Creating bootable back-up image with Acronis

[Maineman]

Would like to back up and create bootable images of 4 computers on one external HD using Acronis. Can this be done?

Just used recovery CD that came with laptop. It set laptop to factory defaults. Now need to re-setup computer the way I want it. My guess is to get the computer set up the way I want it and THEN create the image. This allows recovery without deleting previous settings, correct?

Am told I can create multiple bootable backup images onto one external CD without partitioning it by using Acronis.
Someone else said only one bootable computer image can be set up on an external HD. Any thoughts?

 

[WyomingKnott]

Well, I use Acronis at work and I have created multiple backup images on one hard drive. I think that the confusion here may be as simple as clarifying language.

Acronis can make your backup media bootable into Acronis. That means that you can boot a machine with a dead OS from the drive and restore an image that is on the drive to the machine. There, only one bootable image.

Acronis running on a good PC can store a system image that can not be booted from the external drive, but can be restored from the external drive over a dead OS disk and restore that OS disk to a runnable state. You can store more than one of these images on an external hard drive, if you have Acronis installed on multiple PCs. I have done this myself.

My experience: I did a full image backup with Acronis on my office PC to a removable hard drive. I had Acronis make that drive bootable, into Acronis. Then our IT staff installed full-disk encryption on my PC, and it broke the OS. It booted, but I couldn't start any apps.

So I attached said external drive, booted into Acronis, and restored the image of my OS drive. Much to my surprise (I don't believe in image backups done while the system is running), the PC worked perfectly afterwards.

The only point is to be sure to specify a different backup archive name for each PC that you back up to this external disk.

Let us know if you need more detailed explanations, or if something I wrote was not clear.

 

[Ubrales]

^1 WyomingKnott!

 

[Jonmor68]

Would like to back up and create bootable images of 4 computers on one external HD using Acronis. Can this be done?

Just used recovery CD that came with laptop. It set laptop to factory defaults. Now need to re-setup computer the way I want it. My guess is to get the computer set up the way I want it and THEN create the image. This allows recovery without deleting previous settings, correct?

Am told I can create multiple bootable backup images onto one external CD without partitioning it by using Acronis.
Someone else said only one bootable computer image can be set up on an external HD. Any thoughts?

You don't make multiple bootable images on one external cd (you won't fit much on a cd) or dvd.
You use Acronis to make a bootable cd, which you use to boot the pc with, thus allowing you to select the image you want to restore from an internal or external source.
So you would have image pc1, pc2, pc3, pc4 on say a USB external drive. You use the Acronis boot disk to start pc1, select image pc1 to restore to pc1.
I can't see how you would fit images from 4 pc's (the complete contents of the hdd with OS) on one cd or dvd for that matter. Unless you are talking about data files only.

 

[WyomingKnott]

Jonmor

I think that CD was a typo. Two references to external HD, one to external CD. That's why I answered the way I did.