Acronis 11 home

I am using windows vista home basic and I want to try and create a set of
recovery disks for my system. Does anyone know the best way to do this, I
have a acronis boot disk that allows me to create images outside windows but
I am unsure how to to this. I would like to try and keep the number of dvds
down to an absolute minimum if possible. My initial drive size is 80 GB and
I want the dvds to be bootable.

Any help would be great

Here is what I do.. and some more info that may help you..

First of all acronis ROCKS!!!

when you do this there is an option to customize and split the backup into
parts..

I personally select parts of 700 mb each so that 6 of them fit into 1 dvd
for a total of 4.1 gb per disk..

while acronis is doing this, it is compressing the data too... but Vista is
very big and if you have lots of data in personal folders then you might
have to write many disks.

You can probably manually increase that a bit so you can take advantange of
more of the dvd..

the second option is to select the DVD size option that writes a 4.4 gb file
part.. BUT you need to use a DVD-RW (re-writable) disk in this case
since normal DVD-R have a 2 gig file limit

I save these to a second drive then I fit them into disks later on...

If you have only ONE drive or cant save to a network share, then you can
burn the dvds directly with acronis on-the-fly

you must also make a boot cd from a seperate shortcut in the start menu ..
it has a bootable media creator thing..

you make a seperate bootable cd using that, and then you write the backups
on dvds...

Tell me if this helps.. if you need further assistance ask me...


"Ben Ramsay" <> wrote in message
news4734426-8420-4D22-89A0-...
>I am using windows vista home basic and I want to try and create a set of
> recovery disks for my system. Does anyone know the best way to do this, I
> have a acronis boot disk that allows me to create images outside windows
> but
> I am unsure how to to this. I would like to try and keep the number of
> dvds
> down to an absolute minimum if possible. My initial drive size is 80 GB
> and
> I want the dvds to be bootable.
>
> Any help would be great

Ben Ramsay wrote:
> I am using windows vista home basic and I want to try and create a set of
> recovery disks for my system. Does anyone know the best way to do this, I
> have a acronis boot disk that allows me to create images outside windows
> but
> I am unsure how to to this. I would like to try and keep the number of dvds
> down to an absolute minimum if possible. My initial drive size is 80 GB and
> I want the dvds to be bootable.
>
> Any help would be great

The concept of creating something as critical as disaster recovery
backup to multiple DVD media is foolish and a waste of time and effort.
If you pursue this using DVD, you will regret it in future!!!!

Instead, you should consider using a dedicated, external device such as
the following for your disaster recovery methodology:
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-gb/pro.../freeagent_go/

I like the Free Agent Go series as they are compact and similar in size
to a single DVD in jewel case.

> The concept of creating something as critical as disaster recovery backup
> to multiple DVD media is foolish and a waste of time and effort. If you
> pursue this using DVD, you will regret it in future!!!!
>
> Instead, you should consider using a dedicated, external device such as
> the following for your disaster recovery methodology:
> http://www.seagate.com/www/en-gb/pro.../freeagent_go/

I absolutely agree. DVD's are hopeless for disaster recovery. Use an
external hard drive, and either copy all your data to it (Microsoft's
SyncToy is great for this), or make a mirror image of your main drive using
Acronis.

SteveT

Oh? How come I have used DVDs successfully for many years?

Oh god.. what a bunch of computer illiterate bunch!

Read my post on how I do this, and stop the misinformation!



"Steve Thackery" <> wrote in message
news:...
>> The concept of creating something as critical as disaster recovery backup
>> to multiple DVD media is foolish and a waste of time and effort. If you
>> pursue this using DVD, you will regret it in future!!!!
>>
>> Instead, you should consider using a dedicated, external device such as
>> the following for your disaster recovery methodology:
>> http://www.seagate.com/www/en-gb/pro.../freeagent_go/
>
> I absolutely agree. DVD's are hopeless for disaster recovery. Use an
> external hard drive, and either copy all your data to it (Microsoft's
> SyncToy is great for this), or make a mirror image of your main drive
> using Acronis.
>
> SteveT

vista user 43 wrote:
> Oh? How come I have used DVDs successfully for many years?
>
> Oh god.. what a bunch of computer illiterate bunch!
>
> Read my post on how I do this, and stop the misinformation!

Face it capin' crunch...you're stupid...LOL!
Frank

> Oh? How come I have used DVDs successfully for many years?

How many times have you had to use them in anger, though?

Of course you COULD back up to 1.4M floppies if you really want. But an
external hard drive is MUCH more convenient.

SteveT

"Steve Thackery" <> wrote in message
news:#s$X6$...
>> Oh? How come I have used DVDs successfully for many years?
>
> How many times have you had to use them in anger, though?
>
> Of course you COULD back up to 1.4M floppies if you really want. But an
> external hard drive is MUCH more convenient.
>
> SteveT

One external drive does not make a backup solution.

In article <#s$X6$>,
Steve Thackery <> wrote:
>
>Of course you COULD back up to 1.4M floppies if you really want. But an
>external hard drive is MUCH more convenient.
>

An external hard drive is writeable. Do you really want to find
out that you accidentaly replaced your backups with 40GB of pirated movies?

An external hard drive is sensitive to shock, Do you want to
find out that your 7 year old knocked your backup drive off the shelf
and didn't say anything because it looked ok except for that little dent?

An external hard drive is sensitive to static and magnetic fields.
Do you want to... Well you get the idea. Hard drive backups are convenient
but not a good choice as a disaster recovery plan because they're not
reliable. DVD backups are better because they're relatively rugged and if
you make a backup, test and verify it, then store them you're reasonably
assured of being able to restore from it later. If you need 150 DVD's to
make such a backup buy a tape library.

People who respond to uestions need to read and awnser the question or don't
awnser the question at all