User`s guide

1.1.2 Acronis True Image Home 2011 Netbook Edition basic

concepts

This section provides general information about basic concepts which could be useful for

understanding how the program works.

Backup and recovery

Backup refers to the making copies of data so that these additional copies may be used to recover

the original after a data loss event.

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 Netbook Edition does both by creating disk (or partition) images and

file-level backups respectively.

By default, Acronis True Image Home 2011 Netbook Edition 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 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.

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. 35).

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.

Snapshots

Acronis True Image Home 2011 Netbook Edition uses "snapshot" technology which permits you to

create system partition backups even while running Windows with files open for reading and writing.

Rebooting the computer is not necessary.