Operation Manual

3 Basic concepts

In this section

Basic concepts .......................................................................................... 25

The difference between file backups and disk/partition images ............ 26

Full, incremental and differential backups .............................................. 27

FAQ about backup, recovery and cloning ................................................ 29

Deciding where to store your backups .................................................... 31

Using Acronis Nonstop Backup ................................................................ 33

Backup file naming ................................................................................... 35

Integration with Windows ....................................................................... 35

Wizards..................................................................................................... 37

3.1 Basic concepts

This section provides general information about basic concepts which could be useful for

understanding how the program works.

Backup and recovery

Backup refers to the making copies of data so that these additional copies may be used to recover

the original after a data loss event.

Backups are useful primarily for two purposes:

 To recover an operating system when it is corrupted or cannot start (called disaster recovery).

Refer to Protecting your system (p. 14) for more details about protecting your computer from a

disaster.

 To recover specific files and folders after they have been accidentally deleted or corrupted.

Acronis True Image 2016 does both by creating disk (or partition) images and file-level backups

respectively.

Backup versions

Backup versions are the file or files created during each backup operation. The number of versions

created is equal to the number of times the backup is executed. So, a version represents a point in

time to which the system or data can be restored.

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

differential backups (p. 27).

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

a Windows Vista and Windows 7 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 (p. 106).