as well as for backups to disks or partitions with these file systems.

1.3.4 Supported storage media

• Hard disk drives *

• Networked storage devices

• FTP servers**

• CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R (including double-layer DVD+R), DVD+RW, DVD-RAM,

BD-R, BD-RE***

• USB 1.0 / 2.0, FireWire (IEEE-1394) and PC card storage devices

• ZIP®, Jaz® and other removable media

* Acronis True Image Home does not support dynamic and GPT disks. ** An FTP server must allow passive mode file transfers. Data recovery directly from an FTP

server requires the archive to consist of files of no more than 2GB each. It is recom mended that you change the source computer firewall settings to open Ports 20 and 21 for both TCP and UDP protocols and disable the Routing and Remote Access Windows service.

*** Burned rewritable discs cannot be read in Linux without a kernel patch.

1.4 Technical support

Users of legally purchased and registered copies of Acronis True Image Home ar e entitled to free technical support. If you experience problems installing or using Acronis products that you can’t solve yourself by using this guide, then please contact Acronis Technical Support.

More information about contacting Acronis Technical Support is available at the following

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/support/.

link: In order to open a support trouble ticket, please fill out the Web form on the Acronis site;

support will only open a trouble ticket if it is initiated from this form.

Chapter 2. Acronis True Image Home installation and startup

2.1 Installing Acronis True Image Home

2.1.1 Installing boxed version

To install Acronis True Image Home:

• Run the Acronis True Image Home setup file.

• Before installation, the setup file will check for a newer Acronis True Image Home build

on the Acronis website. If available, the newer version will be offered for installation.

• In the Install Menu, select the program to install: Acronis True Image Home.

• Follow the install wizard instructions on the screen.

Typical, Custom and Complete installation is available. Having pressed Custom, you can choose not to install Rescue Media Builder.

With Rescue Media Builder you can create boo table rescue disks (see details in

10. Creating bootable media

product that contains a bootable CD. Installing the Bootable Rescue Media Builder will allow you to create bootable media or its ISO image at any time from the main program window or running Bootable Rescue Media Builder on its own.

When installed, Acronis True Image Home creates a new device in the Device Manager list (Control Panel -> System -> Hardware -> Device Manager -> Acronis Devices -> Acronis True Image Backup Archive Explorer). Do not disable or uninstall this device, as it is necessary for connecting image archives as virtual disks (see

exploring archives and mounting

). You might not need this tool if you purchased a boxed

Chapter 12. Searching,

images).

Chapter

2.1.2 Installing Acronis True Image Home from Acronis website

To install Acronis True Image Home:

• Click on the download link, save the downloaded executable file to disk and then run it (or choose to run the file after downloading).

• If you have purchased the commercial version of the program, enter (or paste) the serial number. Otherwise, the installer will install the trial version, which will remain fully operational during the entire trial period.

Typical, Custom and Complete installation is available. Having pressed Custom, you can choose not to install Rescue Media Builder.

2.2 Extracting Acronis True Image Home

When installing Acronis True Image Home, you can save the setup (.msi) file on a local or network drive. This will help when modifying or recovering the existing component installation.

To save the setup file:

• Run the Acronis True Image Home setup file.

• In the Install Menu, right-click on the program name and select Extract.

• Select a location for the setup file and click Save.

Recovering or updating the existing Acronis True Image Home installation with use of the .msi file must be done from the command line as follows:

1. Choose Start -> Run

cmd

2. Type

3. When the command-line interpreter window opens, type the following command:

msiexec /i path_to_msi_file\msi_file_name.msi REINSTALL=ALL REINSTALLMODE=vomus

4. After the install wizard window opens, choose Typical, Custom or Complete installation for repairing or changing the program's components.

2.3 Running Acronis True Image Home

You can run Acronis True Image Home in Windows by selecting Start -> Programs -> Acronis -> Acronis True Image Home -> Acronis True Image Home or by clicking on

the appropriate shortcut on the desktop. If your operating system does not load for some reason, you can run Acronis Startup

Recovery Manager. However, this must be activated prior to use; see

Recovery Manager

bootup when you see a corresponding message that tells you to press that key. A cronis True Image Home will be run in the standalone mode, allowing you to recover the damaged partitions.

If your disk data is totally corrupted and the operating system cann ot boot (or if you have not activated Acronis Startup Recovery Manager), load the standalone Acronis True Image Home version from the bootable media, supplied with the retail box or created by you using Rescue Media Builder. This boot disk will allow you to restore your disk from a previously created image.

to learn more about this procedure. To run the program, press F11 during

3.4 Acronis Startup

2.4 Upgrading Acronis True Image Home

If you already have Acronis True Image Home installed, the new version will simply update it; there is no need to remove the old version and reinstall the software.

Please keep in mind that the backups created by the later program version may be incompatible with the previous program versions, so if you roll back Acronis True Image Home to an older version, you likely will have to re-create the archives using the older version. We strongly recommend that you create new bootable media after each Acronis True Image Home upgrade.

2.5 Removing Acronis True Image Home

Select Start -> Settings -> Control panel -> Add or remove programs -> <Acronis True Image Home> -> Remove. Then follow the instructions on the screen. You may

have to reboot your computer afterwards to complete the task. If you use Windows Vista, select Start -> Control panel -> Programs and Features ->

<Acronis True Image Home> -> Remove. Then follow the instructions on the screen. You may have to reboot your computer afterwards to complete the task.

Chapter 3. General information and proprietary Acronis technologies

3.1 The difference between file archives and disk/partition images

A backup archive is a file or a group of files (also called “backups” in this guide), that contains a copy of selected file/folder data or a copy of all information stored on selected disks/partitions.

When you back up files and folders, only the data, along with the folder tree, is compressed and stored.

Backing up disks and partitions is performed in a different way: Acronis True Image H ome stores a sector-by-sector snapshot of the disk, which includes the op erating system , registry, drivers, software applications and data files, as well as system areas hidden from the user. This procedure is called “creating a disk image,” and the resulting backup archive is often called a disk/partition image.

By default, Acronis True Image Home stores only those hard disk parts that contain data (for supported file systems). Further, it does not back up swap file information (pagefile.sys under Windows XP/Vista) 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 restoration. However, you might use the Create an image using the sector-by-sector approach option that lets you include all of the sectors of a hard disk in an image.

A partition image includes all files and folders. This includes all attributes (including hidden and system files), boot record, and FAT (file allocation table); as well as files in the root directory and the zero track of the hard disk with master boot record (MBR).

A disk image includes images of all disk partitions as well as the zero track with master boot record (MBR).

By default, files in all Acronis True Image Home archives have a “.tib” extension. Do not change this file extension.

It is important to note that you can restore files and folders not only from file archi ves, but from disk/partition images too. To do so, mount the image as a virtual disk (see

Searching, exploring archives and mounting

select Restore specified files or folders.

images) or start the image restoration and

Chapter 12.

3.2 Full, incremental and differential backups

Acronis True Image Home can create full, incremental and differential backups. A full backup contains all data at the moment of backup creation. It forms a base for

further incremental or differential backup or is used as a standalone archive. A full backup has the shortest restore time compared to incremental or differential ones.

An incremental backup file only contains data changed since the last backup of any type (full, incremental, or differential one). Therefore, it is smaller and takes less time to create, but as it doesn’t contain all data; all the previous backups and the initial full backup are required for restoration.

Unlike an incremental backup, when every backup procedure creates the next file in a “chain”, a differential backup creates an independent file, containing all changes since the

last full backup. Generally, a differential backup will be restored faster than an incremental one, as it does not have to process through a long chain of previous backups.

A standalone full backup might be an optimal solution if you often roll back the system to its initial state or if you do not like to manage multiple files. If you are interested in saving only the last data state to be able to restore it in case of system failure, consider the differential backup. It is particularly effective if your data changes tend to be few compared to the full data volume.

The same is true for incremental backup. These are most useful when you need frequent backups and the ability to roll back to a specific point in time. Having created a full backup once, if you then create an incremental backup each day of a month, you will get the same result as if you created full backups every day. Increment al images are considerably smaller than full or differential images.

Incremental or Differential?

The difference is typically that in an incremental backup, only the files changed or added since the last time the backup ran are added to the ar chive. With a differential backup, all the files changed or added since the initial full backup, are added to the archive. Thus, differential backups take longer to run than incremental backups. When restoring from an incremental backup, the program must copy the entire initial backup and then step through each of the previous backups to retrieve all the updated files. A differential b ackup, on the other hand, can be restored more quickly because the software must copy only the original backup and the most recent one.

An incremental or differential backup created after a disk is defragmented might be considerably larger than usual. This is because the defragmentation program changes file locations on the disk and the backups reflect these changes. Therefore, it is recommended that you re-create a full backup after disk defragmentation.

3.3 Acronis Secure Zone™

The Acronis Secure Zone is a secure partition that enables keeping backup archives on a managed machine disk space and therefore recovery of a disk to the same disk where the backup resides. In the Acronis True Image Home wizards' windows, the zone is listed along with all locations available for storing archives.

Certain Windows applications, such as Acronis disk management tools, can access the zone. When you create Acronis Secure Zone, an icon appears under My Computer in the Other

section. Double-clicking on the Acronis Secure Zone icon opens the zone and you can view all backup archives it contains. You can also open the zone by right-clicking on its icon and choosing Open in a shortcut menu. Double-clicking on an archive opens it and shows all backups (full, incremental, differential) belonging to the archive. Right-clicking on a specific backup opens a shortcut menu allowing to choose a d esired operation – mount (for image archives), restore, validate, update, remove the backup, and view backup's details. If Acroni s Secure Zone is password-protected, any operation except viewing backup details will require entering the password. Double-clicking on a backup will start the default operation (Mount for image backups and Restore for data backups).

The shortcut menu appearing after right-clicking on the Acronis Secure Zone icon has two more items – Create Shortcut (for placing it on the Desktop) and Explore for exploring the zone contents. Choosing Explore opens Windows Explorer with Acronis Secure Zone selected on the directory tree and you will be able to explore zone contents.

The Acronis Secure Zone is available as a location to store backup files as long as there is free space in the zone. If there is not enough space, older backups will be deleted to create free space.

Acronis True Image Home uses the following approach to clean up the Acronis Secure Zone:

• If you are in the process of creating a backup an d there is not enough free space in the zone to create it, the program will display a dialog which warns you that the Acronis Secure Zone is full. You can click Cancel to cancel the backup operation. In that case, you may want to increase the size of the Acronis Secure Zone and then run the backup operation again. If you want to free some space in the zone, click OK and the oldest full backup of the type being created will be deleted with all subsequent incremental/differential backups, then the backup operation will recommence.

• If deleting the oldest backup does not free enough space, you will get the same warning message again. You may delete the next oldest backup (if any) and repeat this until all the previous backups are deleted.

• If after deleting all the previous backups there is still not enough space for completing the backup, you will get an error message and the backup will be canceled.

The program distinguishes only two types of backups in the zone: disk image backups and file-level backups. My Data, System State, My E-mail, and My Application Settings backups are considered as file-level type backups. For example, if y ou have an e-mail backup (My Email) in the zone and there is not enough space for backing up some folders (My Data), the program will delete the e-mail backup to free space for the folders backup.

You can back up data automatically on a schedule (see order to not worry about zone overflow during a scheduled backup, it is recommended to select the When not enough space in ASZ delete the oldest archive box in the Default backup options and the scheduled backup task options. For more information see the appropriate option in backups, it will be good practice to periodically check the zone free space, indicated on the

Protection State -> System Information screen or on the second screen of the Manage Acronis Secure Zone Wizard.

For information on how to create, resize or delete Acronis Secure Zone using this wizard, see

5.4.9 Error handling

Chapter 9. Managing Acronis Secure Zone

. However, if you keep long chains of incremental

Chapter 8. Scheduling tasks

). In

3.4 Acronis Startup Recovery Manager

3.4.1 How it works

The Acronis Startup Recovery Manager lets you start Acronis True Image Home without loading the operating system. With this feature, you can use Acronis True Image Home by itself to restore damaged partitions, even if the operating system won't start up for some reason. As opposed to booting from Acronis removable media, you will not need a separate media or network connection to start Acronis True Image Home.

3.4.2 How to use

To be able to use Acronis Startup Recovery Manager at boot time, prepare as follows:

1. Install Acronis True Image Home.

2. Activate Acronis Startup Recovery Manager. To do s o, select Tools -> Activate Acronis

Startup Recovery Manager in the main program menu, then click Activate in the dialog that appears.

When Acronis Startup Recovery Manager is activated, it overwrites the master boot record (MBR) with its own boot code. If you have any third-party boot managers installed, you will have to reactivate them after activating the Startup Recovery Manager. For Linux loaders (e.g. LiLo and GRUB), you might consider installing them to a Linux root (or boot) partition boot record instead of MBR before activating Acronis Startup Recovery Manager.

If a failure occurs, turn on the computer and press F11 when you see the "Press F11 for Acronis Startup Recovery Manager" message. This will start a standalone version of Acronis True Image Home that differs only slightly from the complete version. For information on restoring damaged partitions, see

Be careful! Drive letters in standalone Acronis True Image Home might sometimes differ from the way Windows identifies drives. For example, the D: drive identified in the standalone Acronis True Image Home might correspond to the E: drive in Windows.

You won't be able to use the previously activated Acronis Startup Recovery Manager if the Try&Decide mode is started.

Chapter 6. Restoring backup data

3.5 Viewing disk and partition information

You can change the way data is represented in all schemes you see in various wizards. To the right are three icons: Arrange Icons by, Choose Details and i (Display the

properties of the selected item), the latter duplicated in the context menu opened by right-clicking objects.

To sort messages by a particular column, click the header (another click will switch the messages to the opposite order) or the Arrange Icons by button and select the column.

To select columns to view, right-click the headers line or left-click the Choose Columns button. Then flag the columns you want to display. When left-clicking the Choose Columns button, you can also change the display order of columns using the Move Up and Move Down buttons.

If you click the i (Display the properties of the selected item) button, you will see the selected partition or disk properties window.

This window contains two panels. The left panel contains the properties tree and the rig ht describes the selected property in detail. The disk information includes its physical parameters (connection type, device type, size, etc.); partition information includes both physical (sectors, location, etc.), and logical (file system, free space, assigned letter, etc.) parameters.

You can change the width of a column by dragging its borders with the mouse.

3.6 Try&Decide™

The Acronis True Image Home Try&Decide feature allows you to perform potentially dangerous operations such as software installation or opening e-mail attachments without putting your PC at risk. It does this by creating essentially a controlled, secure, temporary workspace that is insulated from the rest of your computer. If the system crashes or your computer stops responding during these operations, you should revert the system to the previous state by discarding changes made in the Try&Decide mode. If operations are successful, you have a choice of applying the changes to the real system. (For more details

Chapter 7 Try&Decide.

see

)

3.7 Acronis DriveCleanser, File Shredder, and System Clean-up

Acronis True Image Home contains utilities for secure destruction of data on an entire hard disk drive, individual partitions, as well as for erasing individual files and eliminating user system activity traces. When replacing your old hard drive with a new, higher-capacity one, you may unwittingly leave on the old disk lots of personal and confi dential information that can be recovered, even if you have reformatted it. The Acronis DriveCleanser provides for the destruction of confidential information on hard disk drives and/or partitions with the help of techniques that meet or exceed most national and state standards. You can select an appropriate data destruction method depending on the importance of your confidential information. The File Shredder provides the same capabilities for individual files and folders. Finally, the System Clean-up wizard ensures elimination of all your activity traces; while working with a PC, you leave thousands of bytes of evidence showing your actions (records in various system files) that you don’t even know about. This could include user names and passwords, as well as other personal information that could be used to steal your identity if it fell into the wrong hands. This utility wipes them completely from the disk drive.

3.8 Support for Zip format

Now you will be able to retrieve files from backups anywhere without using Acronis True Image Home, if you choose the zip format inst ead of the tib format. You can back up files, for example, to a USB stick and retrieve files from such archives on your notebook at home without installing Acronis True Image Home, because the most widely used operating systems, namely Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X have built-in support of the zip file format.

Please, be aware that built-in support of zip files in Windows does not cover operations with multivolume zip archives, and zip archives exceeding 4GB in size or which contain files of more than 4GB each.

The Zip format is available when backing up files and/or folders as well as when making reserve copies of your backups. Acronis True Im age Home provides for the zip format most of the functionality available for the tib format, except password pr otection and encryption – you can schedule backups, validate zip backup archives, restore files and folders from zip archives, make incremental and differential backups, and so on.

Acronis True Image Home can restore and validate only its own zip archives. If a zip archive was created by a file archiver program, it cannot be restored and validated by Acronis True Image Home.

Chapter 4. Getting to know Acronis True Image Home

4.1 Acronis One-Click Protection

Acronis One-Click Protection tool allows you to begin protecting your computer as soon as you install Acronis True Image Home. During the first start of the just installed Acronis True Image Home, the program will offer you to protect your computer by immediately backing up its system volume and Master Boot Record (MBR) as well as scheduling subsequent full backups.

The Acronis One-Click Protection tool performs only full backups of the system volume; scheduling an incremental or differential backup is not possible. In addition, it does not support backup of drives protected by BitLocker Drive Encryption in Windows Vista.

Acronis True Image Home will take stock of your computer's configuration and then offer the optimum destination for backups.

For this purpose the program will use the following algorithm:

1) First of all the program estimates the space required for operation of the One-Click

Protection tool. As the you can use this value as a guide. Let’s say your system partition has 20GB of pr ograms and data. Under normal conditions, that will compress down to approximately 10GB and the disk space required for operation of the One-Click Protection tool might amount to 10GB plus 250 MB for temporary files.

2) If there is an external hard drive, your backups will be stored on that drive, since such a

backup place will provide maximum protection for your computer. The safety of your computer will be even greater, if you get into the habit of disconnecting the external drive and storing it at another location.

3) If you have upgraded from a previous Acronis True Image Home version and already

have the Acronis Secure Zone, the program will check its size and if the zone size is sufficient

average

compression ratio when backing up data into tib files is 2:1,

for backup, it will use the Acronis Secure Zone. In case the zone is too small for backing up the system partition, the program will move to the next best option.

4) If the first two options are unavailable but you have at least two internal har d drives, the

program will back up to a non-system hard drive using a partition with the maximum free space.

5) When your computer has only one hard drive:

• If the hard drive has several partitions (not counting hidden ones), then the program will use a non-system partition with maximum free space

• If the drive has only one non-hidden partition, namely, the system partition: o If the partition has enough free space, the program will create the Acronis Secure

Zone and back up there.

o If the program detects any internal hidden partition, it will back up to the system

partition

o If the partition has insufficient free space, the program will offer to use the writing

CD/DVD drive (if it exists) and will append Acronis One-Click Restore and a full standalone version of Acronis True Image Home as well. In this case the program will use the maximum compression ratio

After applying this algorithm to your computer configuration, Acronis True Image Home will offer the optimum place for storing your backups. If you would prefer another storage location, click the Specify destination link and select the storage location most suitable for you.

If you have upgraded from a previous Acronis True Image Home version and Acronis Startup Recovery Manager was already activated, the program will update its bootable components.

Acronis Startup Recovery Manager lets you start Acronis True Image Home without loading the operating system. For more information see

3.4 Acronis Startup Recovery Manager

If Acronis Startup Recovery Manager is not activated, you can activate it now. Click the "v" arrow in the One-Click Protection window to open Options and then select the Activate Acronis Startup Recovery Manager box. The Options also allow changing the periodicity of refreshing your system volume backups.

Clicking Protect will start the backup task. But before proceeding with the backup, the program will ask you under whose user credentials the subsequent scheduled backups will run.

Clicking Cancel will cancel One-Cli ck Protection. If you decide to use this feature later, click Home on the sidebar and then choose One-Click Protection on the right pane of the Welcome screen.

When archive storage location is a USB flash drive, the backup will begin automatically when the device is plugged in but only if a scheduled backup has been missed. The USB fl ash drive must be the same as the one used for all previous backups; if you plug another flash drive, the backup process won’t start.

The system will always keep the last backup archive. When a task for another backup begins, the older backup is deleted – freeing space for the backup in progress.

If there is not enough free space on your PC, the program will notify you that it cannot back up the system volume and will suggest that you specify a destination for backup yourself.

4.2 Program workspace

Starting Acronis True Image Home takes you to the Welcome screen . This screen provides quick access to practically all the program's functionality.

Clicking the items in the right pane takes you to the corresponding wizard or screen where you can either start the selected task or function right away or make further selections.

All the features listed in the right pane are duplicated on the le ft side of the scr een occupie d by the so called

sidebar

. The sidebar also provides easy access to all functionality of Acronis True Image Home. The main functions are listed in the lower part of the sidebar. If you choose an item in the lower part, the upper part of the sidebar displays subitems related to the chosen item (if any) and the right part of the main window shows detailed information for the current subitem or a list of options available for that subitem.

Status bar

At the bottom of the main window, there is a status bar that briefly describes t he selected operation or screen. If you select a backup archive, task or log, the status bar will show information on the selected item.

Taskbar notification area icon

During most of the operations, a special indicator icon appears in the Windows taskbar notification area (the right portion of the statu s bar with the clock). If you mouse over the icon, you will see a tool tip indicating the operation’s progress. Right-clicking on the icon opens a contextual menu where you can chan ge process priority or cancel the operation if necessary. This icon doesn’t depend on the main program window being open. It is present for background execution of scheduled tasks as well.

Acronis True Image Home uses wizards, which guide you through many operations. Like the main program window, wizards also have the sidebar listing all the steps (both required and optional) needed for completing the operation. For example, see the Backup Wizard screenshot below.

The completed steps are marked with green checkmarks. The green arrow shows the current step. After you complete all the required steps, the Summary button becomes available. If you wish to omit the optional steps, click Summary, read the summary of the operation to be performed (to make sure that the default s ettings satisfy you) and then click Proceed to start the task. Otherwise proceed to the optional steps where you can change the default settings for the current task.

And now let's get acquainted with some other screens you will use while working with Acronis True Image Home. One of the most important and informa tive screens is Protection State. It shows a wealth of information on the protection state of your co mputer and permits taking measures that will enhance protection of your system (or provide it if the system is as of yet unprotected) – the screen has links for creating a system partition backup, and bootable rescue media, for activating Acronis Startup Recovery Manager. In addition, you will get information on the number of backup archives, as well as the date and time of the last backup, number of scheduled tasks and the last task result, and state of the Try&Decide mode. The screen also shows information on the state of your hard disks (total capa ci ty, free space, space occupied by backup archives and other files), information on the state of the Acronis Secure Zone (free and occupied space).

To go to one more screen of interest, click Backup and Restore -> Manage and restore on the sidebar. This screen gives detailed information on your backup archives and provides for quickly performing operations on these archives – Restore, Validate, Remove, Consolidate, Update, Explore backup archives and Mount image backups by a single click on a button on the toolbar. Clicking the button starts the appropriate wizard or performs the appropriate action. On this screen you can assign ratings to your backups, for instance, you may want to assign a high rating to an important backup. A backup ra ting is indicated by the number of "stars" in the Rating column (more stars means higher rating). The default rating is three stars, but you can raise or lower it by clicking on the stars in the column. The assigned backup ratings may be helpful, for example, when sometime later you will need to consolidate the backups stored in an archive – it will be easier to choose which backups to keep after consolidation. For more information on manual backup consolidation see

Consolidating backups

. In addition, these ratings might save you a lot of time you will

11.5

otherwise spend on exploring multiple files in your backup archives trying to guess which of the outdated backups can be deleted without losing important data.

Another useful screen shows logs of program operations and scheduled tasks. A calendar provides quick access to the logs (for past dates) or tasks (for future dates). You just click on a desired date. For more information see

11.3 Viewing Tasks and Logs

We will not bore you with a description of other screens, because many of them are selfexplanatory and some are described in the appropriate chapters of this guide. In addition, all screens have brief descriptions of the features they allow to access or use and you can always open contextual help by clicking the corresponding button.

By the way, you can also select all the features through the main program menu, which is always at your disposal on the toolbar.

Chapter 5. Creating backup archives

5.1 Preparing for your first backup

First of all you must decide where you will store your backups. Acronis True Image Home supports quite a lot of storage devices. For more information see

. Since hard disk drives are now quite inexpensive, in most cases purchasing an

media

external hard drive will be an optimal storage device for your backups. In addition to enhancing the security of your data – you can keep it off-s ite (for example, at home if you back up your office computer and vice versa); many models are hot -pluggable, so you can attach and detach the drive as you need. You can choose various interfaces – USB 2.0, FireWire, eSATA depending on the configuration of your computer ports and the required data transfer rate. In many cases the best choice will be an external USB 2.0 hard drive, though it has a pitfall – such a drive may slow down if it works together with slower USB 1.1 devices. If you have a Gigabit Ethernet home network and a dedicated file server or NAS, for example, Buffalo TeraStation 1.0 TB NAS Gigabit Ethernet Home Server, you can store backups on the file server or NAS practically like onto an internal drive. Blank optical discs such as CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW are very cheap, so they will be the lowest cost solution for backing up your data, though the slowest one (not counting backups to an FTP server through a slow Internet connection).

1.3.4 Supported storage

5.2 Selecting what data to back up

As operating systems and application software become ever larger (for example, Windows Vista x64 requires 15GB of free space on a hard disk), usually it will take you several hours to reinstall your operating system and application software from original CDs or DVDs on a new hard disk. Furthermore, the practice of buying application software by downloading from the Internet is becoming more and more popular. If you lose your registration information, for example, the activation key and/or registration number, which are usually sent by software vendors through e-mail, you may have problems with restoring your right to use the application. So making a backup of your entire system disk (making a disk image) will save you a lot of valuable time in case of a disaster, as well as safeguard you against other possible problems.

Backing up the entire system disk (creating a disk image) takes more disk space, but enables you to restore the system in minutes in case of a system crash or hardware failure. Moreover, the imaging procedure is much faster than copying files and could speed up the backup process significantly when it comes to backing up large volumes of data (s ee details

3.1 The difference between file archives and disk/partition images

in You might think it would take a while to make a copy of your entire hard disk, but the

proprietary technologies used in Acronis True Image Home ensure that image creation is quite fast. And the program can also back up time, updating your image to reflect the current state of your hard disk requires only copyi ng the files that are new or changed and will require much less time. Because images can save you a lot of time when you need to recover the operating system, it is recommended that you make them part of your backup strategy. In our opinion crea ting your system volume image backup is vital for protecting your computer system from a disaster, so now Acronis True Image Home offers to back up the system volume and Master B oot Record during the first start of the program after installation. For more information s ee

Protection

incrementally or differentially,

so after the first

4.1 Acronis One-Click

Images, however, provide no defense against damaged files. If your hard disk contains damaged files when you are making an image, those problems will appear in the image as well.

For that reason, although we strongly recommend you to create images of your hard disk on a regular basis, that is just part of a reliable backup strategy. You should supplement the images with file archives.

Do you need file-level backups?

Do you have bank records, e-mails, photos, etc. you accumulated on your computer for several years? Hardware and software can be replaced, your personal data cannot.

Though there may be some exceptions, the optimal backup strategy for most users consists of creating both images and file-level backups.

After the initial full backup, file-level backups usually take comparatively little time to run, making it easy to back up your data once (or even several times) each day. This ensures that your most recent backup is never more than a day old. Because they also offer insurance against accidental deletion (or change) and file damage, file-level backups are an essential part of a good backup strategy. But file-level backups alone are not sufficien t for two main reasons:

1) If your startup hard drive completely fails, you won’t be able to do any work at all until you’ve replaced it; and 2) Reinstalling an operating system and applications from their original CDs or DVDs is a lengthy and arduous procedure that you could avoid (or speed up greatly) with an image of your hard disk.

You should create images of your primary disk and any other volume you normally use. If you have multiple partitions on a drive, it is advisable to include all of them in the image, because failure of the hard drive in most cases will mean that all the partitions it contains also fail.

Here are some more recommendations you can use to plan your backups. You should store your system drive image in the Acronis Secure Zone or, better still, on a hard drive other than your primary hard disk C:. This gives an additional guarantee that you will be able to recover your system if your primary hard disk drive fails. You should also keep your personal data separate from your operating system and applications, for example, on disk D:. Such an arrangement allows speeding up the creation of data disk (or partition) images and reduces the amount of information you will need to restore.

5.3 Performing backup

1. Start Acronis True Image Home

2. Choose Backup and Restore in the lower area of the sidebar and the Create backup task item will be selected by default.

3. Select what type of data you want to back up. Acronis True Image Home offers you the following backup types:

My Computer (image backup of any set of disks/partitions) My Data (file-level backup of any set of files, folders, or an entire file category) System State (file-level backup of system files, drivers, etc.) My E-mail (file-level backup of Microsoft Outloo k, Microsoft Outlook Express, and Windows

Mail settings and messages).

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Acronis True Image Home - 2009 User's Guide

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual

1.1 What is Acronis® True Image Home?

1.2 New in Acronis True Image Home 2009

1.3 System requirements and supported media

1.3.1 Minimum system requirements

1.3.2 Supported operating systems

1.3.3 Supported file systems

1.3.4 Supported storage media

1.4 Technical support

Chapter 2. Acronis True Image Home installation and startup

2.1 Installing Acronis True Image Home

2.1.1 Installing boxed version

2.1.2 Installing Acronis True Image Home from Acronis website

2.2 Extracting Acronis True Image Home

2.3 Running Acronis True Image Home

2.4 Upgrading Acronis True Image Home

2.5 Removing Acronis True Image Home

Chapter 3. General information and proprietary Acronis technologies

3.1 The difference between file archives and disk/partition images

3.2 Full, incremental and differential backups

3.3 Acronis Secure Zone™

3.4 Acronis Startup Recovery Manager

3.4.1 How it works

3.4.2 How to use

3.5 Viewing disk and partition information

3.6 Try&Decide™

3.7 Acronis DriveCleanser, File Shredder, and System Clean-up

3.8 Support for Zip format

Chapter 4. Getting to know Acronis True Image Home

4.1 Acronis One-Click Protection

4.2 Program workspace

Chapter 5. Creating backup archives

5.1 Preparing for your first backup

5.2 Selecting what data to back up

5.3 Performing backup