What Is A Disk Image - ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE 8.0 User Manual

• Exception paging/hibernate files from images for the decreasing of image file size
• Partition/disk image integrity check before restoration
• Partition/disk file system integrity check after restoration
• Logs viewing;
• Two boot disk variants: complete and safe
• Improved interface and performance
1.3

What is a disk image?

A disk (partition) image is a file that contains a copy of all information stored on a
disk. The image stores the installed operating system, all programs, and all
documents and settings.
By backing up your information regularly, you will protect yourself from data loss in
case of system failure or PC malfunctions.
By default, Acronis True Image image files have a ".tib" extension and can contain
images of several partitions or disks.
Images of large partitions or several disks could be quite large. If so, they can be
split into several files that together make an original image. A single image can
also be split for burning to removable media. A single image that is split across
multiple CDs is sometimes called a "spanned volume."
Acronis True Image can create incremental images.
An incremental image contains only data from those hard disk sectors that changed
after the previous disk image (complete or incremental) was created. Thus such an
image is significantly smaller and takes less time to create than a full image.
However, as it does not contain all the necessary information about disks
(partitions), it requires more than one image for restoration, including the current
incremental image and at least one previous image or, ideally, all the previous
incremental images and the initial complete image. You can't foresee the exact
number of images required for a particular restoration, as it depends on how much
data changes between image creations.
Note that you can create incremental images more often, as they are far smaller
than complete images and take significantly less time to create. If you create such
images often, you'll be able to restore disks (partitions) relatively easily and quickly.
If you just use complete images, this will require far more time and space (up to 10
times more).
An incremental image created after a disk is defragmented might be considerably larger than
usual. This is because the defragmentation program changes file locations on disk and
incremental images reflect these changes.
Using incremental stages instead of complete images gives you more flexibility in
what you restore. It takes much less time and as little as one tenth the disk space.
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Introduction
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