Using Acronis Disk Imaging Software for Data Recovery

Info

Level: Intermediate
Presenter: Eli the Computer Guy
Date Created: March 10, 2010
Length of Class: 24 Minutes
Tracks

Data Recovery
Prerequisites

Introduction to Data Recovery
Purpose of Class

This class teaches students how to easily backup the data from a non functional computer and then either recover all or some of the data.
Topics Covered

Basic Disk imaging
Using Acronis Recovery CD to Backup Data
Navigating through .tib file to recover specific data
Class Notes

Introduction
Acronis is software that allows you to create disk images of hard drives
Disk Images store all of the data on a computer in a single file
Disk Images allow you to do bare metal recovery
Strategies of use
Backup to a large FTP server
Backup ALL computer files to make sure the client hasn't forgotten about something
Acronis makes Windows Permissions irrelevant
Backup and Recovery
Boot the computer off the Acronis Recovery CD, or Installation CD
Follow prompts to backup computer
To recover files install Acronis on Recovery Computer, and then you can navigate through the backup file just like it was a normal folder. just copy/paste the files you need.

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Closed Caption:

hello again as you know I eli the
computer guy
today's class is going to be on using a
chromis disk imaging software for data
recovery so the first question of course
is what the hell's across a Cronus is
backup software that you normally use
you normally install onto either a
computer or a server and it backs up the
computer it uses a type of technology
called disk imaging what disk imaging
does is it takes a snapshot of the
entire hard drive in stores that
snapshot is one single five why this is
useful for backup systems is that you
can do something call me bare metal
recovery where if the hard drive fails
you simply put in a new hard drive and
you can recover the operating system
software all the files you can you can
put that computer back to to the last
time it was backed up in about an hour
so so the bare metal recovery disk
imaging allows you to put a computer
back to back to literally the exact
state that was at when the last backup
was performed
you may have heard with this imaging
though the product to that most people
know about is something called ghost and
so so people actually you know call this
process either disk imaging or ghosting
a computer i like a Crow's so we're not
using a ghost here
so what makes the Cronus nice for for
data recovery that goes beyond at least
what I've seen that goes and some of the
other disk imaging products can do is
the first thing is that they allow you
to create a recovery CD with this allows
you to do is to actually back up a
computer by simply pulling off the CD
wrong so instead of having to install
the software on the computer and then
packing up the computer you can simply
put this recovery CD into the cd-rom
boot off of it and then back up the
computer that way
that's nice because they need then you
don't have to install any programs you
know go through the whole Megillah of
that or if the the computer has too many
viruses and such a need you just simply
can't can't install anything because
it's the computers too messed up so
basically to back up a computer for that
recovery all you do is you put the CD
and boot off the CD and then you tell it
where you want the disk can be stored
the other nice thing that like with a
Cronus is if you install the chrome
software onto your computer as well as
i'll show you get get to the
demonstration component you can actually
navigate through the disk image just as
if it was a normal folder on your hard
drive so although the software the
acronis disk imager stores everything
into one single file if you have a data
recovery computer that has a chrome is
installed on it you can then just simply
double-click on the on the the backup
that disk image and open it up just like
it was a CD drive or just like was a
folder and then you can navigate through
and grab specific files and folders so
basically what you can do is you can
back up an entire hard drive into this
discrimination and then go through and
selectively pick out individual files
and folders that you need will go into
to a little bit of the philosophy of
this in a minute but that's that that
makes life life really easy so basically
this class is all about using a Cronus
disk imaging software for for backing up
and recovering data off your clients
computers
so you may have heard those the
introduction you think well that that's
that's interesting but I don't
understand why why would you really want
to use this in the real world I mean
maybe you can imagine a few instances of
using this book but why why would this
been a cornerstone of my business i mean
we use this we use as lots we use this
time
well the first thing that that makes
this very very nice software is that you
can back up these these disk images to
an ftp sir
so when I had the the shop fully running
we had that massive file server that
store up to eight terabytes of data so
the first thing that we did with the
acronis software is if we had a client
who had a you know too many viruses on
your computer basically their computer
was fine but it was just all stocked up
on fire so we're going to have to do a
restore all of the entire operating
system
well what we could do is we could create
disk image of that entire hard drive and
be able to safely store on our file
server because since a Cronus stores all
the data as a single file
you don't really have to worry about all
these viruses and nasty is getting onto
your file sir you know if you actually
copied over the files individually there
is a chance that you can trigger these
viruses or something else that would in
fact the file server infect other files
on the server when you ball that entire
back up all those files and folders into
one tip file these are all stored just a
format called hip up once once you do
that and put that on the file server
then it's all nice safe and secure so
you have all the data but
you don't have to worry about viruses
all other garbage get lives
the other nice part is again remember
id10t years i just love is love better
up the clients sometimes forget what
they have that is valuable so they may
say you know just saved my pictures are
just saved my videos are just saying
this or just save that and then you if
you just do a copy and paste or a
cut-and-paste you may save exactly what
they told you to say but then their wife
tells them or their husband tells us oh
you didn't tell him about the documents
here or you could tell them about this
they say no and then all of the data has
gone or other problems that I've seen is
his people stored data that we're places
i've seen people just store all their
documents everything straight on the c
drive or under random files all over
their computer and so if you only go
into my documents are you only going to
the desktop to get the files and folders
you may miss a huge amount of data and
once you do that wipe and reload on the
computer system it will all be gone up
so before you you get into Dwight being
reloading if you just do a complete
backup of everything then even if you
miss something you can go back and you
can recover it off of that backup file
like I said the other data recovery
classes i would suggest that you have a
large file server to store your backup
data are like I say with a terabyte of
data storage we could we could keep
about three months worth of clients data
on that server so somebody came back a
week two weeks a month we would still
have their data in the real world that's
important because you know as I used to
tell my employees you can be a hundred
percent right at a hundred percent fire
all at the same time being a
professional technician is not simply
doing exactly what the client tells you
or asks you to do about being enough
a professional to to do the things that
the client would not even think about
asking so so this is one of those things
where you can really make your life
easier the next part that makes your
life easier is the the windows
permission issues when you do data
backup or or recovery can be a bit of a
problem i need to do the class we go to
class on doing permissions and taking
ownership of files and folders in
Windows but as with everything with
Windows that kind of stuff you just be a
pain in the butt so you can see the file
you can see the folder you want but for
some reason your computer isn't giving
you the right permission to actually
have a copy and paste or do something
with the acronis backup software you
just cut through all those permissions
those permissions go which is wonderful
so you just went when you back up all
the data it gets backed up and then when
you go to get it on all those
permissions are just are just gone so
you see you don't have to worry about
all of the windows files of permissions
that may be causing you issues so this
is why basically how you use the the
acronis backup software for data you
know recovery so basically you put the
CDN you back up the entire hard drive to
a file server that should be large
enough to hold quite a few then you go
back and you can you can actually use a
computer that has a Cronus installed on
to navigate through that backup file and
grab the files and folders that you want
again since everything's package and one
one thing you don't have to worry about
viruses getting out and we're little
master is happening and you know as long
as you have a large file server you can
keep that backup file around a little
while in case again you know your client
forgot what they needed to keep which a
lot so we've gone over a little bit
about Cronus you know what it does how
does
the etc I give me one second will
actually do a demonstration where i'm
going to show you how to how to backup
entire computer onto an external little
external hard drive and I'm going to
take that little extra hard drive or
main computer to show you how to
navigate through its altar example but
you know this class we're going to show
you how to do it so you you seen before
so I so give me one second and we'll go
into the demonstration
so this is course
is a standard dell computer i already
have the acronis ed in the in the CD
Drive and we have this little little
external hard drive to backup the data
to and then in the normal world like i
said i would backup the data to a file
server just for this demonstration
process going to use the extra hard
drive because it makes my life easier
so we now turn turn the computer on we
hit f12 that puts us into the boot menu
because we need to be able to boot off
the CD drive so we tell to boot off the
CD Drive across starts
now you have a couple of options here
you will always have you know the full
you can either click into the full
version with Cronus something called the
safe version or you can bypass
everything go straight on the windows
just do the full version i don't really
understand what the point of the safe
version is it is there i'm sure it does
something I just never been able to
figure out what it does
you of course have a normal logins or
the logo screen
now that was one thing if you're going
to do a USB hard drive her back up to
USB hard drive or back up to the ftp
file server make sure that either the
hard drive is plugged in before you put
the computer or that the the network
cable is plugged in before you put up
the computer because if you're using the
hard drive it has to detect the hard
drive and if you're using network cable
it does have to actually pull that dhcp
address so if you don't have a
plugged-in you may have problems so from
here it's pretty simple just hit the
backup button click on backup now is the
option of either my data which will just
be data files you know pictures
documents PowerPoint presentations etc
or my computer if you're doing this
especially for client if you're doing it
for yourself do whatever you want to do
you're doing this for client do the
entire computer remember id10t error is
clients do really stupid crap so if you
don't back up the entire computer you
really might miss something course this
now asks what partitions you want to
back up so we want to backup the sea
partition will tell you the backup sighs
so this is pretty small 11.17 gigabytes
it also gives you an option for backup a
sector-by-sector this is supposed to be
for if you have a bad hard drive and all
the time we use acronis and I'll of
Cronus and we use the Cronus a lot we
use Cronus daily we never really found
the benefit of the sector by sector
I mean I'm not saying it won't work for
you I'm just saying it it never did much
for us if you have a bad hard drive i
would suggest that you you put it on
that that that data recovery device we
have a class about that will do you much
better than trying to use the software
just click Next then create new backup
archive
yes of course browse we're just going to
do
plus our digital do is call it data that
helps
yes even master geeks have problems so
data and I say it's a . tip file so acro
sighs you know save files as octaves and
then we click OK next
congratulations summary and they would
say proceed and so now it's it's
creating the backup image depending on
you know how fast the processor and the
computer is how big hard drive is and
does this can take a bit of time so i
added a test on the soul the little
external hard drive we have in there now
and took some I want to take two about
15-20 minutes that was 411 gigs of data
you know so depending on on what you're
doing it could take a little while so
we'll let this run and then we'll come
back to it when it's finished
and so we're back to the backup
operation after 12 or 13 minutes it
backed up all the data so this is this
is 11 to 12 gigabytes of data going to
external hard drive
yeah you know took a few minutes it's
not really that that human issue so
basically you say okay and then you're
done you pull the external hard drive
out of the computer
we're going to take this over to the to
the big the desktop computer and i'll
show you how to navigate through the
backup file that's on here it's really
that easy so let's go over to my my
desktop computer i'll show you how it
works
so now we're sitting at my Windows 7
computer i have a Cronus installed on
the Windows 7 computer i plugged in the
western digital a little passport hard
drive and I've opened up the folder
where our backup files now are so the
acronis created a two of these . tip
files for for the backup that we created
you will see that the 11
gigabyte hard drive when they guess the
normal compression it compressed it down
to about a four gig set of files so
that's that's not too bad
so if you're thinking about that data
server you know if you can get half the
space you know saved through compression
that that's that's a pretty good thing
so all we need to do since the corona
software is installed on this computer
is we just double-click the tip file and
we can now simply go into it so we just
double click on this icon and now we see
the C Drive of that other computer we
open up the C Drive you know all the
files that you're used to saying it was
a Vista computer vista 64-bit computer c
c program files you c program files a
x86 we can go straight into the users
folder we can go to user which was the
main user and we can look at what they
have we go onto the desktop pc there was
a little executable file that i had
there you go into documents you see my
pictures you know my music and look at
this we can do this easily we're just
without worrying about the windows file
permissions we're just cutting through
windows file permissions
now all you need to do to recover files
here is let's say we want to recover
this documents folder
all we have to do is we simply
right-click we say copy that minimize
minimize and then we taste and we've
recovered that documents folder we can
now this this is now sitting on my
desktop in completely you know no
encryption and it's not in any weird
file folder you don't need any software
installed this is a normal folder now
it's that easy to extract data out of
the backup backup file we can double
click on documents and we go in and we
see its documents you know my picture my
music is nothing in there my pictures my
videos we can now just go in and grab
any data that's here it's literally that
easy all you have to do is install the
acronis software on the computer that
you'll be using to navigate through the
through the backup full file and then
you simply just go into it and grab the
documents and folders that you need that
easy i wish there was more to it
so let's go back out to the real world
and we'll have some final thoughts on
this
that's all there is to using Cronus disk
imaging software for data recovery
you know it's it's it's pretty simple we
just throw on a CD do you know quite a
few things and it runs as long as the
hardware it is functioning well on the
computer it runs like a dream
the hardware is failing well you've got
bigger issues generally what we used to
see is that if the acronis was failing
to back up the hard drive that there
were normally issues with the computer
you know cpus overheating problems
motherboard etc so remember if you're
having a problem with the hard drive it
may not be the hard drive it may
actually be the hard drive controller on
the motherboard that's causing issues so
if you have your having issues using a
Cronus for data recovery you may have
bigger fish to fry basically maybe
having big problems you know Cronus is
nice because you can either back up to
an external hard drive if you're on a
client site so you can even take this
little data recovery or the acronis
emergency see with you even go to a
client site and you can backup the data
on their site to an external hard drive
or if you have a shop you know you back
up straight to an ftp server like I've
been saying you should have 45 terabytes
of storage on that server and then you
can keep the backup file around for a
while because believe me your clients
were going to forget you know which
files should be recovered and it doesn't
matter if you're right they're still
going to be mad at you if they help the
bad back
no it's not it's not politically correct
but it's true so so just just you know
cya cover your ass
why not is easy the acronis backup
software does cost there's the home
edition which is fifty dollars and then
they have multiple other editions you
can't use acronis it i mean what a
Cronus is normally for is for backup
software for computers so they have a
home
version for this home computers they
have a professional version for
workstation computers & office and then
they have a server versions basically
they go from fifty dollars all the way
at the two thousand dollars price
how do I put this for legalese sick this
class showed you how to tecnically do
something we showed you the technical
ability of using a bonus for data
recovery i do have to watch myself and
I'm saying it now so i said i'm not sure
what the licensing requirements of
Cronus are so just keep that in mind I'm
not really sure if Cronus is licensed to
really do what I just show you how to do
if a chrome is watching we used to sell
a crapload of your product so you better
not come out and we used to sell the
6700 dollar versions of your product so
please don't come after we've done well
by your business but you just keep that
in mind
you know you can go to bestbuy you can
pick up this fifty-dollar CD i'm not
sure what the licensing is on that CD
though I just have to lea sick if you
want the home version i have seen that
soul at best buy and staples the but you
can also buy it online
that's where we used to buy the server
software and all the other variations of
the software is you just go to Cronus
dot-com a are not AC our own and I s.com
and you see everything I have you can
buy all their products and download them
the buying process takes about 10
minutes to become used to do a lot
so this was using Cronus disconnection
software for data recovery as you know I
you I the computer guy
I hope you use this this is wonderful
software like i say i've i've put my
nose into other computer repair shops
and doing this for a while and I've seen
the mess other people use and I don't
know why you know trying to copy and
paste or cut and paste or ftp clients
all it's all garbage compared this this
one little product will save you time
energy and and it's it's the way to go
it is the eli dies approval this this is
how you should backup your client
computer if you have to
it's it's the only way to go so again I
mean a lot of computer guy and i look
forward to seeing you at the next clause