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Acronis TI 2010 - Clone Or Backup Image?
Today I did my monthly disk imaging , and decided to test out the restore process using the smaller hard drive I have as a spare.
It worked, but because the spare drive is much smaller than my active drive, I can only only backup/restore the system partition, not the data one. Since this means I need to do do extra work getting access to user data files and large media files ( think Itunes Library, Adobe premiere, Adobe Lightroom Catalog )
In the event of catastrophic hard drive failure, I'd rather be able to pop in a spare drive, restore(if not a clone ), and go about my business.
I see 2 options right now, but let me show you my setup so that we are on the same page:
Netbook computer:
1 500GB HD ( drive I upgraded the Netbook to )
Partitioned as
- 50GB C Drive: OS and Programs
- 400GB D Drive: User Data, plus large file collections ( like OS Distro's, movies, music, etc )
Spare Drive:
1 100GB Drive (drive that came with the Netbook )
Backup Software: Acronis TIH 2010(paid version )
My options to decrease my downtime ( or "pop & go" ) are :
- Resize D: partition to make it just large enough for user data. Make an E: partition and move large files there. Then have Acronis backup C&D , which will now fit on spare drive. ( Fast, but what about my iTunes library? )
- Purchase 500GB spare drive, and clone Internal drive to it using my USB hard drive dock. Fast and I am not missing any data.
Option 1 is time intensive to set up , but its cheaper than 2, and my large files/file collections are currently backed up to a large external drive. So I would not lose them, but I would not have them until I got the replacement drive.
Option 2 is a lot simpler, the minus being I am buying a drive that I might never need. They are around $60 though, so it isn't a huge expense to save me time on backing up, and if internal drive fails, it won't take long at all to recover from it.
Note 1: In addition to a large external drive, I have critical files encrypted and backed up "in the cloud". So I'll never lose everything, even if my house is broken into and my hard drives are stolen.
Note 2: I am working overseas for another 6 months, so this Netbook is my primary system until I get back to the States. It's doing surprisingly well, and I am avoiding buying a new rig with RAID5/etc as that will be one more thing I'll have to ship back or abandon if I can't afford to ship it back.