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Acronis True Image 2017 Starter Guide Page 1
Acronis True Image 2017 for PC Starter Guide
By Gene Barlow
User Group Relations
Copyrighted September 2016
This paper is a step by step guide to installing and using Acronis True Image 2017 for PC on your computer. It
is available at www.ugr7.com/files/TrueImage2017StarterGuide.pdf and is also on the CD you received from us
with True Image. I recommend that you print this paper and follow it carefully as you use True Image for the
first few times. Once you have more experience in using True Image, you will no longer need to follow this
paper. It is intended to help you get started quickly and effectively in using True Image.
This paper is divided into three main parts to make it easier to work with. These parts are as follows:
• Installation deals with installing Acronis True Image 2017 for PC on your computer and maintaining it
with the latest builds.
• Backup deals with setting your backup options and then backing up your computer’s main hard drive
with True Image. It shows you the best way to do your backups using this powerful backup utility.
• Restore deals with restoring a few individual files and folders or restoring your entire hard drive from
your backup image. True Image lets you do either of these restoring steps quickly and easily.
If you want to learn more about True Image, you can read the Acronis True Image 2017 for PC User’s Guide
(169 pages). This document is available at http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/ and it is also
on the CD you get from us. Just be aware that the User’s Guide is intended to describe all of the function of the
product, but not to tell you how to best use the product. I hope to cover that side of True Image in this paper, so
that you will not only know how to do things, but what are the best ways to do them.
Installation of True Image 2017
If you have a prior copy of True Image installed on your computer, you may want to uninstall it using the
Windows Control Panel Programs & Features uninstall option. This will provide a clean slate to install a new
version on your computer. If you forget to uninstall the old version first, don’t worry. True Image will detect the
old version and uninstall it for you automatically.
Installing True Image from a Download: Acronis True Image is normally available as a downloaded software
product. This is my preference when installing new software on my computer. You end up with the latest build
of the software you are installing. The best way to download the True Image installation module consists of the
following three steps:
1. Login to your Account on the Acronis web site. To do this, go to the Acronis web site at
www.acronis.com and click on the My Account link in the upper right corner of the screen. This will
take you to a page where you can login to your account by entering your email address and password. If
you have not set up an Acronis account, click on the option to setup an account. Then follow the
instructions to enter in the basic information needed, such as your first and last name, your email
address, your country, and a password you will use to access your Acronis account. You need to confirm
your password and then click on the Continue button to complete the setup of your account. Next, you
need to download your email messages and open the message from Acronis. In this message, you need
to click on the confirmation link to verify that the email address is valid. This takes you to the first page
Acronis True Image 2017 Starter Guide Page 2
of your new account.
2. Register True Image 2017 in your Account. To do this, click on the Add Keys button on the upper right
side of your account screen. This link opens a box for you to enter in your new serial number. You need
to copy (Ctrl-C) the entire number from the email I sent you and then click once inside the box to anchor
the cursor. Then paste (Ctrl-V) this number in the box. Make sure you do not copy an extra blank at
either the beginning or end of the serial number. That will make the number invalid. If all you have is a
printed serial number, then carefully enter in the serial number of your Acronis product exactly as you
received it, dashes and all. Do not press the Enter key to continue entry on the next line, but let the entry
automatically flow to the next line. When you have entered it exactly, click on the Add button at the
bottom left of the box to complete the registration. If you have already registered this product’s serial
number, then you can skip this step.
3. Download the Registered Product from your Account. Find the True Image 2017 product entry in the list
of your registered products. Then click on the Downloads link in the box for True Image 2017. This will
start to download the installation module for you. Click on Run to download and immediately start to
install the product on your computer.
Installing True Image from our CD: Some of our user group customers prefer to have their software delivered
on a CD. So, as a convenience to them, we have downloaded the software and have burned it onto a CD. This is
not an official Acronis CD, but simply a download convenience we offer our customers. If you received one of
these download alternative CDs from us, all you need to do to install the product is to load the CD in your CD
reader. Make sure the Autorun option is selected for this CD. On the box that comes up, click on the Install
True Image button. This starts the install process. This start-up process tends to be a little slow on some
computers, so let it run for a couple of minutes before deciding that things are not working.
Installation Process: The install process is quick and simple to complete. As the process begins, you see the
blue install screen for the Acronis install wizard. Click on the Install button to start the install. If you are
connected to the internet, this module may check to make sure you have the latest version. If not, follow the
instructions to download the latest version before continuing. On the next screen, you can read the license
agreement and click on the “I accept this agreement” box and then OK to continue. You need an Acronis
account to update your product and obtain technical support. The next screen lets you Create an Acronis
account by filling in the few boxes. If you already have an account, click on the small notice at the bottom of
this box to Sign in to your account.
The next screen requires you to enter in your serial number exactly as you received it from us, dashes and all.
Click on the Enter Serial Number button at the bottom right corner of this screen. Since this is a long and
complex set of characters, I would suggest that you copy (Ctrl-C) the serial number you received from us and
then paste (Ctrl-V) it into the box provided. You can also find your serial number in your Acronis account under
the product name. Click on the Number under Workstations to open up the lists of your registered serial
numbers. Copy and paste the serial number you have assigned to this computer into the box in the install
program. If you received a serial number printed on a sheet of paper, then enter the number carefully to avoid
typos. The dashes must be entered too. Do not enter any spaces in the number as these would make the number
invalid. Also, do not press the Enter key to continue entry on the next line. Just keep entering the number and it
will automatically flow to the next line. If you have problems doing this, please email me at support@ugr7.com
the first 8 characters and I will email you back the entire serial number so that you can copy/paste it into the
box. Make sure that you click on the Activate button to continue.
Acronis True Image 2017 Starter Guide Page 3
Shortly, True Image 2017 for PC will be installed on your computer and you can start to setup your backup
system to meet your needs. Before we begin your first backup, there are a couple of housekeeping things to do
to get ready for that first backup.
Updating True Image: Acronis does an excellent job of correcting problems with their products and publishing
new builds of the software about once every month or two. We only send out the latest build on our CDs, but if
you don’t install that CD right away, you may have an older build on the CD than the current build. I normally
check about once a month to make sure I still have the latest build of the products installed on my computer.
True Image will automatically check for a new build. Make sure the “Automatically Check for Update” box
in the Settings icon (a gear at the bottom of the first column) is checked. That will help you keep your Acronis
software up to date with all of the latest product fixes and changes.
The way to tell if you are current is to run Acronis True Image and when the main window appears click on the
Account (Small head and shoulders icon) in the first Acronis dark blue column. To the right of this Account
button will be the latest information on your account and if it is current or not. If it is not current, then you need
to update your product to the current build.
To download and install a new build of True Image on your computer, you need to do the following steps. Go to
the Acronis web site and login to your account. Then click on the Downloads link under the True Image 2017
heading. Follow the same instructions above as you did to install this product on your computer. Each build is
an entire replacement of True Image 2017, so you do not need to have True Image installed when you update to
a new build.
Create Bootable Rescue Media: An important step that you need to take before you are ready to create your
backup images is to create a bootable rescue media to use in case your main hard drive should fail and you need
to restore an image without an operating system to run on. Acronis True Image makes a bootable CD or a flash
memory thumb drive, depending on what hardware your computer supports. To do this, click on Tools (4 boxes
icon) in the first dark blue Acronis column of True Image 2017. Then click on the Rescue Media Builder
button in the list of tools to the right. In the box that appears, click on Acronis Bootable Rescue Media. Next,
click on the DVD device on your computer. I would place a CD-R disk in your drive, but do not close the tray
drawer. Click on Proceed to burn a bootable CD with a standalone version of True Image on it. When your
system asks for a blank CD, close the tray door and then quickly click on Next to start the creation of the
bootable CD. This approach seems to work best. Your computer may automatically close the DVD tray and
start to burn the CD. You can also choose to place the Acronis Rescue Media on a thumb drive if you prefer by
selecting the USB drive that has your thumb drive plugged into.
Setting up your Backup Hard Drive: You need a dedicated external hard drive to save your backup images
on. This drive should be about the same size as the main hard drive inside your computer, but can be larger.
Most external hard drives come already formatted and ready to use. If your external hard drive is formatted with
FAT32, you may want to format it as NTFS before you start to use it. True Image will backup to the drive either
way, but NTFS tends to be a bit easier to use. Formatting the drive will delete all of the files on the drive, so
save these to another location before you format the drive. To start using the drive, just plug it into a USB port
on your computer and you are ready to go. I would use File Explorer to create an empty folder on the external
hard drive to save all of your backup files in. You can name this folder – Backups, or whatever name is
appropriate to your computer.
Before you run True Image to do a backup, make sure you plug your external backup hard drive into a USB
port. If you plug it into your computer after you start True Image, it might not be found by the True Image
software.
Acronis True Image 2017 Starter Guide Page 4
Backing Up Your Hard Drive
Defining your Backup Process
This section on Backing Up Your Hard Drive will show you how easy it is to use Acronis True Image 2017
for PC to back up your computer’s main hard drive and save this backup on an external hard drive. To get
started, click on Backup icon at the top of the first dark blue column. This will display a new light blue column
with “My Computer” at the top. In this light blue column, you will see all of the backup tasks that you will
define on True Image 2017. To begin with, an Entire PC backup task is predefined for your use. We will make
a couple of simple modifications to this predefined task to let us get started quickly.
On the right side of your True Image screen, you see two large boxes and a small circle in between them. The
left large box defines what you want to back up. You need to back up your entire PC and not just a portion of
your PC, like the c: partition. Then if your main hard drive crashes, you can restore the entire PC and not just
your c: partition. Restoring just the c: partition will not give you a hard drive that will boot and work properly.
True Image has already been setup to backup your entire PC, so you do not need to make any changes to the
first box.
Acronis True Image 2017 Starter Guide Page 5
Next, we need to select the destination of your backup image files. The default is the Acronis Cloud, but
backing up your entire hard drive to the Acronis Cloud is a very slow process and could take you many hours to
complete. Instead, you should store your entire hard drive backup image on a locally attached external hard
drive. To change this destination, click on the second large box.
When you click on the second large box, the backup destination area will appear with 3 large buttons. Click on
the browse button to choose your external hard drive and backup folder. This lets you organize your backup
image files before you save too many of them.
Acronis True Image 2017 Starter Guide Page 6
When you select browse, you will see a new screen with a directory tree of your computer system. Find your
external hard drive and the empty folder that you created to contain the backup image files of your main hard
drive. Select the folder that will contain your backup image files and click on it and then click on OK.
We have now defined for True Image exactly where the backup image files will be saved. We only have a
couple of changes to make to the backup options and then we will be ready to make our first backup. To make
these changes, just click on the options button for this backup task.
Acronis True Image 2017 Starter Guide Page 7
Notice that there are five option screens with tabs at the top to indicate which changes you are making. The first
set of options has to do with the schedule of your backup. I recommend doing a weekly scheduled backup. It is
the default, so it should already be selected. Then select which day of the week you want to do your scheduled
backups. I usually pick late Saturday evening as my backup day. Then select the backup start time. I leave my
computer on all night, so I pick a time in the middle of the night when my computer is likely idle. If you only
want to do manual backups, you can select Do Not Schedule instead. Finally click on the backup scheme tab to
make your next changes.
There are several different types of backup schemes you can select from. I recommend the incremental backup
scheme which is the default scheme. The first time you make a backup, a full backup of all of the files is made.
Then the next several backups only those files that have changed since the last backup are backed up. This uses
a lot less space on your backup hard drive and runs much faster. Make sure the Create a Full Version… is
checked. I would change the number that follows this from 5 to something larger. Pick 8 to 10 incremental
versions instead.
Acronis True Image 2017 Starter Guide Page 8
There are three ways to cleanup older backup images from your external backup hard drive. I prefer the third
option, which is the size of your backups on the hard drive. You want to keep as many backup files on the
backup hard drive as possible, but you do not want to exceed about 80% of the total space on the drive. I have a
1TB backup hard drive so 80% of 1TB would be 800GB. I check the size option and then change the amount to
800GB. Finally, select the Advanced tab to complete the backup options.
On the Advanced option page click on the Validation entry about half way down the page to open it up. Then
check the Validate Backup When it is Created box. This will cause your backup image to be validated
immediately after it is created. So, if your backup is made inaccurately, you can repeat the backup immediately
and not have to wait till your hard drive fails and it is too late to make a valid backup. At this point, we are
through making changes to our backup options and you should click on the OK button at the bottom of the
screen.
Acronis True Image 2017 Starter Guide Page 9
Doing Manual Backups
You are now done defining the backup of your main hard drive to your external hard drive. Click on the Back
up now button’s down arrow and select the Later option. Since the first backup you do may take some time to
complete, it is best to select Later and then at the end of the day, when you are done using the computer, you
can manually start your backup.
Your main backup screen will now look like this. Notice, the Entire PC button will have some additional
information added to the button. If you later define other backups for this same computer, they will appear as
additional buttons in the light blue column on this screen. Each button will be used to control that backup
operation that it was defined for. To start a manual backup of your Entire PC process, just click on the Entire
PC button and then click on the Back up now button in the lower right corner of this screen. True Image will
know whether to do a full image backup or an incremental image backup for you depending on how many
backups have already been done. It will also name each backup file differently, so that duplicates don’t erase
earlier backup image files. It couldn’t be much easier to back up your hard drive.
Acronis True Image 2017 Starter Guide Page 10
When the backup begins, True Image will show you a blue progress bar, the stage and size of the backup done,
and estimate the time left to complete the backup. It will take a few minutes for this information to appear, so be
patient and you will see it soon. I would suggest that you do your backups at the end of the day when you will
not need the computer. You can run your backups while you are still using your computer, but things may slow
down if you do this. I prefer to run my backups when I don’t need to use my computer. If you check the box to
shut down the computer after completion, your computer will not run all night.
When the full backup of your computer is complete, you will see some information about the backup added to
the Entire PC button. A green circle check will appear to tell you the backup was successful. The down arrow
on the button can be used to see the actual backup file listing on your external hard drive as well as give you
some other nice options to try. Along the top of the right part of the screen you will see when your backup last
completed, when the next backup is scheduled and how big was the total backup image file. You can now exit
True Image by clicking on the X icon in the upper right corner of the screen.
Take a minute after you do your backups to look at the backup files that were created in the folder on your
external hard drive. Look at the size of the backup files. Notice that the larger files are your full backup files
and the smaller ones in between are your incremental backup files. You should have the exact number of
Acronis True Image 2017 Starter Guide Page 11
incremental images between full back up images that you specified when you set up your Backup Scheme.
Notice how True Image names full and incremental backup image files.
Doing Automatic Backups
One of the biggest problems with doing backups is that you get busy and forget to do them on a regular basis.
That is why it is important to set up your backups so that they run automatically, without your needing to start
them. That is why we setup this backup task to do automatic backups each week. That is also why you see a
scheduled backup date and time listed at the top of this completion screen. To do this backup, all you need to do
is to remember to leave your computer on a few hours before the backup begins. If you forget, and turn the
computer off, the backup will start when you turn the computer on the next morning. It really couldn’t be much
easier to do backups than True Image 2017 for PC can do for you.
That completes the backup process to do regular weekly backups of your entire main hard drive to a folder on
your external hard drive. If you follow this example exactly, you will do a full backup image about once every
other month with weekly incremental backup images in between. That will give you the most economical space
usage on the external hard drive while not taking significant risks with your backup images. This is the most
important way you should be doing backups using True Image. Once you are doing these full disk backups on a
weekly basis, you may want to add additional backups of just your most important files on a more frequent
basis. With True Image, you can have many different types of backups working for your protection and they
won’t interfere with each other.
Restoring Your Hard Drive
There are two types of restores that you can do with True Image:
• Restoring individual files from your backup image
• Restoring your entire hard drive after a hard drive crash
We will describe both of these types of restores in the following pages.
Restoring Individual Files
This function is one of the more powerful functions of Acronis True Image and one that you will use frequently.
It gives you the ability to go back to any backup image in the past, open up that image and look at files in that
image or copy them back to your main hard drive. True Image can do this without having to restore your entire
hard drive. Here’s how it works.
When you install True Image on your Windows system, True Image will modify Windows Explorer (File
Explorer on Win8/8.1 and Win10 computers) so that it has additional capability not found in the standard
Windows system. After the install of True Image, Windows Explorer will be able to see inside condensed image
files and retrieve individual files out of the backup image. So, retrieving individual files from a backup image is
nothing more than using Windows Explorer to access the contents of the image file.
The following example shows how to use Windows Explorer to find and copy a file inside your backup image
on the external hard drive and copying it to your main hard drive. First, click on the backup image folder
containing the image file you want to look into. Then double click on the image file till you can see all of the
individual files and folders inside the image file.
Acronis True Image 2017 Starter Guide Page 12
In this case, find and select the name of the folder in the left column of Windows Explorer on your backup
external hard drive where you have stored your backup images. Now, in the right column of Windows Explorer,
you will see the image files stored in that folder. I have sorted this list in descending order by the date the file
was created. So, you will see the most recent backup image at the top of the list. The missing file I am looking
for is in this backup I made a few days ago. To find the missing file, I double click on the image file name at the
top of this list.
By not picking the most recent image in this list, you can be very selective in looking for missing files from any
backup you have taken in the past. This is a powerful way to pick a file that has been missing for some time or
to pick a certain revision level of a file from past backups. This is a major reason that I recommend using
incremental images and not differential images. Had you used differential images, the missing file may no
longer be retrievable after it was accidently deleted.
When you see the next screen in Windows Explorer, you again double click on the image that contains the most
recent backup, which has the missing file.
Acronis True Image 2017 Starter Guide Page 13
You need to continue to double click on folders that contain your missing file. This process is called “drilling
down” in Windows Explorer to find your missing file. When you finally see the missing file name, you can
double click on the file name to display it to verify it is the file you are looking for. Then close the displayed file
and right click on the file name. Then select copy to copy that file to the Windows clipboard. Then you can find
in Windows Explorer where that missing file should be placed on your main hard drive and paste (Ctrl-V) the
file at that location. You can also use Windows Explorer to drag and drop one or many files from your backup
image file to your main hard drive. If you are comfortable using Windows Explorer, you will be an expert in
retrieving files from a backup image. This function in True Image is very powerful, yet extremely easy to use.
Restoring Your Entire Hard Drive
Before we describe how to restore your entire hard drive, there are a couple of considerations that we need to
discuss.
If you followed my recommendations in backing up your entire hard drive, then you can easily restore your
entire hard drive in a few minutes and have your system up and running again quickly. If, for some reason, you
only backed up a portion of your hard drive, for example just your c: partition, then you can restore only that
partition, but that will not give you a full working system. Your restored hard drive would be missing important
parts that you did not backup.
While True Image permits you to restore on top of the main hard drive that is not working, I recommend against
doing this for two important reasons:
1- When you start the restore, the first thing that True Image must do is to delete the entire contents of your
main hard drive. If, for some reason, the restore does not complete, you will be left with your main hard
drive deleted. In other words, you are burning your bridges behind you before you accomplish a
successful restore.
2- Even if your restore is successful, the crashed main hard drive may contain files that are more current
than your backup. Even though you cannot boot from the crashed drive, you can probably access the
files on it and retrieve these more current files after the restore is completed.
To protect yourself, I recommend that you remove the damaged hard drive from your computer and save it to
retrieve recent files from it after the restore. Then mount a clean empty hard drive in its place inside your
computer and do your restore to this empty hard drive. After you install this empty hard drive inside the
Acronis True Image 2017 Starter Guide Page 14
computer, do not format it or load Windows on it. Leave it totally empty. The True Image restore will cover all
of those steps in the restore process.
You are now ready to do a full hard drive restore to an empty hard drive that you have mounted inside your
computer where the crashed main hard drive use to be. Attach your external hard drive that contains the most
recent full hard drive backup to your computer. Then place the True Image Rescue CD that you created when
you first installed True Image and turn on your computer and boot from that CD. That will bring up a small
standalone version of True Image that you will use to restore the most recent backup image to the empty hard
drive you have inside your computer. The following are the steps you need to do to accomplish this restore.
Follow these steps carefully to make sure you restore your main drive correctly.
• Select the Acronis True Image 2017 button on the first screen.
• Under the heading, “What would you like to do?” click on “Recover My Disks”.
• This brings up the “Select a backup from which to recover” screen. Select your most recent (full or
incremental) backup image and Next to continue.
• This brings up the “Choose recovery method” screen. Select Recover whole disks and partitions and
Next to continue.
• This brings up the “Select the items to recover” screen. Place a check in Disk 1 to recover the entire hard
drive. Then click on Next to continue.
• Now, you see “Select destination of Disk 1” screen. Select your main hard drive (Disk 2) and click on
Next.
• The final screen you see is the Summary screen. Read what steps will be done and click on the Proceed
button.
That will start the full restore of your new hard drive. Let the computer run uninterrupted till it completes. Then
you can remove the Rescue CD and the external backup hard drive and boot up your computer from the newly
restored main hard drive.
Other Functions of True Image
Acronis True Image has many other functions in the product that are available for your use. See the full User’s
Guide for a detailed explanation of these other functions. Just remember, that you should make sure you do the
backup approach described in this document first. Then you can add any additional backup approaches you are
interested in as additional backups. None of these other approaches should replace the full backup image
approach described in this document.
Enjoy using Acronis True Image 2017. It's an outstanding product!
That completes this paper on Acronis True Image 2017. If you have questions on this document or other
questions about True Image, send a note to support@ugr7.com and I will try to assist you. While I try to help
my customers as time permits, I am not Acronis official technical support for this product. To reach Acronis, go
to www.acronis.com/support and fill in the information requested.
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