User's Manual

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6 Archiving data
In this section
What is data archiving? ................................................................................................... 112
What is excluded from archives? .................................................................................... 113
Cloud archiving vs. Online backup .................................................................................. 113
Archiving your data ......................................................................................................... 114
Accessing your archived files .......................................................................................... 115
6.1 What is data archiving?
Data archiving is a tool that allows you to move your big or rarely used files to Acronis Cloud, NAS, an
external hard drive, or a USB flash drive. Every time you run this tool, it analyzes the data in the
selected folder and suggests uploading the found files to Acronis Cloud or moving them to local
storage. You can select the files and folders that you want to archive. After moving to an archive, the
local copies of these files will be deleted. The links to the files are stored in a special location called
Acronis Drive. You can access the location as an ordinary folder in File Explorer. Double-clicking a file
link will open the file as if it was stored in the local folder. If the file is archived to Acronis Cloud, it
will be downloaded back to your computer, first. You can also access and manage it right in Acronis
Cloud.
Data archiving has the following main features:
 Free storage space saving
As a rule, storage space of modern high-capacity hard drives is mostly occupied by user data,
such as photographs and documents, and not by the operating system or applications. Since
most of the data is used occasionally, there is no need to keep them on a local drive. Data
archiving helps you free up storage space for frequently used files.
 Cloud archiving and local archiving
You can choose a destination type for your archive: Acronis Cloud or local storage, such as an
internal hard drive, external hard drive, NAS, or a USB flash drive. Every time you choose Acronis
Cloud as a destination, the selected data is stored in the same cloud archive. Local archives are
independent from each other and may have different names, destinations, encryption settings,
and so on, though you can select an existing archive as a destination instead of creating a new
one. The number of local archives is not limited.
 Easy access of cloud archive from any device
When you archive your files to Acronis Cloud, you can access them with Acronis True Image 2021,
the Acronis True Image mobile application, and the Acronis Cloud web application from any
device running Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, and Android, including tablets and smartphones.
 Data protection in the cloud archive
Your data stored in Acronis Cloud is protected from corruption or disaster. For example, in case
of your local hard drive failure, you can download your files to your new hard drive. Moreover,
your data is stored in encrypted state. You can be sure that no one except you can access your
data.
 File sharing
When your files are uploaded to Acronis Cloud, you can create public links to share the files with
your friends or to post them to forums and social networks.
 File versions