Can Acronis True Image do this?

[TailsNZ]

I'm putting Windows XP on a 74gb hard drive (formatted to 64k clusters), and will have a 74gb partition on my second hard drive to backup to. I've heard the best way is to make it an invisible partition, apparently that's more secure from viruses and such.

So I was wondering if Acronis True Image 8 good for that? I read from one user (and I guess this is just them, but wanted to check) that it formatted their partition they wanted to back up to... and also formatted the other partitions on that drive too... without even asking for confrmation. Has anyone else heard of this?

Reading through old topics here it seems a Windows backup program that backups Windows while it's running, will never give a 100% accurate backup. But it sounds like it's 'good enough for most', right? It's really something I'd just like to set and forget.

Thanks!

 

[corkyg]

Those things can happen if you let the program go in the "automatic" mode. Setting and forgetting is an invitation to disaster some day. It assumes that machines are smart enough to make such decisions. I always run TI 8 in manual mode for cloning a drive. That way I decide whether or not to delete partitions on the target drive and create new ones, or leave them - same for retaining data on the source drive.

If you really want automatic backing up, try a duplicate computer and set up an auto synchronization schedule on a network connection.

Another good solution is to backup to an external drive - but again, surrendering total control to a dumb machine is always risky.

 

[TailsNZ]

Ah ok, good point I should probably use manual mode. At the moment it's not really for hard drive crashes (that's why it's on my 2nd hard drive, which is always inside the PC still), but more if Windows messes up or gets a virus, and it isn't on the backup yet. I'll get an external back up solution later this year.

It's not true about the program automatically formatting every partition on the hard drive you're backing up to though?