User's Manual

3. General information and proprietary Acronis

technologies

3.1. The difference between file archives and

disk/partition images

A backup archive is a file or a group of files (also called "backups" in this guide), that contains a copy

of selected file/folder 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 Home 2010

Netbook Edition stores a sector-by-sector 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.

By default, Acronis True Image Home 2010 Netbook Edition stores only those hard disk parts that contain data

(for supported file systems). Furthermore, it does not back up swap file information (pagefile.sys under Windows

XP/Vista) 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 recovery. However, you might use the Create an image

using the sector-by-sector approach option that lets you include all of the sectors of a hard disk in an image.

A partition image includes all files and folders. This includes all attributes (including hidden and system files),

boot record, and FAT (file allocation table); as well as files in the root directory and the zero track of the hard

disk with the 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).

By default, files in all Acronis True Image Home 2010 Netbook Edition archives have a ".tib"

extension. Do not change this file extension.

It is important to note that you can recover 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 Exploring archives and

mounting images (p. 109)) or start the image recovery and select Recover chosen files and folders.

3.2. Full, incremental and differential backups

Acronis True Image Home 2010 Netbook Edition 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

recovery time compared to incremental or differential ones.

An incremental backup file only contains data changed since the last backup of any type (full,

incremental, or differential). Therefore, it is smaller and takes less time to create, but as it doesn't

contain all the data; all the previous backups and the initial full backup are required for recovery.

Unlike an incremental backup, when every backup procedure creates the next file in a "chain", a

differential backup creates an independent file, containing all changes since the last full backup.