How to use Acronis to backup o/s ?

Mike Torello wrote:
"Bill in Co." wrote:

Mike Torello wrote:
WaIIy wrote:

The existing partition I copied to was and is 37 gigs, the copy takes
up
27 gigs

That's because the pre-existing partition there was deleted in the
copy
partition operation (and effectively recreated as this new and smaller
one).

"Was and is" The destination drive had partition D of 37 gigs. The
copy was 27 gigs. The partition is still 37 gigs.
Casper didn't touch it.

Maybe that will quiet "Bill" and his repetitive assertion that Casper
is deleting a partition before it accomplishes its task.

IF it is making a bonafide *partition copy*. That means the source and
destination partitions are *identical*, in all respects. (I'm not just
talking about transferring the data within one partition over to another
one).

Everything on one's system disk is "data"... all the files, the
registry, etc.

That doesn't answer my question at all. I said, identical. All the
files and data is NOT the same thing. And, there is no registry being
copied UNLESS you are backing up the system disk, and even then, it's not
the registry that's on there, it the registry's data files, not the registry
itself (which is loaded into memory).

You really need to download and LOOK at the Casper 5.0 user guide.
What isn't in the text, is easily found in the graphics.

Casper has two cloning/copying methods:

1) Copy an entire hard disk - one partition or many. The result is
that everything on the destination drive is destroyed before the task
is accomplished.

2) Copy a specific drive - which can be the entire system disk if it
has only one partition, or all the partitions on the disk. This
method is used IF/WHEN one wants to preserve the partition makeup of
the destination drive or doesn't want to use the entire drive.

Again... download and take the time to digest the material in the user
guide. It is quite simple to follow - easier than one of Anna's
treatises... and might even include less text.

Too simple, to the point of being a bit too simplistic, although the general
ideas are covered.

I'm talking about what partition copying IS, or is NOT. I've used ATI,
BING, and PM, so I think I've got a pretty good understanding of the
*underlying concepts* here which have nothing to do with the specific
program being used, except as to which technique is or is not being used.