Acronis true image echo Manual

 

24                                                                                 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2009 

A backup archive is a file or a group of files (also called in this guide “backups”), that 
contains a copy of selected files/folders data or a copy of all information stored on 
selected disks/partitions.  
When you back up files and folders, only the data, along with the folder tree, is 
compressed and stored.  
Backing up disks and partitions is performed in a different way: Acronis True Image Echo 
Enterprise Server saves a sector-based snapshot of the disk, which includes the operating 
system, registry, drivers, software applications and data files, as well as system areas 
hidden from the user. This procedure is called “creating a disk image,” and the resulting 
backup archive is often called a disk/partition image. 

 

Acronis True Image Echo Enterprise Server stores only those hard disk parts that contain 

data (for supported file systems). Further, it does not back up swap file information 

(pagefile.sys) and hiberfil.sys (a file that keeps RAM contents when the computer goes 

into hibernation). This reduces image size and speeds up image creation and restoration. 

 

A partition image includes all files and folders independent of their attributes (including 

hidden and system files), boot record, FAT (file allocation table), root and the zero track 
of the hard disk with master boot record (MBR). 

 

A disk image includes images of all disk partitions as well as the zero track with the 

master boot record (MBR). 

All Acronis True Image Echo Enterprise Server archives files have a “.tib” extension by 
default. 
It is important to note that you can restore files and folders not only from file archives, 
but from disk/partition images, too. To do so, mount the image as a virtual disk (see 

) or start the image restoration and select Restore specified 

files or folders. 

Acronis True Image Echo Enterprise Server can create full, incremental and differential 
backups. 
A full backup contains all data at the moment of backup creation. It forms a base for 
further incremental or differential backup or is used as a standalone archive. A full backup 
has the shortest restore time as compared to incremental or differential ones. 
An  incremental backup only contains data changed since the last full or incremental 
backup creation. Therefore, it is smaller and takes less time to create. However, since it 
does not contain all data needed to restore an image, 

all

 the previous incremental 

backups 

and

 the initial full backup are required for restoration. 

A differential backup creates an independent file containing all changes since the last 
full archive. Generally, data from a differential backup will be restored faster than an 
incremental backup, as it does not have to process through a long chain of previous 
backups.