User`s guide

3 Backing up data

Acronis True Image Home 2011 Netbook Edition 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 below sections describe the backup features in more detail.

In this section

The difference between file backups and disk/partition images ............ 34

Full, incremental and differential backups .............................................. 35

Backing up partitions and disks ................................................................ 37

Backing up files and folders ..................................................................... 39

Backing up e-mail ..................................................................................... 42

Making reserve copies of your backups ................................................... 44

Backup to various places .......................................................................... 45

Adding an existing backup to the list ....................................................... 46

Excluding items from backup ................................................................... 46

Backup options ......................................................................................... 47

Validating backups ................................................................................... 60

Consolidating backup versions ................................................................. 60

Cloning backup settings ........................................................................... 62

3.1 The difference between file backups and

disk/partition images

A backup is a copy of selected files, folders or information stored on disks.

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

Disk/partition backups are different from file and folder backups. Acronis True Image Home 2011

Netbook Edition stores a sector-by-sector snapshot of the disk. 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 Acronis True Image Home 2011 Netbook Edition stores only the hard disk parts that

contain data (for supported file systems).

Furthermore, Acronis True Image Home does not back up swap file information. It will not back up

pagefile.sys under Windows XP and later and it will not back up 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.

However, you can still use the Back up sector-by-sector option that lets you include all of the sectors

of a hard disk in an image.

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).