User's Manual

Table Of Contents

Backup versions represent full, incremental and differential backups - see Full, incremental and

differential backups (p. 33).

The backup versions are similar to file versions. The file versions concept is familiar to those who use

a Windows 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.

Disk cloning

This operation copies the entire contents of one disk drive to another disk drive. This may be

necessary, for example, when you want to clone your operating system, applications, and data to a

new larger capacity disk. You can do it two ways:

 Use the Clone disk utility.

 Back up your old disk drive, and then recover it to the new one.

Backup file format

Acronis True Image usually saves backup data in the proprietary tib format using compression. The

data from .tib file backups can be recovered only through Acronis True Image, in Windows or in the

recovery environment.

Acronis Nonstop Backup uses a special hidden storage for data and metadata. The backed up data is

compressed and split into files of about 1 GB. These files also have a proprietary format and the data

they contain can be recovered only with the help of Acronis True Image.

Backup validation

The backup validation feature allows you to confirm that your data can be recovered. The program

adds checksum values to the data blocks being backed up. During backup validation, Acronis True

Image opens the backup file, recalculates the checksum values and compares those values with the

stored ones. If all compared values match, the backup file is not corrupted.

Scheduling

For your backups to be really helpful, they must be as "up-to-date" as possible. Schedule your

backups to run automatically and on a regular basis.

Deleting backups

When you want to delete backups and backup versions you no longer need, please do it by using the

tools provided by Acronis True Image 2021. Refer to Deleting backups and backup versions (p. 82) for

details.

Acronis True Image 2021 stores information on the backups in a metadata information database.

Therefore, deleting unneeded backup files in File Explorer will not delete information about these

backups from the database. This will result in errors when the program tries to perform operations

on the backups that no longer exist.

3.2 The difference between file backups and

disk/partition images

When you back up files and folders, only the files and folder tree are compressed and stored.