Acronis Backup & Recovery

Backing up dynamic volumes (Windows)

This section explains in brief how to back up and recover dynamic volumes using Acronis Backup & Recovery 10. Basic disks that use the GUID Partition Table (GPT) are also discussed.

Dynamic volume is a volume located on dynamic disks, or more exactly, on a disk group. Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 supports the following dynamic volume types/RAID levels:

• simple/spanned
• striped (RAID 0)
• mirrored (RAID 1)
• a mirror of stripes (RAID 0+1)
• RAID 5.

Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 can back up and recover dynamic volumes and, with minor limitations, basic GPT volumes.

  Backing up dynamic volumes  

Dynamic and basic GPT volumes are backed up in the same way as basic MBR volumes. When creating a backup plan through the GUI, all types of volumes are available for selection as Items to back up. When using the command line, specify the dynamic and GPT volumes with the DYN prefix.

Command line examples

trueimagecmd /create /partition:DYN1,DYN2 /asz

This will back up DYN1 and DYN2 volumes to the Acronis Secure Zone.

trueimagecmd /create /harddisk:DYN /asz

This will back up all dynamic volumes in the system to the Acronis Secure Zone.

The boot code on basic GPT volumes is not backed up or recovered.

  Recovering dynamic volumes  

A dynamic volume can be recovered

• over any type of existing volume
• to unallocated space of a disk group
• to unallocated space of a basic disk.

Recovery over an existing volume

When a dynamic volume is recovered over an existing volume, either basic or dynamic, the target volume’s data is overwritten with the backup content. The type of target volume (basic, simple/spanned, striped, mirrored, RAID 0+1, RAID 5) will not change. The target volume size has to be enough to accommodate the backup content.

Recovery to disk group unallocated space

When a dynamic volume is recovered to disk group unallocated space, both the type and the content of the resulting volume are recovered. The unallocated space size has to be enough to accommodate the backup content. The way unallocated space is distributed among the disks is also important.

Example

Striped volumes consume equal portions of space on each disk.

Assume you are going to recover a 30GB striped volume to a disk group consisting of two disks. Each disk has volumes and a certain amount of unallocated space. The total size of unallocated space is 40GB. The recovery will always result in a striped volume if the unallocated space is distributed evenly among the disks (20GB and 20GB).

If one of the disks has 10GB and the other has 30GB of unallocated space, then the recovery result depends on the size of the data being recovered.

• If the data size is less than 20GB, then one disk can hold, say, 10GB; the other will hold the remaining 10GB. This way, a striped volume will be created on both disks and 20GB on the second disk will remain unallocated.
• If the data size is more than 20GB, the data cannot be distributed evenly between the two disks, but can fit into a single simple volume. A simple volume accommodating all the data will be created on the second disk. The first disk will remain untouched.

Moving and resizing volumes during recovery

You can resize the resulting basic volume, both MBR and GPT, during recovery, or change the volume’s location on the disk. A resulting dynamic volume cannot be moved or resized.

  Preparing disk groups and volumes  

Before recovering dynamic volumes to bare metal you should create a disk group on the target hardware.

You also might need to create or increase unallocated space on an existing disk
group. This can be done by deleting volumes or converting basic disks to dynamic.

You might want to change the target volume type (basic, simple/spanned, striped, mirrored, RAID 0+1, RAID 5). This can be done by deleting the target volume and creating a new volume on the resulting unallocated space.

Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 includes a handy disk management utility which enables you to perform the above operations both under the operating system and on bare metal. To find out more about Acronis Disk Director Lite, see the Disk management section.