ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE 8.0 User Manual page 20

Creating a partition (disk) image
Image mode selection
A complete image contains all hard disk data, so it takes a lot of space.
Acronis True Image does not include swap file information (win386.swp under Windows
98/Me and pagefile.sys under Windows NT/2000/XP), or hiberfil.sys (a file that keeps RAM
contents when the computer goes into hibernation). This considerably reduces the image size
and increases the speed of creating the image.
An incremental image contains data only from parts that changed after the previous
complete or incremental image was created, so it's usually smaller and takes less
time to create.
Therefore, if you create the first disk (partition) image, you should select the
complete mode.
If you already have a complete image, it is recommended that you create
incremental images.
(Having a policy for creating full and incremental images is recommended. For
example, you might consider creating a full image monthly and incremental images
weekly.)
Incremental image size is based only on changes that occurred after the previous
image was created.
If all image files are stored together, if doesn't matter which one you select, as the
program will recognize them as a single image. If you stored the files on several
removable disks, you must provide the latest image file; otherwise, restoration
problems might occur.
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