Operation Manual

Chapter 12. Exploring archives and

mounting images

Acronis True Image Home offers two kinds of archive contents management: mounting for

images and exploring for both images and file-level archives. Both operations are performed

via the Backup Archives category.

Exploring images and file-level archives lets you view their contents and copy the

selected files to the hard disk.

Mounting images as virtual drives lets you access them as though they were physical

drives. This means that:

• a new disk with its own letter will appear in the drives list

• using Windows Explorer and other file managers, you can view the image contents as if

they were located on a physical disk or partition

• you will be able to use the virtual disk in the same way as the real one: open, save,

copy, move, create, delete files or folders. If necessary, the image can be mounted in

read-only mode

Please keep in mind that, though both file archives and disk/partition images have a default

“.tib” extension, only images can be mounted. If you want to view file archive contents, use

the Explore operation. Images residing in backup locations cannot be mounted. The

following is a brief summary of the Explore vs Mount operation:

Explore Mount

Archive type File-level, disk or partition image Partition image

Assigning a letter No Yes

Archive modification No Yes (in R/W mode)

Files extraction Yes Yes

Backup locations support Yes No

The current version of Acronis True Image Home can mount or explore an image archive

only if all its volumes reside in the same directory. If your archive spans several CD-R/RW

discs and you wish to mount the image, you should copy all volumes to a hard disk drive or

network drive.

12.1 Exploring an archive

1. Click Explore and Validate Backup Archives in the Tools group or select the Backup

Archives category on the sidebar to navigate to the Manage Backup Archives window. Then

select Explore Backup Archive. Or, you can select Tools -> Explore Backup Archive in

the main program menu.

2. Select an archive or a backup location from the drive tree and click Open. If the archive is

located in Acronis Secure Zone, select it to choose the archive at the next step.