acronis.

com

Acronis Cyber Protect

Home Office

User Guide REVISION: 6/21/2023

Table of contents
Introduction 10
What is Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office? 10
Backups created in Acronis True Image (2020 or 2021) and Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office 10
Backup schemes 11
Cleaning up TIBX format backups 11
Cleaning up local backups manually has the following scheme: 11
Which backups retain TIB format 11
System requirements and supported media 11
Minimum system requirements 11
Supported operating systems 12
Supported file systems 13
Supported Internet connection types 13
Supported storage media 14
Installing and uninstalling Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office 14
Activating Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office 16
Too many activations issue 16
Managing your subscription licenses manually 17
Trial version information 17
General limitations 17
Synchronization 17
Acronis Cloud 18
Purchasing the full version 18
Upgrading Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office 18
Built-in store 19
Technical Support 19
Getting started 20
User interface language 20
Protecting your system 20
Backing up your computer 20
Creating Acronis bootable media 22
Backing up all data on your PC 23
Creating an Acronis Survival Kit 24
Backing up your files 26
Cloning your hard drive 27
Why do I need it? 27

2 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Before you start 28
Cloning a disk 28
Recovering your computer 29
Acronis account 31
Getting started with Acronis Cloud 32
Remote storage 32
Web application 33
How we ensure security of your data 33
Subscription information 33
Basic concepts 34
The difference between file backups and disk/partition images 35
Full, incremental and differential backups 37
Full method 37
Incremental method 37
Differential method 38
Changed Block Tracker (CBT) 39
Deciding where to store your backups 40
Preparing a new disk for backup 41
FTP connection 41
Authentication settings 42
Acronis Nonstop Backup 43
Nonstop Backup limitations 43
How it works 43
Retention rules 43
Acronis Nonstop Backup data storage 44
Nonstop Backup - Frequently asked questions 45
Backup file naming 46
Naming convention for backup files created in Acronis True Image (2020 or 2021) and Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office 46
Naming convention for backup files created before Acronis True Image 2020 46
Integration with Windows 47
Wizards 48
FAQ about backup, recovery and cloning 49
Backing up data 51
Backing up disks and partitions 51
Backing up files and folders 52
Backing up mobile devices 54

3 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Acronis Mobile 55
Local destination of mobile backups 55
Backing up Office 365 data 56
Why back up Office 365 data? 56
Backing up Office 365 data 56
Backup options 57
Scheduling 58
Backup schemes 60
Notifications for backup operation 66
Excluding items from backup 68
Image creation mode 70
Backup protection 70
Online backup protection 71
Pre/Post commands for backup 72
Backup splitting 73
Backup validation option 73
Backup reserve copy 74
Removable media settings 75
Error handling 76
File-level security settings for backup 77
Computer shutdown 78
Performance of backup operation 78
Selecting a data center for backup 80
Laptop power settings 81
Wi-Fi networks for backup to Acronis Cloud 81
Operations with backups 82
Backup operations menu 82
Backup activity and statistics 84
Sorting backups in the list 86
Replicating backups to Acronis Cloud 86
Validating backups 87
Backup to various places 88
Adding an existing backup to the list 88
Notarized backup 89
Cleaning up backups, backup versions, and replicas 93
Cleaning up space on Acronis Cloud 95
Removing data from Acronis Cloud 96

4 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Recovering data 99
Recovering disks and partitions 99
Recovering your system after a crash 99
Recovering partitions and disks 111
About recovery of dynamic/GPT disks and volumes 124
Arranging boot order in BIOS or UEFI BIOS 127
Disk recovery from Cloud 128
Recovering files and folders 133
Searching backup content 135
Recovering Office 365 data 136
What items can be recovered? 136
Recovering Office 365 data 137
Recovery options 137
Disk recovery mode 138
Pre/Post commands for recovery 138
Validation option 139
Computer restart 139
File recovery options 139
Overwrite file options 139
Performance of recovery operation 140
Notifications for recovery operation 141
Archiving data 143
What is data archiving? 143
What is excluded from archives? 144
Cloud archiving vs. Online backup 144
Archiving your data 145
Data archiving options 146
Accessing your archived files 147
Sharing data 148
Protecting family data 149
What is family data protection? 149
Adding a new device to Online Dashboard 149
Backing up data remotely 150
Recovering data with Online Dashboard 151
Email notifications 151
Protection 153
The Protection dashboard 153

5 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Active protection 154
Anti-ransomware protection 154
Real-time Protection 155
Web filtering 156
Configuring Active Protection 156
Antivirus scans 158
Configuring Antivirus scans 159
Vulnerability assessment 160
Managing detected issues 161
Managing files in Quarantine 161
Configuring Protection exclusions 162
Videoconference app protection 162
Downloading Protection updates 162
Synchronizing data 164
About the Sync feature 164
What you can and cannot synchronize 164
Storage types 164
Data types 164
Sync icons 165
The notification area 165
File Explorer 165
Creating a sync 166
Versions of synchronized files 167
Reverting to a previous file version 167
How to recover a deleted file 167
Deleting a sync 168
Disk cloning and migration 169
Disk cloning utility 169
Clone Disk wizard 169
Manual partitioning 171
Excluding items from cloning 172
Migration method 174
Migrating your system from an HDD to an SSD 180
SSD size 180
Which migration method to choose 180
What to do if Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office does not recognize your SSD 180
Migrating to SSD using the backup and recovery method 182

6 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Tools 184
Acronis Cloud Backup Download 184
Acronis Media Builder 185
Creating Acronis bootable media 186
Acronis bootable media startup parameters 188
Adding drivers to an existing .wim image 189
Creating an .iso file from a .wim file 191
Making sure that your bootable media can be used when needed 192
Selecting video mode when booting from the bootable media 195
Acronis Startup Recovery Manager 197
Additional information 198
Try&Decide 199
When Try&Decide can help 199
How Try&Decide works after a computer restart 199
Limitations in using Try&Decide 200
Using Try&Decide 201
Try&Decide options and notifications 202
Try&Decide: typical use cases 203
Acronis Secure Zone 204
Acronis Secure Zone cleanup 205
Creating and managing Acronis Secure Zone 205
Acronis Secure Zone location 206
Size of Acronis Secure Zone 207
Acronis Secure Zone protection 208
Removing Acronis Secure Zone 209
Adding a new hard disk 209
Selecting a hard disk 209
Selecting initialization method 210
Creating new partitions 211
Security and Privacy Tools 214
Acronis DriveCleanser 214
System Clean-up 219
Mounting a backup image 227
How to mount an image 228
Unmounting an image 228
Working with .vhd(x) files 229
How to use .vhd(x) files 229

7 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Limitations and additional information 229
Converting Acronis backup 229
Importing and exporting backup settings 230
Acronis Universal Restore 231
What problem does it solve? 231
How do I use it? 231
Creating Acronis Universal Boot media 232
Using Acronis Universal Restore 234
Troubleshooting 236
Resolving the most frequent issues 236
Acronis System Report 236
Acronis Smart Error Reporting 238
When you have an Internet connection 238
When you do not have an Internet connection 238
Sending feedback to Acronis 238
How to collect crash dumps 240
Acronis Customer Experience Program 240
Glossary 242
Index 246

8 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Copyright statement
© Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023. All rights reserved.

All trademarks and copyrights referred to are the property of their respective owners.

Distribution of substantively modified versions of this document is prohibited without the explicit
permission of the copyright holder.

Distribution of this work or derivative work in any standard (paper) book form for commercial
purposes is prohibited unless prior permission is obtained from the copyright holder.

DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND ALL EXPRESS OR IMPLIED CONDITIONS,

REPRESENTATIONS AND WARRANTIES, INCLUDING ANY IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT, ARE DISCLAIMED, EXCEPT TO THE
EXTENT THAT SUCH DISCLAIMERS ARE HELD TO BE LEGALLY INVALID.

Third party code may be provided with the Software and/or Service. The license terms for such
third-parties are detailed in the license.txt file located in the root installation directory. You can
always find the latest up-to-date list of the third party code and the associated license terms used
with the Software and/or Service at https://kb.acronis.com/content/7696

Acronis patented technologies

Technologies, used in this product, are covered and protected by one or more U.S. Patent Numbers:
7,047,380; 7,246,211; 7,275,139; 7,281,104; 7,318,135; 7,353,355; 7,366,859; 7,383,327; 7,475,282;
7,603,533; 7,636,824; 7,650,473; 7,721,138; 7,779,221; 7,831,789; 7,836,053; 7,886,120; 7,895,403;
7,934,064; 7,937,612; 7,941,510; 7,949,635; 7,953,948; 7,979,690; 8,005,797; 8,051,044; 8,069,320;
8,073,815; 8,074,035; 8,074,276; 8,145,607; 8,180,984; 8,225,133; 8,261,035; 8,296,264; 8,312,259;
8,347,137; 8,484,427; 8,645,748; 8,732,121; 8,850,060; 8,856,927; 8,996,830; 9,213,697; 9,400,886;
9,424,678; 9,436,558; 9,471,441; 9,501,234; and patent pending applications.

9 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Introduction

What is Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office?

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office is a complete cyber protection solution that ensures the security
of all your information. It can back up your documents, photos, emails, and selected partitions, and
even the entire disk drive, including operating system, applications, settings, and all of your data.
One of its main advantages is the data protection and security features.

Backups allow you to recover your computer system should a disaster occur, such as losing data,
accidentally deleting critical files or folders, or suffering a complete hard disk crash.

Online Backup allows you to store your files and disks on Acronis Cloud. Your data will be protected
even if your computer is lost, stolen, or destroyed, and your data can be entirely recovered onto a
new device, if needed.

Key features:

l Disk backup to a local storage and to Acronis Cloud

l File backup to a local storage and to Acronis Cloud
l Antivirus and Anti-malware Protection
l Acronis bootable media
l Hard disk cloning
l Data archiving
l Family data protection
l File synchronization
l Security and privacy tools

Note
You cannot create backups to Acronis Cloud with Acronis Startup Recovery Manager and Acronis
bootable media.

Learn how to protect your computer: "Protecting your system".

Backups created in Acronis True Image (2020 or 2021)

and Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office
Acronis True Image 2020 introduced a new backup format - TIBX, which is even more reliable and
convenient. The TIBX format is used for disk backups created to internal drives, external drives,
network storage.

To learn more about backup file naming, see "Backup file naming" (p. 46).

10 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Backup schemes
Backing up in the TIBX format supports all backup schemes. As opposed to the TIB format, which
saves every backup version as a separate file, the TIBX format saves full and differential backup
versions as separate files, while incremental backup versions are automatically merged into their
base backups (full or differential).

Cleaning up TIBX format backups

If you’d like to clean up backup versions you do not need anymore, use automatic and manual
cleanup methods.

In case automatic or manual cleanups are configured, some small auxiliary files may stay in the
storage after the cleanup. Windows may show the size of these files bigger than the real one. You
can see the physical size by checking Windows file properties.

Note
Do not delete any files manually!

Cleaning up local backups manually has the following scheme:

l Full backups can be deleted with the dependent versions only.
l Differential backup versions can be deleted independently of any other backup versions.
l Incremental backups:
o If it is the last backup chain, then any incremental backup can be deleted to free up the space.
o If it is not the last backup chain, any incremental backup version can be deleted only together
with all other incremental versions of the same chain.

Which backups retain TIB format

The following backups continue to use the TIB format:

l File-level backups
l Nonstop backups
l Notarized backups
l Backups which use CD/DVD/Blu-ray, FTP, or Acronis Secure Zone as their destination

To compare naming of a .tibx archive with a .tib archive in detail, refer to Backup file naming.

Refer to Cleaning up backups, backup versions, and replicas for more details about the cleanup.

System requirements and supported media

Minimum system requirements

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office requires the following hardware.

11 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l Intel CORE 2 Duo (2GHz) processor or equivalent
The CPU must support SSE instructions.
l 2 GB RAM
l 7 GB of free space on the system hard disk
l CD-RW/DVD-RW drive or USB drive for bootable media creation
o Required free space for Linux is about 660 MB.
o Required free space for Windows is about 700 MB.
l Screen resolution is 1024 x 768
l Mouse or other pointing device (recommended)

Warning!
Successful backup and recovery are not guaranteed for the installations on virtual machines.

Other requirements
l An internet connection is required for the product activation, for downloading protection
updates, and for all features that use Acronis Cloud. If your computer is not connected to the
internet, you can activate the product by using another computer that has an internet
connection. Refer to Activating Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office for details.
l You need to have administrator privileges to run Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

Supported operating systems

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office has been tested on the following operating systems.

l Windows 11
l Windows 10
l Windows 8.1
l Windows 8
l Windows 7 SP1 (all editions)
l Windows Home Server 2011

Note
l Beta builds are not supported. See https://kb.acronis.com/content/60589.
l Windows Embedded, IoT editions, Windows 10 LTSB, Windows 10 LTSC, and Windows 10 in S
mode are not supported.
l To use Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office on Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1, you will
need the following security updates from Microsoft: KB4474419 and KB4490628. See
https://kb.acronis.com/content/69302.

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office also lets you create a bootable CD-R/DVD-R or USB drive that can
back up and recover a disk/partition on a computer running any Intel- or AMD- based PC operating
system, including Linux®.

It is possible for the software to work on other Windows operating systems, but it is not guaranteed.

12 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Warning!
Successful recovery is guaranteed only for the supported operating systems. Other operating
systems can be backed up using a sector-by-sector approach, but they may become unbootable
after recovery.

Supported file systems

l NTFS
l Ext2/Ext3/Ext4
l ReiserFS(3)1
l Linux SWAP2
l HFS+/HFSX3
l FAT16/32/exFAT4

If a file system is not supported or is corrupted, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office can copy data
using a sector-by-sector approach.

Supported Internet connection types

The table below shows which Internet connection types are supported by the product functions.

Internet connection type

Acronis Console in Windows Acronis bootable media

Any connection established Proxy Ethernet Wi-Fi Proxy

in Windows server cable server

Disk-level and file-level backup to + - - - -

Acronis Cloud

Disk-level recovery from Acronis + - + + -

Cloud

File-level recovery from Acronis + - - - -

Cloud

Data synchronization + - - - -

Product activation + -* - - -

Product update + - ** - - -

1File systems are supported only for disk or partition backup/recovery operations.
2File systems are supported only for disk or partition backup/recovery operations.
3Disk recovery, partition recovery, and cloning operations are supported without resizing.
4Disk recovery, partition recovery, and cloning operations are supported without resizing.

13 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

* - You can activate the product by using an activation code. Refer to the Activation from another
computer section in Activating Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office for details.

** - To update the product, download the newer product version from the Acronis website and
install it over your current one.

Supported storage media

l Hard disk drives (HDD)
l Solid-state drives (SSD)
l Networked storage devices
l FTP servers

Note
The FTP server must allow passive mode file transfers. Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office splits a
backup into files with a size of 2GB when backing up directly to an FTP server.

l CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R (including double-layer DVD+R), DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, BD-R, BD-RE
l USB 1.1 / 2.0 / 3.0, USB-C, eSATA, FireWire (IEEE-1394), SCSI, and PC card storage devices

Limitations on operations with dynamic disks

l Creation of Acronis Secure Zone on dynamic disks is not supported.
l Recovery of a dynamic volume as a dynamic volume with manual resizing is not supported.
l Try&Decide® cannot be used for protecting dynamic disks.
l Disk cloning operation is not supported for dynamic disks.

The firewall settings of the source computer should have Ports 20 and 21 opened for the TCP and
UDP protocols to function. The Routing and Remote Access Windows service should be disabled.

Installing and uninstalling Acronis Cyber Protect Home

Office
To install Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office

1. Download the Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office setup file from the Acronis website at
https://go.acronis.com/home-office.
2. Run the setup file.
Before starting the setup process, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office will check for a newer build
on the website. If there is one, the newer version will be offered for installation.
3. Select the installation mode:
l Click Install for the default installation.
l Click Custom installation to choose the required components.

14 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 o Backup and core protection. This component is essential for:
n "Backing up data" (p. 51)
n "Recovering data" (p. 99)
n "Vulnerability assessment" (p. 160)
n "Archiving data" (p. 143)
n "Sharing data" (p. 148)
n "Synchronizing data" (p. 164)
n "Disk cloning and migration" (p. 169)
n "Tools" (p. 184)
o Anti-ransomware protection, Cryptomining detection, and Videoconference
protection. For more information, refer to "Active protection" (p. 154).
o Real-time protection, Antivirus scan, and Web filtering. For more information, refer to
"Active protection" (p. 154) and "Antivirus scans" (p. 158).
o Try&Decide tool. If you're using the Memory integrity feature of Windows, do not install
this component to avoid compatibility issues. For more information, refer to "Try&Decide"
(p. 199).
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office will be installed on your system partition (usually C:).
4. When the installation is complete, click Start application.
5. Read and accept the terms of the license agreements for Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office and
Bonjour.
Bonjour software will be installed on your computer for advanced support of NAS devices. You
can uninstall the software at any time.
You can also agree to participate in the Acronis Customer Experience Program. You can change
this setting at any time.
6. In the Activation window, you can do one of the following:
l To activate Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, enter your serial number, and then click
Activate. The product will be activated.
l To sign in to your Acronis account, click Sign in. Refer to Acronis account for details.
l To use the trial version, click Start trial.

To recover from an Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office error

If Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office ceased running or produced errors, its files might be
corrupted. To repair this problem, you first have to recover the program. To do this, run Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office installer again. It will detect Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office on your
computer and will ask you if you want to modify or remove it.

To add or remove components of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office

l If you use Windows 11, click Start > Settings > Apps > Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office >
Modify.
l If you use Windows 10, click Start > Settings > Apps > Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office >
Modify.

15 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l If you use Windows 8, click the Settings icon, then select Control Panel > Uninstall a program >
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office > Modify.
l If you use Windows 7, click Start > Control Panel > Uninstall a program > Acronis Cyber
Protect Home Office > Modify.

In the installer, click Modify. Then, select or clear the check boxes for the required components. You
may have to restart your computer to complete the task.

To uninstall Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office completely

l If you use Windows 11, click Start > Settings > Apps > Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office >
Uninstall.
l If you use Windows 10, click Start > Settings > Apps > Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office >
Uninstall.
l If you use Windows 8, click the Settings icon, then select Control Panel > Uninstall a program >
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office > Uninstall.
l If you use Windows 7, click Start > Control Panel > Uninstall a program > Acronis Cyber
Protect Home Office > Uninstall.

Then follow the instructions on the screen. You may have to restart your computer afterwards to
complete the task.

Note
If you used the "Acronis Secure Zone" (p. 204) or "Acronis Nonstop Backup" (p. 43), select in the
window that appears what to do with the zone and Nonstop Backup storages.

Activating Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office

To use Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, you need to activate it via the Internet. Without activation
the fully functional product works for 30 days. If you do not activate it during that period, all the
program functions become unavailable except the recovery. The first time your computer is
connected to the Internet and you log in to Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office with your login and
password, the product will be activated automatically.

Too many activations issue

Possible reasons for the "Too many activations" issue:

l You exceed the maximum number of computers with installed Acronis Cyber Protect
Home Office.
For example, you have one license or a serial number for one computer and you install Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office on a second computer.
Solutions:
o Enter a new serial number. If you do not have one, you can buy it in the Acronis built-in store
or at the Acronis website.

16 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 o Move the license to your new computer from another one on which the product is already
activated. To do this, select the computer from which you want to move the license. Note that
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office will be deactivated on that computer.
l You reinstall Windows or change hardware of your computer.
For example, you might upgrade motherboard or processor in your computer. Activation is lost,
because Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office sees your computer as a new one.
Solution:
To reactivate Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office on your computer, choose from the list the same
computer by its old name.

Managing your subscription licenses manually

If you use the subscription-based version of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, you can manage
the licenses manually at the Acronis website. You can do the following:

l Move licenses between your computers

l Transfer licenses between your accounts
l Remove a license from a computer
l Resolve product activation conflicts, including the "Too many activations" issue
l Buy new licenses

To manage licenses

1. Go to https://account.acronis.com/, and then sign in with your Acronis account.

2. In the Products section, find Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, and then click Manage.

Trial version information

General limitations
The trial version of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office works only during the trial period of 30 days.
It has the following limitations:

l Disk cloning is disabled.

l When booting from Acronis bootable media, the only available operation is recovery.

Synchronization
Data synchronization is available without any limitations, but when the trial period expires:

l Your computer is excluded from all syncs. After activating the full version of Acronis Cyber Protect
Home Office you will be able to connect to the syncs again.
l All the versions of synced files will be permanently deleted from Acronis Cloud.

17 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Acronis Cloud
You have 1000 GB of storage space on the cloud during the trial period. You can use this space to
store your online backups, archives, and versions of synced files. After the trial period is over,
Acronis Cloud works in recovery-only mode for 30 days. After this period, you won't be able to use
the Acronis Cloud service and all your data on the Cloud will be deleted.

Purchasing the full version

You can buy the full version at the Acronis website or using in-app purchase functionality. See
details in Upgrading Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

Upgrading Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office

When an update for Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office is available at the Acronis website, you can
download it. If you currently have Acronis True Image (2017 or later), the new version will simply
update it; there is no need to remove the old version and reinstall the software. If your current
version is older, we recommend that you remove the current version, first.

Your backups created with a previous version of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office are completely
compatible with the newer product version. After you upgrade, all of your backups will automatically
be added to your backup list.

The backups created by a more recent program version may be incompatible with previous
program versions. If you roll back Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office to a previous version, you
likely will have to re-create the backups using the older version. We strongly recommend that you
create new bootable media after each Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office upgrade.

To purchase the full version

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

2. On the sidebar, click Account, and then click Buy full version. The built-in store opens.
3. Select the license that you want to buy, and then click Buy now.
4. Provide your payment information.

To update Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

2. On the sidebar, click Account.
If there is a new version available, you will see the appropriate message next to the current build
number.
3. Click Download and install.

Note

18 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Before you start downloading, make sure that your firewall won't block the download process.

4. When the new version is downloaded, click Install now.

To check for updates automatically, go to the Settings tab, and then select the Automatically
check for updates at startup check box.

Built-in store
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office provides an in-app store. Using this store, you can:

l Buy the full version of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

l Buy Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office subscription.
l Buy more storage space on Acronis Cloud.

To access the in-app store, go to the Account tab, and then click Acronis Store. You will see the in-
app store and all available purchase options.

Technical Support
If you need assistance with Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, refer to
https://www.acronis.com/support/.

19 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Getting started

User interface language

Before you start, select a preferred language for the Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office user
interface. By default, the language is set in accordance with your Windows display language.

To change the user interface language

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

2. In the Settings section, select a preferred language from the list.

Protecting your system

1. Back up your computer.
2. Create Acronis bootable media.

It is recommended to test the bootable media as described in Making sure that your bootable
media can be used when needed.

Backing up your computer

When should I back up my computer?

Create a new backup version after every significant event in your system.

Examples of these events include:

l You bought a new computer.

l You reinstalled Windows on your computer.

20 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l You configured all system settings (for example, time, date, language) and installed all necessary
programs on your new computer.
l Important system update.

Note
To ensure you save a healthy state of a disk, it is a good idea to scan it for viruses before backing it
up. Use antivirus software for this purpose. Note this operation often takes a significant amount of
time.

How do I create a backup of my computer?

You have two options to protect your system:

l Entire PC backup (recommended)

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office backs up all your internal hard drives in disk mode. The
backup contains the operating system, installed programs, system settings, and all your personal
data including your photos, music, and documents. Refer to Backing up all data on your PC for
details.
l System disk backup
You can choose to back up your system partition or the entire system drive. Refer to Backing up
disks and partitions for details.

We do not recommend using nonstop backup as a primary way to protect your system, because the
main purpose of this technology is protection of frequently changed files. For the safety of your
system, use any other schedule. See examples in "Examples of custom schemes" (p. 65). Refer to
"Acronis Nonstop Backup" (p. 43) for more details about the Nonstop Backup feature.

To back up your computer

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

2. On the sidebar, click Backup.
If this is your first backup, you will see the backup configuration screen. If you already have some
backups in the backup list, then click Add backup.
3. Click the Backup source icon, and then select Entire PC.
If you want to back up your system disk only, then click Disks and partitions, and then select
your system partition (usually C:) and the System Reserved partition (if any).
4. Click the Backup destination icon, and then select a storage place for the backup (see
recommendation below).
5. Click Back up now.

As a result, a new backup box appears in the backup list. To create a new version of the backup in
future, select the backup box from the list, and then click Back up now.

Where do I store my disk backups?

21 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l Good—Your ordinary internal hard disk.
l Better—Acronis Secure Zone. This is a special secure partition on your local hard drive for storing
backups.
l The best—Acronis Cloud or an external hard disk.

Refer to Deciding where to store your backups for details.

How many backup versions do I need?

In most cases, you need 2-3 backup versions of your entire PC contents or your system disk, with a
maximum of 4-6 (see above for information about when to create backups). You can control the
number of backup versions by using automatic cleanup rules. Refer to Custom schemes for details.

Remember, the first backup version (the full backup version) is the most important. It is the biggest
one, because it contains all data stored on the disk. Further backup versions (the incremental and
differential backup versions) may be organized in different schemes. These versions contain only
data changes. That’s why they are dependent on the full backup version and why the full backup
version is so important.

By default, a disk backup is created by using the incremental scheme. This scheme is optimal, in
most cases.

Note
For advanced users: it is a good idea to create 2-3 full backup versions and store them on different
storage devices. This method is much more reliable.

Creating Acronis bootable media

Acronis bootable media is a CD, DVD, USB flash drive, or other removable media from which you
can run Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office when Windows cannot start. You can make a media
bootable by using Acronis Media Builder.

To create Acronis bootable media

1. Insert a CD/DVD or plug in a USB drive (USB flash drive, or an HDD/SSD external drive).
2. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.
3. On the sidebar, click Tools, and then click Rescue Media Builder.
4. On the first step, select Simple.
5. Select the device to use to create the bootable media.
6. Click Proceed.

To use Acronis bootable media

Use Acronis bootable media to recover your computer when Windows cannot start.

1. Connect the bootable media to your computer (insert the CD/DVD or plug in the USB drive).
2. Arrange the boot order in BIOS so that your Acronis bootable media is the first device to be
booted.

22 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Refer to Arranging boot order in BIOS for details.
3. Boot your computer from the bootable media and select Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.
Once Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office is loaded, you can use it to recover your computer.

Refer to Acronis Media Builder for details.

Backing up all data on your PC

What is an Entire PC backup?

An Entire PC backup is the easiest way to back up the full contents of your computer. We
recommend that you choose this option when you are not sure which data that you need to protect.
If you want to back up your system partition only, refer to Backing up disks and partitions for
details.

When you select Entire PC as a backup type, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office backs up all your
internal hard drives in disk mode. The backup contains the operating system, installed programs,
system settings, and all your personal data including your photos, music, and documents.

The recovery from an Entire PC backup is also simplified. You only need to choose the date to which
you want to revert your data. Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office recovers all data from the backup
to the original location. Note that you cannot select specific disks or partitions to recover and you
cannot change the default destination. If you need to avoid these limitations, we recommend that
you back up your data with an ordinary disk-level backup method. Refer to Backing up disks and
partitions for details.

You can also recover specific files and folders from an Entire PC backup. Refer to Backing up files
and folders for details.

If an Entire PC backup contains dynamic disks, you recover your data in partition mode. This means
that you can select partitions to recover and change recovery destination. Refer to About recovery
of dynamic/GPT disks and volumes for details.

To create an Entire PC backup

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

2. On the sidebar, click Backup.
3. Click the plus sign at the bottom of the backup list.
4. Click the Backup source icon, and then select Entire PC.
5. Click the Backup destination icon, and then select a destination for the backup.
We recommend that you back up your computer to Acronis Cloud or to local or network storage.
Refer to Deciding where to store your backups for details.

23 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

6. [optional step] Click Options to set the options for the backup. For more information see Backup
options.
7. Click Back up now.

Note
When you back up your data to Acronis Cloud, the first backup may take a considerable amount of
time to complete. Further backup processes will likely be much faster, because only changes to files
will be transferred over the Internet.

Additionally, watch the English-language video instructions at https://goo.gl/KjW5sM.

See Also: Difference between Backup and Disk Clone

Creating an Acronis Survival Kit

To recover your computer in case of a failure, you need to have two crucial components—a backup
of your system disk and Acronis bootable media. Most often these components are separated, for
example, the system backup is stored on an external drive or Acronis Cloud and the bootable media
is a small USB flash drive. An Acronis Survival Kit combines both components so that you could have
a single device that has everything that you need to recover your computer in case of a failure. It is
an external hard disk drive that contains both the Acronis bootable media files and a backup of your
system partition, entire computer, or any disk backup. Moreover, the backup of your data can be
used as a normal backup: it can contain any data that you need to secure, you can set up Scheduling
to update it as a normal backup. And even more, the external hard drive is not exclusively booked
by the Acronis Survival Kit, its bootable media takes only 2 Gb of the disk space, and the remaining
space can be shared by the system partition or entire computer backup which is the part of the

24 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Acronis Survival Kit, and by any other data including other backups, your personal data, photos,
whatever. But keep only one Acronis Survival Kit on one external hard disk.

No matter how many backups are stored in this external hard disk, only one Acronis Survival Kit is
required to recover a computer. Its bootable media component works with any system partition or
entire computer backup if they both are created for the same computer or computers with the
same configuration.

As a device for an Acronis Survival Kit you can use:

l an external hard disk drive

It should be larger than 32 GB and have an NTFS, FAT32, or exFAT file system. If the drive has
another file system, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office suggests formatting the drive.
l a USB flash drive
It should be an MBR flash drive with minimum size of 32 GB. If you use a GPT flash drive, Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office suggests formatting the drive to MBR. Note, flash drives are
supported only for Windows 10 (build 1703 and later) and for Windows 11.

To create an Acronis Survival Kit

When you configure a backup of your system partition, entire computer, or any disk backup and
select an external hard disk drive as a destination, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office will suggest
creating an Acronis Survival Kit.

1. Click Back up now or Create Acronis Survival Kit.

2. In the opened window, click Create.

25 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office creates a small partition on the selected drive and writes the
boot files there. To create it, one of the existing volumes will be resized. If the disk is not a GPT
one and has a file system different from NTFS, FAT32, or exFAT, Acronis Cyber Protect Home
Office suggests formatting the disk. Pay attention, that disk formatting deletes all the data stored
on the disk.
3. When the boot files are successfully written to the drive, it becomes Acronis bootable media that
you can use to recover your computer. To complete creating an Acronis Survival Kit, you need to
save a backup of your system partition, entire computer, or any disk backup to this drive. To do
this, click Back up now. If you skip this step, do not forget to create a backup on this drive later.
Refer to Backing up disks and partitions for details.
When your Acronis Survival Kit is ready, you can use it to recover your computer. Refer to
Recovering your system to the same disk for details.

Every time you configure a backup to an external device with a Survival Kit on it, Acronis Cyber
Protect Home Office will check its version. If an up-to-date version of the Survival Kit is available,
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office will suggest updating the Survival Kit on your external device.

Backing up your files

To protect files such as documents, photos, music files, and video files, there is no need to back up
the entire partition containing the files. You can back up specific files and folders and save them to
the following storage types:

l Local or network storage

This option is fast and easy. Use it to protect rarely changed files.
l Acronis Cloud
This option is reliable. Use it to protect critical files and files that you want to share between
devices or people.
To use Acronis Cloud, you must have an Acronis account and a subscription to the Acronis Cloud
service.
Refer to "Subscription information" (p. 33) for details.

26 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

To back up files and folders

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

2. On the sidebar, click Backup.
3. Click the Backup source icon, and then select Files and folders.
4. In the opened window, select the check boxes next to the files and folders that you want to back
up, and then click OK.
5. Click the Backup destination icon, and then select a destination for backup:
l Acronis Cloud—Sign in to your account, and then click OK.
l Your external drive—When an external drive is plugged into your computer, you can select it
from the list.
l NAS—Select an NAS from the list of found NAS devices. If you have only one NAS, Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office will suggest using it as a backup destination by default.
l Browse—Select a destination from the folder tree.
6. Click Back up now.

Refer to Backing up files and folders for details.

Additionally, watch the English-language video instructions at https://goo.gl/i4J1AN.

Cloning your hard drive

Why do I need it?

When you see that the free space on your hard drive is not enough for your data, you might want to
buy a new, larger hard drive and transfer all your data to the new drive. The usual copy operation
does not make your new hard drive identical to the old one. For example, if you open File Explorer
and copy all files and folders to the new hard drive, Windows will not start from the new hard drive.

27 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

The Clone disk utility allows you to duplicate all your data and make Windows bootable on your new
hard drive.

Before you start

We recommend that you install the target (new) drive where you plan to use it and the source drive
in another location, for example, in an external USB enclosure. This is especially important for
laptops.

Note
It is recommended that your old and new hard drives work in the same controller mode (for
example, IDE or AHCI). Otherwise, your computer might not start from the new hard drive.

Cloning a disk
1. On the sidebar, click Tools, and then click Clone disk.
2. On the Clone Mode step, we recommend that you choose the Automatic transfer mode. In this
case, the partitions will be proportionally resized to fit your new hard drive. The Manual mode
provides more flexibility. Refer to Clone Disk wizard for more details about the manual mode.

Note
If the program finds two disks, one partitioned and another unpartitioned, it will automatically
recognize the partitioned disk as the source disk and the unpartitioned disk as the destination
disk. In this case, the next steps will be bypassed and you will be taken to the cloning Summary
screen.

3. On the Source Disk step, select the disk that you want to clone.

28 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

4. On the Destination Disk step, select the destination disk for the cloned data.

Note
If any disk is unpartitioned, the program will automatically recognize it as the destination and
bypass this step.

5. On the Finish step, ensure that the configured settings suit your needs, and then click Proceed.

By default, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office shuts down the computer after the clone process
finishes. This enables you to change the position of master/subordinate jumpers and remove one of
the hard drives.

Additionally, watch the English-language video instructions at https://goo.gl/bjWRLL.

Recovering your computer

Recovery of a system disk is an important operation. Before you start, we recommend that you read
the detailed descriptions in the following Help topics:

l Trying to determine the crash cause

l Preparing for recovery
l Recovering your system to the same disk

Let’s consider two different cases:

29 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

1. Windows works incorrectly, but you can start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.
2. Windows cannot start (for example, you turn on your computer and see something unusual on
your screen).

Case 1. How to recover computer if Windows works incorrectly?

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

2. On the sidebar, click Backup.
3. From the backup list, select the backup that contains your system disk. The backup can be
located on local, network storage, or Acronis Cloud.
4. On the right panel, click Recovery.
5. Depending on the backup type, click Recover PC or Recover disks.
6. In the opened window, select the backup version (the data state from a specific date and time).
7. Select the system partition and the System Reserved partition (if any) to be recovered.
8. Click Recover now.

Note
To complete the operation, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office must restart your system.

Case 2. How to recover computer if Windows cannot start?

30 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

1. Connect Acronis bootable media to your computer, and then run the special standalone version
of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.
Refer to Step 2 Creating Acronis bootable media and Arranging boot order in BIOS for details.
2. On the Welcome screen, select My disks below Recover.
3. Select the system disk backup to be used for recovery. Right-click the backup and choose
Recover.
When the backup is not displayed, click Browse and manually specify the path to the backup. In
the same window, you can connect to Acronis Cloud and select an online backup. Refer to
Recovering your system from Acronis Cloud for details.
4. At the Recovery method step, select Recover whole disks and partitions.
5. Select the system partition (usually C) on the What to recover screen. Note that you may
distinguish the system partition by the Pri, Act flags. Select the System Reserved partition (if any),
as well.
6. You may leave all settings of the partitions without changes and click Finish.
7. Check the summary of operations, and then click Proceed.
8. When the operation finishes, exit the standalone version of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office,
remove the bootable media (if any), and boot from the recovered system partition. After making
sure that you have recovered Windows to the state you need, restore the original boot order.

Acronis account
An Acronis account is required when you:

l Register an Acronis product.

l Back up to Acronis Cloud.
l Synchronize your data.
l Archive your data.

31 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

To create an Acronis account

1. On the sidebar, click Account, and then click Sign in or create an account.
2. Click Create an account.
3. Fill in the registration form. Provide the required data, accept the Terms of Use, and, optionally,
subscribe to receive news and promotional offers occasionally.

Note
To keep your personal data secure, choose a strong password for your online backups, guard it
from getting into the wrong hands, and change it from time to time.

4. Click Create account.

5. An email message will be sent to the address you specified. Open this message and confirm your
wish to create an account.

To sign in with your Acronis account

1. On the sidebar, click Account, and then click Sign in or create an account.
2. Enter your registration email address and password, and then click Sign in.

To sign out of your Acronis account:

1. On the sidebar, click Account.

2. Click your email address, and then choose Sign out.

Getting started with Acronis Cloud

Note
Acronis Cloud might be unavailable in your region. For more information, click here:
https://kb.acronis.com/content/4541

Remote storage
On the one hand, Acronis Cloud is a secure remote storage which you can use to store:

l Backups of your files and folders

l Backups of your partitions and disks
l Versions of your synchronized files and folders

Because files are stored on a remote storage, they are protected even if your computer is stolen or
your house burns down. In the case of a disaster or data corruption, you can recover your files and
even the entire contents of your computer.

With one account, you can save data from several computers and all your mobile devices running
iOS and Android operating systems.

To start using Acronis Cloud, you need a subscription to the service. Refer to Subscription
information for details.

32 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Web application
On the other hand, Acronis Cloud is a web application that allows you to recover and manage the
data you store on Acronis Cloud. To work with the application, you can use any computer connected
to the Internet.

To access the application, go to https://www.acronis.com/my/online-backup/webrestore/, and then

log in to your Acronis account.

How we ensure security of your data

When you use Acronis Cloud as storage, you want to be sure that your personal files won't get into
the wrong hands. You may be especially concerned about your mobile device, because all of your
data will be transferred through the Internet.

Let us assure you that your data will be safe. First of all, we use encrypted protocols (SSL, TLS) to
transfer all data through both the Internet and LAN. To access the data, sign in to your account by
providing the email address and password for that account. Second, you can choose to use only
protected Wi-Fi networks for backing up of your data. In this case, your data will be completely safe
while it is transferred to Acronis Cloud. Select the secure Wi-Fi networks for backup in the
Settings.

Subscription information
The Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office features that use Acronis Cloud (such as online backup,
cloud archiving, and cloud synchronization) require a subscription to Acronis Cloud Storage. To
subscribe, start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, go to the Account tab, and then choose if you
want to start a trial subscription or buy a full one.

Note
Acronis Cloud is subject to our Fair Usage Policy. See more details at
https://kb.acronis.com/ati/fairusage.

Trial version

When you activate the trial version of the product, a 1000 GB storage and free subscription to
Acronis Cloud for the Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office trial period is assigned to your account
automatically. See details in Trial version information.

Full version

You can purchase the full Acronis Cloud subscription in the Account section of your version of
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office or at the Acronis website. See details in Upgrading Acronis Cyber
Protect Home Office.

33 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Basic concepts
This section provides general information about basic concepts which could be useful for
understanding how the program works.

Backup and recovery

Backup refers to the making copies of data so that these additional copies may be used to recover
the original after a data loss event.

Backups are useful primarily for two purposes:

l To recover an operating system when it is corrupted or cannot start (called disaster recovery).
Refer to Protecting your system for more details about protecting your computer from a disaster.
l To recover specific files and folders after they have been accidentally deleted or corrupted.

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office does both by creating disk (or partition) images and file-level
backups respectively.

Recovery methods:

l Full recovery can be performed to the original location or to a new one.

When the original location is selected, the data in the location is completely overwritten with the
data from the backup. In case of a new location, the data is just copied to the new location from
the backup.
l Incremental recovery is performed only to the original location and only from a cloud backup.
Before the recovery starts, the files in the original location are compared with the files in the
backup by file attributes, such as file size and date of last modification. Those files that do not
match are marked for recovery, the remaining files will be skipped during recovery. In that way,
as opposed to the full recovery, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office recovers only changed files.
This method significantly reduces the recovery time and saves Internet traffic while recovering
from Acronis Cloud.

Backup versions

Backup versions are the file or files created during each backup operation. The number of versions
created is equal to the number of times the backup is executed. So, a version represents a point in
time to which the system or data can be restored.

Backup versions represent full, incremental and differential backups - see Full, incremental and
differential backups.

The backup versions are similar to file versions. The file versions concept is familiar to those who
use a Windows feature called "Previous versions of files". This feature allows you to restore a file as
it existed on a particular date and time. A backup version allows you to recover your data in a similar
way.

Disk cloning

34 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

This operation copies the entire contents of one disk drive to another disk drive. This may be
necessary, for example, when you want to clone your operating system, applications, and data to a
new larger capacity disk. You can do it two ways:

l Use the Clone disk utility.

l Back up your old disk drive, and then recover it to the new one.

Backup file format

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office usually saves backup data in the proprietary TIBX format using
compression. The data from .tibx file backups can be recovered only through Acronis Cyber Protect
Home Office, in Windows or in the recovery environment.

Acronis Nonstop Backup uses a special hidden storage for data and metadata. The backed up data
is compressed and split into files of about 1 GB. These files also have a proprietary format and the
data they contain can be recovered only with the help of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

Backup validation

The backup validation feature allows you to confirm that your data can be recovered. The program
adds checksum values to the data blocks being backed up. During backup validation, Acronis Cyber
Protect Home Office opens the backup file, recalculates the checksum values and compares those
values with the stored ones. If all compared values match, the backup file is not corrupted.

Scheduling

For your backups to be really helpful, they must be as up to date as possible. Schedule your backups
to run automatically and on a regular basis.

Deleting backups

When you want to delete backups and backup versions you no longer need, do it by using the tools
provided by Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office. Refer to Deleting backups and backup versions for
details.

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office stores information on the backups in a metadata information
database. Therefore, deleting unneeded backup files in File Explorer will not delete information
about these backups from the database. This will result in errors when the program tries to perform
operations on the backups that no longer exist.

The difference between file backups and disk/partition

images
When you back up files and folders, only the files and folder tree are compressed and stored.

Disk/partition backups are different from file and folder backups. Acronis Cyber Protect Home
Office stores an exact snapshot of the disk or partition. This procedure is called "creating a disk
image" or "creating a disk backup" and the resulting backup is often called "a disk/partition image"
or "a disk/partition backup".

35 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

What does a disk/partition backup contain?

A disk/partition backup contains all the data stored on the disk or partition:

1. Zero track of the hard disk with the master boot record (MBR) (applicable to MBR disk backups
only).
2. One or more partitions, including:
a. Boot code.
b. File system meta data, including service files, file allocation table (FAT), and partition boot
record.
c. File system data, including operating system (system files, registry, drivers), user data and
software applications.
3. System Reserved partition, if any.
4. EFI system partition, if any (applicable to GPT disk backups only).

What is excluded from disk backups?

To reduce image size and speed up image creation, by default Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office
only stores the hard disk sectors that contain data.

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office excludes the following files from a disk backup:

l pagefile.sys
l hiberfil.sys (a file that keeps RAM contents when the computer goes into hibernation)

You can change this default method by turning on the sector-by-sector mode. In this case, Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office copies all hard disk sectors, and not only those that contain data.

Additionally, when you back up your system partition or disk to Acronis Cloud, Acronis Cyber Protect
Home Office excludes the following data:

l The Temp folders, usually located in:

o C:\Windows\Temp\
o C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Temp
l The System Volume Information folder (usually located in C:\System Volume Information\)
l The Recycle Bin
l Web browser temporary data:
o Temporary Internet files
o Cookies
o History
o Cache
l .tib and .tibx files
l .tmp files
l .~ files

36 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Full, incremental and differential backups
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office offers three backup methods: full, incremental, and differential.

Full method
The result of a full method backup operation (also known as full backup version) contains all of the
data at the moment of the backup creation.

Example: Every day, you write one page of your document and back it up using the full method.
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office saves the entire document every time you run backup.

1.tibx, 2.tibx, 3.tibx, 4.tibx—files of full backup versions.

Additional information

A full backup version forms a base for further incremental or differential backups. It can also be
used as a standalone backup. A standalone full backup might be an optimal solution if you often roll
back the system to its initial state or if you do not like to manage multiple backup versions.

Recovery: In the example above, to recover the entire work from the 4.tibx file, you need to have
only one backup version—4.tib.

Incremental method
The result of an incremental method backup operation (also known as incremental backup version)
contains only those files which have been changed since the LAST BACKUP.

Example: Every day, you write one page of your document and back it up using the incremental
method. Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office saves the new page every time you run backup.

37 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Note: The first backup version you create always uses full method.

l 1.tibx—file of full backup version.

l 2.tibx, 3.tibx, 4.tibx—files of incremental backup versions.

Additional information

Incremental method is the most useful when you need frequent backup versions and the ability to
roll back to a specific point in time. As a rule, incremental backup versions are considerably smaller
than full or differential versions. On the other hand, incremental versions require more work for the
program to provide recovery.

Recovery: In the example above, to recover the entire work from the 4.tibx file, you need to have all
the backup versions—1.tibx, 2.tibx, 3.tibx, and 4.tibx. Therefore, if you lose an incremental backup
version or it becomes corrupted, all later incremental versions are unusable.

Differential method
The result of a differential method backup operation (also known as differential backup version)
contains only those files which have been changed since the LAST FULL BACKUP.

Example: Every day, you write one page of your document and back it up using the differential
method. Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office saves the entire document except the first page stored
in the full backup version.

Note: The first backup version you create always uses full method.

l 1.tibx—file of full backup version.

l 2.tibx, 3.tibx, 4.tibx—files of differential backup versions.

38 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Additional information

Differential method is an intermediate between the first two approaches. It takes less time and
space than a full one, but more than an incremental one. To recover data from a differential backup
version, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office needs only the differential version and the last full
version. Therefore, recovery from a differential version is simpler and more reliable than recovery
from an incremental one.

Recovery: In the example above, to recover the entire work from the 4.tibx file, you need to have
two backup versions—1.tibx and 4.tibx.

To choose a desired backup method, you usually need to configure a custom backup scheme. For
more information see Custom schemes.

Note
An incremental or differential backup created after a disk is defragmented might be considerably
larger than usual. This is because the defragmentation program changes file locations on the disk
and the backups reflect these changes. Therefore, it is recommended that you re-create a full
backup after disk defragmentation.

Changed Block Tracker (CBT)

The CBT technology accelerates the backup process when creating local incremental or differential
disk-level backup versions. Changes to the disk content are continuously tracked at the block level.
When a backup starts, the changes can be immediately saved to the backup.

39 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Deciding where to store your backups
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office supports quite a few of storage devices. For more information,
refer to "Supported storage media" (p. 14).

The table below shows possible backup destinations for your data.

HDD* SSD* USB Acronis File Network SMB FTP DVD Memory
flash Cloud server, share card
drive NAS or
NDAS

MBR + + + + + + + + + +
partitions or
entire disks
(HDD, SSD)

GPT/dynami + + + + + + + + + +
c volumes or
disks

Files and + + + + + + + + + +
folders

*Internal or external.

Though backing up to your local hard drive is the simplest option, we recommend that you store
your backups off-site because it enhances the security of your data.

Recommended storage media:

1. Acronis Cloud
2. External drive
If you plan to use an external USB hard drive with your desktop PC, we recommend that you
connect the drive to a rear connector by using a short cable.
3. Home file server, NAS, or NDAS
Check whether Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office detects the selected backup storage, both in
Windows and when booted from the bootable media.
To gain access to an NDAS-enabled storage device, in many cases you will need to specify the
NDAS device ID (20 characters) and the write key (five characters). The write key allows you to
use an NDAS-enabled device in write mode (for example, for saving your backups). Usually the
device ID and write key are printed on a sticker attached to the bottom of the NDAS device or on
the inside of its enclosure. If there is no sticker, you need to contact your NDAS device vendor to
obtain that information.
4. Network share
See also: Authentication settings.

40 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

5. FTP server
See also: FTP connection.
6. Optical discs (CD, DVD, BD)
Blank optical discs such as DVD-R, DVD+R are very cheap, so they will be the lowest cost solution
for backing up your data, though the slowest one.
Due to the necessity of swapping discs, we strongly recommend to avoid backing up to DVDs if
the number of discs is more than three. When there is no alternative to backing up to DVDs, we
recommend to copy all DVDs to a folder on a hard disk, and then to recover from that folder.

Preparing a new disk for backup

A new internal or external hard drive may not be recognized by Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.
If this is the case, use the operating system tools to change the disk status to Online and then to
initialize the disk.

To change a disk status to Online

1. Open Disk Management. To do this, go to Control Panel -> System and Security ->
Administrative Tool, start Computer Management, and then click Disk Management.
2. Find the disk marked as Offline. Right-click the disk and then click Online.
3. The disk status will be changed to Online. After that, you will be able to initialize the disk.

To initialize a disk

1. Open Disk Management. To do this, go to Control Panel -> System and Security ->
Administrative Tool, start Computer Management, and then click Disk Management.
2. Find the disk marked as Not Initialized. Right-click the disk and then click Initialize Disk.
3. Select a partition table for the disk - MBR or GPT, and then click OK.
4. [optional step] To create a volume on the disk, right-click the disk, click New Simple Volume,
and then follow the wizard's steps to configure the new volume. To create one more volume,
repeat this operation.

FTP connection
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office allows you to store your backups on FTP servers.

To create a new FTP connection, when selecting a backup storage click FTP connection, and in the
opened window provide:

l Path to the FTP server, for example: my.server.com

l Port
l User name
l Password

To check your settings, click the Test connection button. The computer will try to connect to the
specified FTP server. If the test connection has been established, click the Connect button to add
the FTP connection.

41 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

The created FTP connection will appear in the folder tree. Select the connection and browse for the
backup storage that you want to use.

Note
The mere opening of an FTP server's root folder does not bring you to your home directory.

Note
For data to be recovered directly from an FTP server, the backup must consist of files no greater
than 2GB each.

Note
Because of this, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office splits a backup into files with a size of 2GB when
backing up directly to an FTP server. If you back up to a hard disk with the aim of transferring the
backup to an FTP later, you may split the backup into files of 2GB each by setting the desired file
size in the backup options.

Note
An FTP server must allow passive mode file transfers.

Note
The firewall settings of the source computer should have Ports 20 and 21 opened for the TPC and
UDP protocols to function. The Routing and Remote Access Windows service should be disabled.

Authentication settings
If you are connecting to a networked computer, in most cases you will need to provide the
necessary credentials for accessing the network share. For example, this is possible when you select
a backup storage. The Authentication Settings window appears automatically when you select a
networked computer name.

If necessary, specify the user name and password, and then click Test connection. When the test is
successfully passed, click Connect.

Troubleshooting
When you create a network share that you plan to use as a backup storage, ensure that at least one
of the following conditions is met:

l Windows account has a password on the computer where the shared folder is located.
l Password-protected sharing is turned off in Windows.
For example, in Windows 7, you can find this setting at Control Panel —> Network and
Internet —> Network and Sharing Center —> Advanced sharing settings —> Turn off
password protected sharing.

Otherwise, you will not be able to connect to the shared folder.

42 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Acronis Nonstop Backup
Acronis Nonstop Backup provides easy protection of your disks and files. It allows you to recover
entire disks, individual files and their different versions.

The main purpose of Acronis Nonstop Backup is continuous protection of your data (files, folders,
contacts, etc.), though you can use it to protect partitions as well. If you choose to protect an entire
partition, you will be able to recover the partition as a whole using the image recovery procedure.

We do not recommend using nonstop backup as a primary way to protect your system. For the
safety of your system, use any other schedule. Refer to Examples of custom schemes for examples
and details.

Nonstop Backup limitations

l You can create only one nonstop backup.
l Acronis Cloud cannot be used as a destination for a disk-level nonstop backup.
l Windows libraries (Documents, Music, etc.) can be protected with a disk-level nonstop backup
only.
l You cannot protect data stored on external hard drives.
l Nonstop Backup and Try&Decide cannot work simultaneously.

How it works
Once you start Acronis Nonstop Backup, the program will perform an initial full backup of the data
selected for protection. Acronis Nonstop Backup will then continually monitor the protected files
(including open ones). Once a modification is detected, the changed data is backed up. The shortest
interval between the incremental backup operations is five minutes. This allows you to recover your
system to an exact point in time.

Acronis Nonstop Backup checks file changes on the disk, not in the memory. If, for instance, you are
working in Word and do not save for a long time, your current changes in the Word document will
not be backed up.

You may think that at these backup rates the storage will fill in no time. Do not worry as Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office will back up only so called "deltas". This means that only differences
between old and new versions will be backed up and not whole changed files. For example, if you
use Microsoft Outlook or Windows Mail, your pst file may be very large. Furthermore, it changes
with each received or sent E-mail message. Backing up the entire pst file after each change would be
an unacceptable waste of your storage space, so Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office backs up only
its changed parts in addition to the initially backed up file.

Retention rules
Local backups

43 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Acronis Nonstop Backup keeps all backups for the last 24 hours. The older backups will be
consolidated in such a way that Nonstop Backup will keep daily backups for the last 30 days and
weekly backups until all Nonstop Backup data destination space is used.

The consolidation will be performed every day between midnight and 01:00 AM. The first
consolidation will take place after the Nonstop Backup has been working for at least 24 hours. For
example, you have turned on the Nonstop Backup at 10:00 AM on July 12. In this case the first
consolidation will be performed between 00:00 and 01:00 AM on July 14. Then the program will
consolidate the data every day at the same time. If your computer is turned off between 00:00 and
01:00 AM, the consolidation will start when you turn the computer on. If you turn off Nonstop
Backup for some time, the consolidation will start after you turn it on again.

Cloud backups

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office keeps only the following backup versions:

l All versions for the last hour

l The first versions of every hour for the last 24 hours
l The first version of every day for the last week
l The first version of every week for the last month
l The first version of every month

All other versions are automatically deleted. The retention rules are pre-set and cannot be changed.

Acronis Nonstop Backup data storage

Acronis Nonstop Backup data storage can be created on local hard disk drives (both internal and
external) or Acronis Cloud.

In many cases an external hard disk will be the best choice for Nonstop Backup data storage. You
can use an external disk with any of the following interfaces: USB (including USB 3.0), eSATA,
FireWire, and SCSI.

You can also use an NAS as the storage, but with one limitation - it must be accessible with the SMB
protocol. It does not matter whether an NAS share you want to use for the storage is mapped as a
local disk or not. If the share requires login, you will need to provide the correct user name and
password. For more information see Authentication settings. Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office
remembers the credentials and the subsequent connections to the share do not require login.

When an external hard disk or NAS is unavailable, the Nonstop Backup destination can be an
internal disk, including a dynamic one. Keep in mind that you cannot use a partition to be protected
as a Nonstop Backup storage. If your computer has a single hard disk drive with a single partition,
but you want to use Acronis Nonstop Backup anyway, you can create Acronis Secure Zone and use it
as the Nonstop Backup data storage.

Before creating Acronis Nonstop Backup data storage, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office checks
whether the selected destination has enough free space. Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office
multiplies the volume of data to be protected by 1.2 and compares the calculated value with the

44 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

available space. If the free space on the destination satisfies this minimum storage size criterion, the
destination can be used for storing Nonstop Backup data.

Nonstop Backup - Frequently asked questions

Why does Acronis Nonstop Backup pause on its own? - This is the designed behavior of Acronis
Nonstop Backup. When the system load rises to a critical level, Acronis Nonstop Backup receives the
overload alarm from Windows and pauses itself. This is done to aid Windows relieve the load
caused by other applications. The overload can be caused by running resource-intensive
applications (for example, performing a deep system scan with your antivirus software).

In such a case Nonstop Backup automatically pauses and you cannot restart it. After pausing,
Acronis Nonstop Backup gives the system one hour to relieve the load and then attempts to restart.

The automatic restart count for Acronis Nonstop Backup is 6. This means that after the first
automatic restart Acronis Nonstop Backup will attempt to restart five more times with intervals of
exactly one hour between attempts.

After the sixth unsuccessful attempt, Acronis Nonstop Backup will wait for the next calendar day. On
the next day the automatic restart count will automatically reset. When not interfered with, Acronis
Nonstop Backup performs six restart attempts per day.

The restart attempt count can be reset by doing any of the following:

l Restarting Acronis Nonstop Backup service;

l Rebooting the computer.

Restarting Acronis Nonstop Backup service will only reset the restart count to 0. If the system is still
overloaded, Acronis Nonstop Backup will pause again. For information on restarting the Acronis
Nonstop Backup service, refer to https://kb.acronis.com/content/14708.

Rebooting the computer will reset the load and the restart count. If the system overloads again,
Acronis Nonstop Backup will pause.

Why does Acronis Nonstop Backup sometimes cause a high CPU load? - This is the expected
behavior of Acronis Nonstop Backup. This may happen on restart of a paused Acronis Nonstop
Backup if a considerable amount of protected data has been modified during the pause.

For example, if you manually pause the Acronis Nonstop Backup that you use for protecting your
system partition and then install a new application. When you restart Acronis Nonstop Backup, it
loads the CPU for some time. However, the process (afcdpsrv.exe) then goes back to normal.

This happens because Acronis Nonstop Backup needs to check the backed up data against the data
that have been modified during the pause to ensure protection continuity. If there was a
considerable amount of data modified, the process may load CPU for some time. After the check is
done and all the modified data is backed up, Acronis Nonstop Backup goes back to normal.

Can I have Acronis Nonstop Backup storage on an FAT32 partition of a local hard disk? - Yes,
FAT32 and NTFS partitions can be used as the storage.

45 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Can I set up Acronis Nonstop Backup storage on a network share or NAS? - Yes, Acronis
Nonstop Backup supports network shares, mapped drives, NAS and other network attached devices
with one limitation - they must use the SMB protocol.

Backup file naming

Depending on the version by which a backup was created, its name will differ.

Naming convention for backup files created in Acronis True Image

(2020 or 2021) and Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office
A backup file name has only the backup name and an incremental counter. It does not contain any
additional information such as backup method, backup chain number, backup version number, or
volume number.

A backup name may look like:

1. my_documents.tibx
2. my_documents_0001.tibx
3. my_documents_0002.tibx
4. my_documents_0003.tibx

Full and differential backups are stored in separate files and incremental backups are automatically
merged into full backups.

The following backups continue to use the TIB format and naming convention:

l File-level backups for all destinations except for Acronis Cloud. File-level backups to Acronis Cloud
are in .tibx format.
l Nonstop backups
l Notarized backups
l Backups which use CD/DVD/Blu-ray, FTP, or Secure Zone as their destination

Naming convention for backup files created before Acronis True

Image 2020
A TIB backup file name has the following attributes:

l Backup name
l Backup method (full, inc, diff: full, incremental, differential)
l Number of backup chain1 (in the form of b#)

1Sequence of minimum two backup versions that consist of the first full backup version and the subsequent one or

more incremental or differential backup versions. Backup version chain continues till the next full backup version (if
any).

46 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l Number of backup version1 (in the form of s#)
l Number of volume (in the form of v#)
For example this attribute changes when you split a backup into several files. Refer to Backup
splitting for details.

Thus a backup name may look the following way:

1. my_documents_full_b1_s1_v1.tib
2. my_documents_full_b2_s1_v1.tib
3. my_documents_inc_b2_s2_v1.tib
4. my_documents_inc_b2_s3_v1.tib

If you are creating a new backup, and there is already a file with the same name, the program does
not delete the old file, but adds to the new file the "-number" suffix, for example, my_documents_inc_
b2_s2_v1-2.tib.

Integration with Windows

During installation Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office provides closer integration with Windows.
Such merging allows you to get the most out of your computer.

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office integrates the following components:

l Acronis items on the Windows Start menu

l Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office button on the taskbar
l Shortcut menu commands

Windows Start menu

The Start menu displays Acronis commands, tools and utilities. They give you access to Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office functionality, without having to start the application.

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office button on the taskbar

The Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office button on the Windows taskbar shows the progress and
result of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office operations.

Tray Notification Center

When Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office is open, you can see the status of any operation in it.
However, since some operations can take quite a while, such as a backup, there is no need to keep
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office to learn its result.

1The result of a single backup operation. Physically, it is a file or a set of files that contains a copy of the backed up

data as of a specific date and time. Backup version of files created by Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office have a .tibx
extension. The TIBX files resulting from consolidation of backup versions are also called backup versions.

47 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

The Tray Notification Center contains latest notifications in one place, lets you see important
operation statuses without opening Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office at the moment when you
need them. The following notifications are shown in Acronis Tray Notification Center: information
on the results of backup operations, and other important notifications from Acronis Cyber Protect
Home Office. The Tray Notification Center is minimized and hidden under Acronis Cyber Protect
Home Office in the tray.

Shortcut menu commands

To access shortcut menu commands, open File Explorer, right-click selected items, point to Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office, and then select a command.

l To create a new file-level backup, select New file backup.

l To create a new disk-level backup, select New disk backup.
l To mount a disk-level backup (.tibx file), select Mount.
l To validate a backup (.tibx file), select Validate.

File-level recovery in File Explorer

1. In File Explorer, double-click the backup file (.tibx file) that contains the data to recover.
2. Copy or drag the files and folders to any location on your computer, as if they were stored on an
ordinary disk.

Wizards
When you use the available Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office tools and utilities, the program will in
many cases employ wizards to guide you through the operations.

For example, see the screenshot below.

48 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

A wizard window usually consists of the following areas:

1. This is the list of steps to complete the operation. A green checkmark appears next to a complete
step. The green arrow indicates the current step. When complete all the steps, the program
displays the Summary screen in the Finish step. Check the summary and click Proceed to start
the operation.
2. This toolbar contains buttons to manage objects you select in area 3.
For example:
l Details - displays the window that provides detailed information about the selected
backup.
l Properties - displays the selected item properties window.
l Create new partition - displays the window where you can configure a new partition
settings.
l Columns - allows you to choose which table columns to display and in which order.
3. This is the main area where you select items and change settings.
4. This area displays additional information about the item you select in area 3.

FAQ about backup, recovery and cloning

l I have a 150 GB system partition, but the occupied space on that partition is only 80 GB.
What will Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office include in a backup?—By default, Acronis

49 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Cyber Protect Home Office copies only the hard disk sectors that contain data, so it will include
only 80 GB in a backup. You can also choose the sector-by-sector mode. Note that such a backup
mode is required only in special cases. For more information, see Image creation mode. While
creating a sector-by-sector backup, the program copies both used and unused hard disk sectors
and the backup file will usually be significantly larger.
l Will my system disk backup include drivers, documents, pictures, etc.?—Yes, such a backup
will contain the drivers, as well as the contents of the My documents folder and its subfolders, if
you kept the default location of the My documents folder. If you have just a single hard disk in
your PC, such a backup will contain all of the operating system, applications and data.
l I have an old hard disk drive which is almost full in my notebook. I purchased a new
bigger HDD. How can I transfer Windows, programs and data to the new disk?—You can
either clone the old hard disk on the new one or back up the old hard disk and then recover the
backup to a new one. The optimum method usually depends on your old hard disk partitions
layout.
l I want to migrate my old system hard disk to an SSD. Can this be done with Acronis Cyber
Protect Home Office?—Yes, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office provides such a function. For
procedure details, see Migrating your system from an HDD to an SSD.
l What is the best way to migrate the system to a new disk: cloning or backup and
recovery?—The backup and recovery method provides more flexibility. In any case, we strongly
recommend to make a backup of your old hard disk even if you decide to use cloning. It could be
your data saver if something goes wrong with your original hard disk during cloning. For example,
there were cases when users chose the wrong disk as the target and thus wiped their system
disk. In addition, you can make more than one backup to create redundancy and increase
security.
l What should I back up: a partition or the whole disk?—In most cases, it is better to back up
the whole disk. However, there may be some cases when a partition backup is advisable. For
example, your notebook has a single hard disk with two partitions: system (disk letter C) and the
data (disk letter D). The system partition stores your working documents in the My documents
folder with subfolders. The data partition stores your videos, pictures, and music files. If you only
want to back up the system partition, you don’t have to back up the whole disk. In this case, a
partition backup will be enough. Besides, if you only want to have your data backed up (not the
system files), you can create a file backup. However, we recommend creating at least one whole
disk backup if your backup storage has enough space.
l Does Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office support RAID?—Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office
supports hardware RAID arrays of all popular types. Support of software RAID configurations on
dynamic disks is also provided. Acronis bootable media supports most of the popular hardware
RAID controllers. If the standard Acronis bootable media does not "see" the RAID as a single
volume, the media does not have the appropriate drivers. In this case you can create WinPE-
based media and add the required drivers there (in the advanced mode).

50 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Backing up data

Backing up disks and partitions

As opposed to file backups, disk and partition backups contain all the data stored on the disk or
partition. This backup type is usually used to create an exact copy of a system partition of the whole
system disk. Such backup allows you to recover your computer when Windows works incorrectly or
cannot start.

To back up partitions or disks

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

2. On the sidebar, click Backup.
3. Click Add backup.
4. [Optional] To rename the backup, click the arrow next to the backup name, click Rename, and
then enter a new name.
5. Click the Backup source area, and then select Disks and partitions.
6. In the opened window, select the check boxes next to the partitions and disks that you want to
back up, and then click OK.
To view hidden partitions, click Full partition list.

Note
To back up dynamic disks you can use only the partition mode.

7. Click the Backup destination area, and then select a destination for backup:

51 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 l Acronis Cloud—Sign in to your account, and then click OK.
l Your external drive—When an external drive is plugged into your computer, you can select it
from the list.
l NAS—Select an NAS from the list of found NAS devices. If you have only one NAS, Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office will suggest using it as a backup destination by default.
l Browse—Select a destination from the folder tree.

Note
If possible, avoid storing your system partition backups on dynamic disks, because the system
partition is recovered in the Linux environment. Linux and Windows work with dynamic disks
differently. This may result in problems during recovery.

8. [optional step] Click Options to set the options for the backup. For more information see Backup
options.
9. [optional step] Click the Add a comment icon, and then type a comment to the backup version.
Backup comments will help you to find the necessary version later, when recovering your data.
10. Perform one of the following:
l To run the backup immediately, click Back up now.
l To run the backup later or on a schedule, click the arrow to the right of the Back up now
button, and then click Later.

Note
When you back up your data to Acronis Cloud, the first backup may take a considerable amount of
time to complete. Further backup processes will likely be much faster, because only changes to files
will be transferred over the Internet.

Note
Once an online backup is started, you are free to close Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office. The
backup process will continue in background mode. If you suspend the backup, turn off your
computer, or disconnect it from the Internet, the backup will resume when you click Back up now or
when the Internet connection is restored. A backup interruption does not cause your data to be
uploaded twice.

Backing up files and folders

To protect files such as documents, photos, music files, video files, there is no need to back up the
entire partition containing the files. You can back up specific files and folders.

To back up files and folders

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

2. On the sidebar, click Backup.
3. Click Add backup.

52 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 4. [Optional] To rename the backup, click the arrow next to the backup name, click Rename, and
then enter a new name.
5. Click the Backup source area, and then select Files and folders.
6. In the opened window, select the check boxes next to the files and folders that you want to back
up, and then click OK.

7. Click the Backup destination area, and then select a destination for backup:
l Acronis Cloud—Sign in to your account, and then click OK.
If you do not have an Acronis account, click Create account, type your email address,
password, and then click the Create account button. Refer to Acronis account for details.
l Your external drive—When an external drive is plugged into your computer, you can select it
from the list.
l NAS—Select an NAS from the list of found NAS devices. If you have only one NAS, Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office will suggest using it as a backup destination by default.
l Browse—Select a destination from the folder tree.
8. [optional step] Click Options to set the options for the backup. For more information see Backup
options.
9. [optional step] Click the Add a comment icon, and then type a comment to the backup version.
Backup comments will help you to find the necessary version later, when recovering your data.
10. Perform one of the following:
l To run the backup immediately, click Back up now.
l To run the backup later or on a schedule, click the down arrow to the right of the Back up
now button, and then click Later.

53 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Note
When you back up your data to Acronis Cloud, the first backup may take a considerable amount of
time to complete. Further backup processes will likely be much faster, because only changes to files
will be transferred over the Internet.

Additionally, watch the English-language video instructions at https://goo.gl/i4J1AN.

Backing up mobile devices

If you have an iOS or Android smartphone, you can use Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office to
protect your mobile data such as photos, video files, contacts, and calendars. Refer to Acronis
Mobile for details.

Before you start a backup, choose where you want to store the backup: Acronis Cloud or local
storage on your computer. You can change the destination later, but you cannot back up to both
destinations simultaneously. To back up the data to Acronis Cloud, use the Acronis Mobile app.
Refer to Backing up your mobile device to Acronis Cloud for details.

To back up mobile data to local storage on your computer

1. Make sure that:

l Acronis True Image (2017 or later) or Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office is installed on your
computer.
l The Acronis Mobile app is installed on your mobile device.
l Your mobile device and your computer are connected to the same Wi-Fi network.
2. On your computer:
a. Start Acronis True Image (2017 or later) or Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.
b. On the sidebar, click Backup, and then click Add backup.
c. Click the Backup source area, and then select Mobile device.
A QR code will be displayed. Please do not close this window.
3. On your mobile device:
a. Start Acronis Mobile.
b. Tap a plus icon to create a backup. Note that this step does not occur the first time you back
up your mobile device.
c. Select computer as a backup destination.
d. Tap Scan QR code, point your camera at the QR code on the computer screen, and then wait
until the mobile device is connected to the computer.
e. Select the data categories that you want to back up, or tap Confirm if you want to back up all
of them.
f. Allow Acronis Mobile to access to your personal data.
g. [optional step] Enter a password to encrypt the backup and protect it. Otherwise, tap Skip
Encryption.
h. Tap Start Backup.

54 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

When the backup is started, you can track the progress in any application - on the computer or
mobile device, but the errors and warning messages are displayed in the mobile app only.

You can close both Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office on your computer and the Acronis Mobile
app. The backup will continue in the background mode.

If you want data changes (for example, new photographs) to be backed up automatically, make sure
the Continuous backup setting is turned on. If this setting is turned off, the new data is backed up
only when you tap Back up. Refer to Mobile app settings for details.

When you change a mobile backup destination from local storage to Acronis Cloud, the connection
between the mobile device and the computer is lost, and Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office stops
associating the mobile backup in the list with the mobile device. Then, if you want to change the
destination back to local storage, you will need to restore this connection. The connection may also
be lost because of an error. To restore it, select the mobile backup in the backup list of Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office, click Reconnect, and then scan the QR code with your mobile device.
After that, the backup will continue normally with the same settings.

Acronis Mobile

Note
Acronis Cloud might be unavailable in your region. For more information, click here:
https://kb.acronis.com/content/4541

Acronis Mobile allows you to back up your data to Acronis Cloud, to local storage on your computer,
and then recover it in case of loss or corruption. Note that backup to the cloud storage requires an
Acronis account and Acronis Cloud subscription.

For more information about Acronis Mobile key features and supported devices, refer to Acronis
Mobile documentation.

Where can I find these apps?

You can view additional information and download Acronis Mobile from the Apple App Store or
Google Play:

l Acronis Mobile for iOS devices: https://go.acronis.com/atimobile/download/iOS

l Acronis Mobile for Android devices: https://go.acronis.com/atimobile/download/Android

Local destination of mobile backups

When you back up your mobile data to a computer, Acronis Mobile stores the backups in the default
folder C:\ProgramData\Acronis Mobile Backup Data\acronis-local-data\. When you change the default
folder, the acronis-local-data folder is moved to the location that you selected. All new mobile data
will be backed up to the new location.

55 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Note
All mobile backups are always stored in the same folder and cannot be separated.

To change a local destination for mobile backups

1. On the sidebar, click Settings, find the Mobile backup location option.
2. In the Mobile backup location section, click Change. The Change location window is
displayed.
3. Click Select location, and then select a new location for the backups. Note, you can select a
location only on your internal hard drives.

To change the new location to the initial one, click Reset to default.

Backing up Office 365 data

Why back up Office 365 data?

Even though Microsoft Office 365 for Home is a set of cloud services, regular backups provide an
additional layer of protection from user errors and intentional malicious actions. With Acronis Cyber
Protect Home Office, you can protect your Microsoft Outlook mailboxes and Microsoft OneDrive
data by backing up them to secure Acronis Cloud. After uploading to Acronis Cloud, all of the
content is available from any device, any time. You can recover deleted items from a backup even
after the Office 365 retention period has expired.

Backing up Office 365 data

Data that you can back up in your Outlook mailbox:

l All folders
l E-mail messages
l Attachments

Note
You cannot back up shared or group mailboxes.

Data that you can back up in your OneDrive:

l All files and folders

To back up Office 365 data:

1. Open Online Dashboard by doing one of the following:

l Follow the link: https://cloud.acronis.com.
l On the sidebar of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, click Backup, click Add backup, click
the Backup source area, and then select Cloud service.
2. Sign in to your Acronis account.

56 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

3. On the sidebar, click Resources, click Add, and then choose Microsoft Office 365 for Home.
4. Log in to your Microsoft account, if prompted.
5. At the Backup source area, select items to backup:
l Entire account
l Outlook
l OneDrive
6. Click Done.
7. You can configure cleanup rules for the backup via the Cleanup pane. You can also encrypt the
backup and protect it with a password. When done, click Apply.
8. To start the backup, click Run now.

Backup options
When you create a backup, you can change additional options and fine-tune the backup process. To
open the options window, select a source and destination for a backup, and then click Options.

Note that options of each backup type (disk-level backup, file-level backup, online backup, nonstop
backup) are fully independent and you should configure them separately.

After you have installed the application, all options are set to the initial values. You can change them
for your current backup operation only or for all backups that will be created in future. Select the
Save as default check box to apply the modified settings to all further backup operations by
default.

57 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

If you want to reset all the modified options to the values that were set after the product installation
initially, click the Reset to initial settings button. Note that this will reset the settings for the
current backup only. To reset the settings for all further backups, click Reset to initial settings,
select the Save the settings as default check box, and then click OK.

Additionally, watch the English-language video instructions at https://goo.gl/bKZyaG.

Scheduling
Location: Options > Schedule

The Schedule tab allows you to specify the backup and validation schedule settings.

You can specify a schedule for backups created or validated regularly:

l Daily—The operation will be executed once a day or more frequently.

l Weekly—The operation will be executed once a week or several times a week on the selected
days.
l Monthly—The operation will be executed once a month or several times a month on the
selected dates.
l Upon event—The operation will be executed upon an event.
l Nonstop—The operation will run every five minutes.
l Do not schedule—The scheduler will be turned off for the current operation. In this case the
backup or validation will run only when you click Back up now or Validate respectively in the
main window.

58 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Advanced settings
Clicking Advanced settings allows you to specify the following additional settings for backup and
validation:

l Back up only when the computer is locked or screensaver is running—Select this check box
to postpone a scheduled operation until the next time the computer is not in use (a screen saver
is displayed or computer is locked). For the validation schedule, the check box changes to Run
the validation only when the computer is idle.
l Wake up the sleeping/hibernating computer—Select this check box to wake up the
sleeping/hibernating computer to perform the scheduled operation.
l Prevent the computer from going to sleep/hibernate—Select this check box to eliminate a
situation when a time-consuming backup is interrupted if the computer goes into sleep or
hibernation mode.
l Run missed operations at the system startup with delay (in minutes)—Select this check box
to force the missed operation to run at the next system startup, if the computer was switched off
at the scheduled time, and the operation was not performed.
Additionally, you can set a time delay to start backup after the system startup. For example, to
start backup 20 minutes after system startup, enter 20 in the appropriate box.
l Run missed operations when an external device is connected [optional, if you schedule a
backup to a USB flash drive, or validation of a backup that is located on a USB flash drive]—Select
this check box to run a missed operation when the USB flash drive is attached if it was
disconnected at the scheduled time.

Daily backup parameters

You can set up the following parameters for backups created or validated daily:

l Every—Select the daily periodicity from the dropdown list (for example, every 2 hours).
l Once a day—The operation starts once a day at the specified time.
l Twice a day—The operation starts twice a day. Select the time for each of the two operations.

Description of the Advanced settings see in Scheduling.

Weekly backup parameters

You can set up the following parameters for backups created or validated weekly:

l Days of the week—Select the days on which to run the operation .

l At—Select the operation start time.

Description of the Advanced settings see in Scheduling.

Monthly backup parameters

You can set up the following parameters for backups created or validated monthly:

59 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l Every—Select a numeral and a day of the week from the dropdown lists. For example, select
Every first Monday to run the operation on the first Monday of every month.
l On selected days of the month—Select the date(s) for backup. For example, you may want to
run the operation on the 10th and the last day of the month.
l At—Select the operation start time.

Description of the Advanced settings see in Scheduling.

Upon event execution parameters

You can set up the following parameters for backups created or validated upon some event:

l Once a day only—Select the check box if you want to run the operation only at the first
occurrence of the event on the current day.
l Specify the event triggering the backup creation or validation:
o When an external device is connected—The operation starts each time the same external
device (USB flash drive or an external HDD) you previously used as a backup destination is
plugged into your computer. Note that Windows should recognize this device as external.
o User logon—The operation starts each time the current user logs on to the OS.
o User logoff—The operation starts each time the current user logs off the OS.
o System shutdown or restart—The operation starts at every computer shutdown or reboot.
o System startup with delay (in minutes)—The operation starts at every OS startup with the
delay time you specified.

Description of the Advanced settings see in Scheduling.

Backup schemes
Location: Options > Backup scheme

Backup schemes along with the scheduler help you set up your backup strategy. The schemes allow
you to optimize backup storage space usage, improve data storage reliability, and automatically
delete the obsolete backup versions.

Note
For online backups, the backup scheme is preset and cannot be changed. After the initial full
backup, only incremental versions are created.

The backup scheme defines the following parameters:

l Backup methods that will be used to create backup versions (full, differential or incremental)
l Sequence of the backup versions created using different methods
l Version cleanup rules

60 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office allows you to choose from the following backup schemes:

l Single version scheme—Select this scheme if you want to use the smallest backup storage.
l Version chain scheme—This may be the optimal scheme in many cases.
l Incremental scheme—Select to create a full version after every five incremental versions. This is
the default scheme.
l Differential scheme—Select to create only differential backups after an initial full backup.
l Custom scheme—Select to set up a backup scheme manually.

You can easily change the backup scheme for a pre-existing backup. This will not affect the integrity
of the backup chains, so you will be able to recover your data from any previous backup version.

Note
You cannot change the backup scheme when backing up to optical media such as a DVD/BD. In this
case, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office by default uses a custom scheme with only full backups.
This is because the program cannot consolidate backups stored on optical media.

Single version scheme

This backup scheme is the same for both disk backup and file backup types (except scheduler
settings).

The program creates a full backup version and overwrites it every time according to the specified
schedule or when you run the backup manually. In this process, the old version is deleted only after
a new version is created.

61 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Note
The very first file will remain for auxiliary purposes, without your data in it. Do not delete it!

Backup scheduler setting for disk backup: monthly.

Backup scheduler setting for file backup: daily.

Result: you have a single up-to-date full backup version.

Required storage space: minimal.

Version chain scheme

This backup scheme differs for disk backup and file backup types.

Disk backup version chain

At first the program creates the 1st full backup version. The version will be kept until you delete it
manually. After that, according to the specified schedule (or when you run backup manually) the
program creates: 1 full and 5 differential backup versions, then again 1 full and 5 differential backup
versions and so on. The versions will be stored for 6 months. After the period the program analyzes
if the oldest backup versions (except the 1st full version) may be deleted. It depends on the
minimum number of versions (eight) and version chains consistency. The program deletes the
oldest versions one by one after creating new versions with the same backup method (for example,
the oldest differential version will be deleted after creation of the newest differential version). First
of all the oldest differential versions will be deleted, then - the oldest full version.

Backup scheduler setting: monthly.

Result: you have monthly backup versions for the last 6 months plus the initial full backup version
that may be kept for a longer period.

Required storage space: depends on the number of versions and their sizes.

File backup version chain

According to the specified schedule (or when you run backup manually) the program creates: 1 full
and 6 incremental backup versions, then again 1 full and 6 incremental versions and so on. The
versions will be stored for 1 month. After the period the program analyzes if the oldest backup
versions may be deleted. It depends on the version chain consistency. To keep the consistency, the
program deletes the oldest versions by chains "1 full + 6 incremental backup versions" after creating
a new analogous version chain.

Backup scheduler setting: daily.

Result: you have backup versions for every day of the last month.

Required storage space: depends on the number of versions and their sizes.

62 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Custom schemes
With Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office you also can create your own backup schemes. Schemes
can be based on the pre-defined backup schemes. You can make changes in a selected pre-defined
scheme to suit your needs and then save the changed scheme as a new one.

Note
You cannot overwrite existing pre-defined backup schemes.

In addition, you can create custom schemes from scratch based on full, differential or incremental
backup versions.

So first of all select one of the backup methods in the appropriate box.

l Full
Select this method if you want to create only full backup versions.
l Incremental
Select this method if you want to create backup chains containing only full and incremental
backup versions.
You can configure the scheme by using one of the following options:
o Create only incremental versions after the initial full version—Select this option to create
only one backup version chain. Automatic cleanup is not available for this option.
o Create a full version after every [n] incremental versions—Select this option to create
several backup version chains. This is a more reliable but more space-consuming backup
scheme.
l Differential
Select this method if you want to create backup chains containing only full and differential
backup versions.
You can configure the scheme by using one of the following options:
o Create only differential versions after the initial full version—Select this option to create
only one backup version chain. Automatic cleanup is not available for this option.
o Create a full version after every [n] differential versions—Select this option to create
several backup version chains. This is a more reliable but more space-consuming backup
scheme.

Turn on automatic cleanup

l Old version cleanup rules—To delete obsolete backup versions automatically, you can set one
of the following cleanup rules:
o Delete versions older than [n] days [available for full method only]—Select this option to
limit the age of backup versions. All versions that are older than the specified period will be
automatically deleted.
o Delete version chains older than [n] days [available for incremental and differential
methods only]—Select this option to limit the age of backup version chains. The oldest version

63 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 chain will be deleted only when the most recent backup version of this chain is older than the
specified period.
o Store no more than [n] recent versions [available for full method only]—Select this option
to limit the maximum number of backup versions. When the number of versions exceeds the
specified value, the oldest backup version will be automatically deleted.
o Store no more than [n] recent version chains [available for incremental and differential
methods only]—Select this option to limit the maximum number of backup version chains.
When the number of version chains exceeds the specified value, the oldest backup version
chain will be automatically deleted.
o Keep size of the backup no more than [defined size] [not available for local backups]—
Select this option to limit the maximum size of the backup. After creating a new backup
version, the program checks whether the total backup size exceeds the specified value. If it's
true, the oldest backup version will be deleted.
l Do not delete the first version of the backup—Select this check box to keep the initial data
state. The program will create two initial full backup versions. The first version will be excluded
from the automatic cleanup, and will be stored until you delete it manually. If you select
incremental or differential method, the first backup chain will start from the second full backup
version. And only the third version of the backup will be incremental or differential one. Note that
when the check box is selected for the full method, the Store no more than [n] recent versions
check box changes to Store no more than 1+[n] recent versions.

Managing custom backup schemes

If you change anything in an existing backup scheme, you can save the changed scheme as a new
one. In this case you need to specify a new name for that backup scheme.

l You can overwrite existing custom schemes.

l You cannot overwrite existing pre-defined backup schemes.
l In a scheme name, you can use any symbols allowed by OS for naming files. The maximum length
of a backup scheme name is 255 symbols.
l You can create not more than 16 custom backup schemes.

After creating a custom backup scheme, you can use it as any other existing backup scheme while
configuring a backup.

You can also use a custom backup scheme without saving it. In this case, it will be available only for
the backup where it was created and you will be unable to use it for other backups.

If you do not need a custom backup scheme anymore, you can delete it. To delete the scheme,
select it in the backup schemes list, click Delete, and then confirm in the Delete scheme window.

Note
The pre-defined backup schemes cannot be deleted.

64 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Examples of custom schemes

1. Entire PC backup “Two full versions”

Case: You want to protect all data on your computer with two full versions and you want to update
the backup once a month. Let’s see how you can do it by using a custom backup scheme.

1. Start configuring an entire PC backup. Refer to Backing up all data on your PC for details.
2. Make sure Entire PC is selected as the backup source.
3. Click Options, open the Schedule tab, click Monthly, and then specify a day of the month (for
example, the 20-th). This will result in a backup version being created on a monthly basis, on the
day you specify. Then, specify a start time for the backup operation.
4. Open the Backup scheme tab, and then choose Custom scheme instead of Incremental
scheme.
5. In the Backup method box, select Full from the drop-down list.
6. To limit the number of versions, click Store no more than [n] recent versions, and type or
select 2, and click OK.
In this case, the program will create a new full version every month, on the 20-th day. After
creating the third version, the oldest version will be automatically deleted.
7. Check that all settings are correct and click Back up now. If you want your first backup to be run
only at the time you specified in the Scheduler, click the down arrow to the right of the Back up
now button and select Later in the drop-down list.

2. File backup “Daily incremental version + weekly full version”

Case: You have files and/or folders you work with every day. You need to save your daily work
results and want to be able to recover data state to any date for the last three weeks. Let’s see how
you can do this using a custom backup scheme.

1. Start configuring a file backup. Refer to Backing up files and folders for details.
2. Click Options, open the Schedule tab, click Daily, and then specify a start time for the backup
operation. For example, if you finish your everyday work at 8 PM, specify this time or a little later
(8.05 PM) as the start time.
3. Open the Backup scheme tab, and then choose Custom scheme instead of Incremental
scheme.
4. In the Backup method box, select Incremental from the drop-down list.
5. Click Create a full version after every [n] incremental versions, and type or select 6.
In that case, the program will first create the initial full backup version (no matter how you set up
a backup process, the first backup version will always be the full one), and then six incremental
versions day by day. Then, it will create one full version and six incremental versions again and
so on. So every new full version will be created in exactly a week's time.
6. To limit the storage time for the versions, click Turn on automatic cleanup.
7. Click Delete version chains older than [n] days, type or select 21, and click OK.

65 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

8. Check that all settings are correct and click Back up now. If you want your first backup to run
only at the time you specified in the Scheduler, click the down arrow to the right of the Back up
now button and select Later in the drop-down list.

3. Disk backup “Full version every 2 months + differential version twice a month”
Case: You need to back up your system partition twice a month and create a new full backup version
every two months. In addition, you want to use no more than 100 GB of disk space to store the
backup versions. Let’s see how you can do it using a custom backup scheme.

1. Start configuring a disk backup. Refer to Backing up disks and partitions.

2. Select your system partition (usually C:) as the backup source.
3. Click Options, open the Schedule tab, click Monthly, and then specify, for example, the 1st and
15th days of the month. This will result in a backup version in about every two weeks. Then,
specify a start time for the backup operation.
4. Open the Backup scheme tab, and then choose Custom scheme instead of Incremental
scheme.
5. In the Backup method box, select Differential from the drop-down list.
6. Click Create a full version after every [n] differential versions, and type or select 3.
In that case the program will first create the initial full backup version (no matter how you set up
a backup process, the first backup version will always be the full one), and then three differential
versions, each one in about two weeks. Then again a full version and three differential versions
and so on. So every new full version will be created in two months.
7. To limit storage space for the versions, click Turn on automatic cleanup.
8. Click Keep size of the backup no more than [defined size], type or select 100 GB, and click
OK.

Note
When the total backup size exceeds 100 GB, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office will clean up the
existing backup versions to make the remaining versions satisfy the size limit. The program will
delete the oldest backup chain consisting of a full backup version and three differential backup
versions.

9. Check that all settings are correct and click Back up now. If you want your first backup to be run
only at the time you specified in the Scheduler, click the down arrow to the right of the Back up
now button and select Later in the drop-down list.

Notifications for backup operation

Location: Options > Notifications

Sometimes a backup or recovery procedure can last an hour or longer. Acronis Cyber Protect Home
Office can notify you when it is finished via email. The program can also duplicate messages issued
during the operation or send you the full operation log after operation completion.

By default, all notifications are disabled.

66 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Free disk space threshold
You may want to be notified when the free space on the backup storage becomes less than the
specified threshold value. If after starting a backup Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office finds out that
the free space in the selected backup location is already less than the specified value, the program
will not begin the actual backup process and will immediately inform you by displaying an
appropriate message. The message offers you three choices - to ignore it and proceed with the
backup, to browse for another location for the backup or to cancel the backup.

If the free space becomes less than the specified value while the backup is being run, the program
will display the same message and you will have to make the same decisions.

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office can monitor free space on the following storage devices: local
hard drives, USB cards and drives, and Network shares (SMB). This option cannot be enabled for FTP
servers and CD/DVD drives.

To set the free disk space threshold

1. Select the Show notification message on insufficient free disk space check box.
2. Enter a threshold value in the Notify me when free disk space is less than box.

Note
The message will not be displayed if the Do not show messages and dialogs while processing
(silent mode) check box is selected in the Error handling settings.

Email notification
1. Select the Send email notifications about the operation state check box.
2. Configure email settings:
l Enter the email address in the To field. You can enter several addresses, separated by
semicolons.
l Enter the outgoing mail server (SMTP) in the Server settings field.
l Set the port of the outgoing mail server. By default, the port is set to 25.
l Select the required encryption for the emails.
l If required, select the SMTP authentication check box, and then enter the user name and
password in the corresponding fields.
3. To check whether your settings are correct, click the Send test message button.

If the test message sending fails

1. Click Show extended settings.

2. Configure additional email settings:
l Enter the sender's email address in the From field. If you are not sure what address to specify,
then type any address you like in a standard format, for example aaa@bbb.com.
l Change the message subject in the Subject field, if necessary.

67 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 To simplify monitoring a backup status, you can add the most important information to the
subject of the email messages. You can type the following text labels:
o %BACKUP_NAME%—The backup name
o %COMPUTER_NAME%—The name of the computer where the backup was started
o %OPERATION_STATUS%—The result of the backup or other operation
For example, you can type: Status of backup %BACKUP_NAME%: %OPERATION_STATUS%
(%COMPUTER_NAME%)
l Select the Log on to incoming mail server check box, and enter the incoming mail server
(POP3) under it.
l Set the port of the incoming mail server. By default, the port is set to 110.
3. Click the Send test message button again.

Additional notification settings

l Send notification upon operation's successful completion—Select this check box to send a
notification concerning a process completion.
l Send notification upon operation failure—Select this check box to send a notification
concerning a process failure.
l Send notification when user interaction is required—Select this check box to send a
notification with operation messages.
l Add full log to the notification—Select this check box to send a notification with a full log of
operations.

Note
You will only get email notifications for a particular backup. If you want to receive notifications
about all of your backups, you can set up email notifications in the Online Dashboard. Refer to
Email notifications for details. Both methods work independently from each other and can be used
simultaneously.

Excluding items from backup

Location: Options > Exclusions

If you want to exclude unnecessary files from a backup, specify the appropriate file types on the
Exclusions tab of the backup options. You can specify exclusions for disk backups, file backups or
online backups.

When you select a specific file for backup, it cannot be excluded by the exclusion settings. The
settings are applicable only to files located on a partition, disk, or inside a folder selected for backup.

How to use the default exclusion settings

After you have installed the application, all the exclusion settings are set to the initial values. You
can change them for your current backup operation only or for all backups that will be created in
future. Select the Save as default check box to apply the modified settings to all further backup

68 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

operations by default. If you want to reset all the modified settings to the values that they were
originally set to when the product was installed, click the Reset to initial settings button.

What you can exclude and how

You have the following options to exclude files from backups:

l Do not notarize digitally signed files (available for notarized backups only)—The main purpose
of a notarized backup is protection of your personal files. Therefore, there is no need to back up
system files, application files, and other files that have a digital signature. To exclude these files,
select the corresponding check box.
l Exclude hidden files—Select this check box to exclude hidden files and folders from a file-level
backup.
l Exclude system files—Select this check box to exclude system files and folders from a file-level
backup.

You can exclude files meeting the criteria you specify. To do this, select the Exclude files matching
the following criteria check box, click the plus sign, and then enter the exclusion criterion.

Note
We do not recommend excluding hidden and system files from the backups of your system
partition.

To add an exclusion criterion

69 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l You can enter explicit file names for exclusion from the backup:
o file.ext - all such files will be excluded from the backup.
o C:\file.ext - the file.ext file on the C: disk will be excluded.
l You can use wildcard characters (* and ?):
o *.ext - all files with a .ext extension will be excluded.
o ??name.ext - all files with a .ext extension, having six letters in their names (starting with any
two symbols (??) and ending with name), will be excluded.
l To exclude a folder from a disk-level backup, click the plus sign, click the ellipsis button, go to the
directory tree and select the folder you want to exclude, and then click OK.

To delete a criterion added by mistake, select the criterion, and then click the minus sign.

Image creation mode

Location: Options > Advanced > Image creation mode

This option is not available for the backups that use Acronis Cloud as a backup destination.

You can use these parameters to create an exact copy of your whole partitions or hard disks, and
not only the sectors that contain data. For example, this can be useful when you want to back up a
partition or disk containing an operating system that is not supported by Acronis Cyber Protect
Home Office. Keep in mind that this mode increases processing time and usually results in a larger
image file.

l To create a sector-by-sector image, select the Back up sector-by-sector check box.

l To include all unallocated disk space into the backup, select the Back up unallocated space
check box.
This check box is available only when the Back up sector-by-sector check box is selected.

Backup protection
Location: Backup dashboard > Options > Advanced > Backup protection

Note
This topic is applicable to local and network backups. For information about protecting cloud
backups, refer to Online backup protection.

By default, there is no password protection for backups, but you can configure passwords to protect
your backup files.

Note
You cannot change the backup protection option for an existing backup.

To protect a backup

1. Enter the password for the backup into the corresponding field. We recommend that you use a
password longer than seven symbols and containing both letters (in upper and lower cases

70 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 preferably) and numbers to make it more difficult to guess.

Note
A password cannot be retrieved. Memorize the password that you specify for a backup
protection.

2. To confirm the previously entered password, retype it into the corresponding field.
3. [optional step] To increase the security of your confidential data, you can encrypt the backup
with strong industry-standard AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) cryptographic algorithm. AES
is available with three key lengths – 128, 192 and 256 bits to balance performance and protection
as desired.
The 128-bit encryption key is sufficient for most applications. The longer the key, the more
secure your data. However, the 192 and 256-bit long keys significantly slow down the backup
process.
If you want to use AES encryption, choose one of the following keys:
l AES 128 - to use 128-bit encryption key
l AES 192 - to use 192-bit encryption key
l AES 256 - to use 256-bit encryption key
If you do not want to encrypt the backup and only want to protect a backup with a password,
select None.
4. Having specified the backup settings, click OK.

How to get access to a password-protected backup

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office asks for the password every time you try to modify the backup:

l Recover data from the backup

l Edit settings
l Mount
l Move

To access the backup, you must specify the correct password. For safety reasons, there is no way to
recover lost passwords.

Online backup protection

Location: Options > Advanced > Backup protection

To protect your data on Acronis Cloud from unauthorized access, you can use encryption. In this
case, when you back up your data, it will be encrypted by using the AES-256 algorithm and then
saved to Acronis Cloud. To encrypt and decrypt your data, the program needs the password, that
you should specify when you configure the online backup. You can specify any set of characters you
like. Note that the password is case-sensitive.

71 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Warning!
A password of an online backup cannot be retrieved. Memorize the password that you specify for
backup protection.

While attempting to access the encrypted data, the program asks you to enter the password.

Note
Note that you cannot set or change the password for a pre-existing online backup.

Pre/Post commands for backup

Location: Options > Advanced > Pre/Post commands

This option is not available for the backups that use Acronis Cloud as a backup destination.

You can specify commands (or even batch files) that will be automatically executed before and after
the backup procedure.

For example, you may want to start/stop certain Windows processes, or check your data before
starting backup.

To specify commands (batch files)

l Select the Use custom commands check box.

l Select a command to be executed before the backup process starts in the Pre-command field. To
create a new command or select a new batch file, click the Edit button.
l Select a command to be executed after the backup process ends in the Post-command field. To
create a new command or select a new batch file, click the Edit button.

Please do not try to execute interactive commands, i.e. commands that require user input (for
example, pause). These are not supported.

Edit user command for backup

You can specify user commands to be executed before or after the backup procedure:

l In the Command field, type-in a command or select it from the list. Click ... to select a batch file.
l In the Working directory field, type-in a path for command execution or select it from the list of
previously entered paths.
l In the Arguments field enter or select command execution arguments from the list.

Disabling the Do not perform operations until the command's execution is complete
parameter (enabled for Pre commands by default), will permit the backup process to run
concurrently with your command execution.

The Abort the operation if the user command fails (enabled by default) parameter will abort the
operation if any errors occur in command execution.

You can test a command you entered by clicking the Test command button.

72 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Backup splitting
Location: Options > Advanced > Backup splitting

Note
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office cannot split already existing backups. Backups can be split only
when being created.

This option is not available for the backups that use Acronis Cloud as a backup destination.

Large backups can be split into several files that together make up the original backup. A backup
can also be split for burning to removable media.

The default setting - Automatic. With this setting, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office will act as
follows.

When backing up to a hard disk:

l If the selected disk has enough space and its file system allows the estimated file size, the
program will create a single backup file.
l If the storage disk has enough space, but its file system does not allow the estimated file size, the
program will automatically split the image into several files.
l If you do not have enough space to store the image on your hard disk, the program will warn you
and wait for your decision as to how you plan to fix the problem. You can try to free some
additional space and continue or select another disk.

When backing up to a CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, BD-R/RE:

l Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office will ask you to insert a new disk when the previous one is full.

Alternatively, you may select the desired file size from the drop-down list. The backup will then be
split into multiple files of the specified size. This is useful when you store a backup to a hard disk in
order to burn the backup to CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW or BD-R/RE later on.

Note
Creating images directly on CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, BD-R/RE might take considerably
more time than it would on a hard disk.

Backup validation option

Location: Options > Advanced > Validation

This option is not available for the backups that use Acronis Cloud as a backup destination.

You can specify the following settings:

l Validate backup each time after it is completed—Select to check the integrity of the backup
version immediately after backup. We recommend that you enable this option when you back up
your critical data or system disk.

73 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 o Validate the latest backup version only—A quick validation of the last backup slice.
o Validate entire backup
l Validate backup on schedule—Select to schedule validation of your backups to ensure that
they remain "healthy".
o The latest backup version when it is completed
o Entire backup when it is completed
The default settings are as follows:
o Frequency—Once a month.
o Day—The date when the backup was started.
o Time—The moment of backup start plus 15 minutes.

You can also configure start of the validation manually from the backup context menu.

To do this, right-click the backup and choose:

l Validate all versions

l Validate the latest version
Example: You start a backup operation on July 15, at 12.00. The backup version is created at
12.05. Its validation will run at 12.15 if your computer is in the "screen saver" state at the
moment. If not, then the validation will not run. In a month, August 15, at 12.15, the validation will
start again. As before, your computer must be in the "screen saver" state. The same will occur on
September 15, and so on.
You can change the default settings and specify your own schedule. For more information see
Scheduling.

Backup reserve copy

Location: Options > Advanced > Backup reserve copy

This option is not available for the backups that use Acronis Cloud as a backup destination and for
local backups created in Acronis True Image (2020 or 2021) and Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

Backup reserve copy is an independent full backup version created immediately after a normal
backup. Even when you create an incremental or differential backup version containing only data
changes, the reserve copy will contain all the data selected for the normal backup. You can save
reserve copies of your backups on the file system, a network drive, or a USB flash drive.

Note
CD/DVDs are not supported as locations for reserve copies.

To make a reserve copy

1. Select the Create a reserve copy of my backups check box.

2. Specify a location for the backup copies.
3. Select the reserve copy format. You can create it as an Acronis backup (.tibx files) or just copy the
source files to the selected location as is, without any modification.

74 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

4. [Optional step] Protect the reserve copy with a password.
All other backup options will be inherited from the source backup.

Removable media settings

Location: Options > Advanced > Removable media settings

When backing up to removable media, you can make this media bootable by writing additional
components to it. Thus, you will not need a separate bootable disk.

Warning!
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office does not support creating bootable media if a flash drive is
formatted in NTFS or exFAT. The drive must have a FAT16 or FAT32 file system.

The following settings are available:

l Place Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office on media—We strongly recommend selecting this
option to support USB, PC Card (formerly PCMCIA), and SCSI interfaces along with the storage
devices connected via them.
l Place Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office (64-bit) on media—The same option for 64-bit
systems.
l Place Acronis System Report on media—Select this option to generate system report that is
used for collecting information about your system in case of any program problem. Report
generation will be available before you start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office from the
bootable media. The generated system report can be saved to a USB flash drive.
l Place Acronis System Report (64-bit) on media—The same option for 64-bit systems.
l Ask for first media while creating backups on removable media—Select this option to
display the Insert First Media prompt when backing up to removable media. With the default
setting (option selected), backing up to removable media may not be possible if the user is away,
because the program will wait for someone to click OK in the prompt box. Therefore, you should
disable the prompt when scheduling a backup to removable media. Then, if the removable media
is available (for example, CD-R/RW inserted) the backup can run unattended.

If you have other Acronis products installed on your computer, the bootable versions of these
programs' components will be offered as well.

32-bit or 64-bit components

Pay attention to which versions of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office and Acronis System Report
are compatible with your computer.

32-bit components 64-bit components

BIOS-based 32-bit computers + -

BIOS-based 64-bit computers + +

75 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 EFI-based 32-bit computers + -

EFI-based 64-bit computers - +

Error handling
When Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office encounters an error while performing a backup, it stops
the backup process and displays a message, waiting for a response on how to handle the error. You
can configure an error handling policy, so Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office will not stop the
backup process, but will handle the error according to the rules that you set, and will continue
working.

Note
This topic applies to backups that use local or network backup destinations. For error handing
options for backups that use Acronis Cloud as a backup destination, see Error handling for Cloud
backups and replicas.

To set up the error handling policy

1. On the Backup dashboard > Options > Advanced > Error handling
2. Set the error handling policy:
l Do not show messages and dialogs while processing (silent mode) - Enable this setting to
ignore errors during backup operations. This is useful when you cannot control the backup
process.
l Ignore bad sectors - This option is available only for disk and partition backups. It lets you
successfully complete a backup even if there are bad sectors on the hard disk.
We recommend that you select this check box when your hard drive is failing, for example:
o Hard drive is making clicking or grinding noises during operation.
o The S.M.A.R.T. system has detected hard drive issues and recommends that you back up
the drive as soon as possible.
When you leave this check box cleared, the backup may fail because of possible bad sectors
on the drive.
l When not enough space in ASZ, delete the oldest backup (enabled by default) - We
recommend that you select this check box when planning unattended scheduled backups to
the Acronis Secure Zone. Otherwise, when the Acronis Secure Zone is full during a backup
operation, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office suspends the backup and requires your action.
The dialog will open even when the Do not show messages and dialogs while processing
(silent mode) setting is enabled.
l Repeat attempt if a backup fails - This option allows you to automatically repeat a backup
attempt if the backup fails for some reason. You can specify the number of attempts and the
interval between attempts. Note that if the error interrupting the backup persists, the backup
will not be created.

76 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Note
Scheduled backup operations will not start until all attempts are completed.

3. Click OK.

Error handling for Cloud backups and replicas

You can configure Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office to retry failed backups and replications to
Cloud.

To configure the number of retry attempts and the interval between them:

1. On the Backup dashboard, click a backup to Cloud, click Options, and go to the Advanced tab.
2. Under Error handling, select the Repeat attempt if a backup fails check box, and then choose
the number of attempts (from 1 to 99) and the interval between them.
3. Click OK.

The new setting will be applied for all following backup and replication operations to Cloud for the
selected backup object.

Note
Scheduled backup operations will not start until all attempts to repeat the backup are completed.

File-level security settings for backup

Location: Options > Advanced > File-level security settings

Note
This option is only available for file-level backups.

This option is not available for the backups that use Acronis Cloud as a backup destination.

You can specify security settings for backed up files:

l Preserve file security settings in backups - selecting this option will preserve all the security
properties (permissions assigned to groups or users) of the backup files for further recovery.
By default, files and folders are saved in the backup with their original Windows security settings
(i.e. permissions for read, write, execute and so on for each user or user group, set in file
Properties -> Security). If you recover a secured file/folder on a computer without the user
specified in the permissions, you may not be able to read or modify this file.
To eliminate this kind of problem, you can disable preserving file security settings in backups.
Then the recovered files/folders will always inherit the permissions from the folder to which they
are recovered (parent folder or disk, if recovered to the root).
Or, you can disable file security settings during recovery, even if they are available in the backup.
The result will be the same.

77 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l In backups, store encrypted files in a decrypted state (the preset is disabled) - check the
option if there are encrypted files in the backup and you want them to be accessed by any user
after recovery. Otherwise, only the user who encrypted the files/folders will be able to read them.
Decryption may also be useful if you are going to recover encrypted files on another computer.
If you do not use the encryption feature available in Windows XP and later operating systems,
simply ignore this option. (Files/folders encryption is set in Properties -> General -> Advanced
Attributes -> Encrypt contents to secure data).

Computer shutdown
Location: Options > Advanced > Computer shutdown

You can configure the following options:

l Stop all current operations when I shut down the computer—When you turn off your
computer while Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office is performing a long operation, for example a
disk backup, this operation prevents the computer from shutdown. When this check box is
selected, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office automatically stops all its current operations before
shutdown. This may take about two minutes. The next time you run Acronis Cyber Protect Home
Office, it will restart the stopped backups.
l Shut down the computer after the backup is complete—Select this option if the backup
process you are configuring may take a long time. In this case, you will not have to wait until the
operation completion. The program will perform the backup and turn off your computer
automatically.
This option is also useful when you schedule your backups. For example, you may want to
perform backups every weekday in the evening to save all your work. Schedule the backup and
select the check box. After that you may leave your computer when you finish your work knowing
that the critical data will be backed up and the computer will be turned off.

Performance of backup operation

Location for backups to local destinations: Options > Advanced > Performance

Location for backups to Acronis Cloud: Options > Advanced > Performance and network

Compression level
You can choose the compression level for a backup:

l None—The data will be copied without any compression, which may significantly increase the
backup file size.
l Normal—The recommended data compression level (set by default).
l High—Higher backup file compression level, takes more time to create a backup.
l Max—Maximum backup compression, but takes a long time to create a backup.

78 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Note
The optimal data compression level depends on the type of files stored in the backup. For example,
even maximum compression will not significantly reduce the backup size, if the backup contains
essentially compressed files, like .jpg, .pdf or .mp3.

Note
You cannot set or change the compression level for a pre-existing backup.

Operation priority
Changing the priority of a backup or recovery process can make it run faster or slower (depending
on whether you raise or lower the priority), but it can also adversely affect the performance of other
running programs. The priority of any process running in a system, determines the amount of CPU
usage and system resources allocated to that process. Decreasing the operation priority will free
more resources for other CPU tasks. Increasing backup or recovery priority may speed up the
process by taking resources from the other currently running processes. The effect will depend on
total CPU usage and other factors.

You can set up the operation priority:

l Low (enabled by default)—The backup or recovery process will run slower, but the performance
of other programs will be increased.
l Normal—The backup or recovery process will have the equal priority with other processes.
l High—The backup or recovery process will run faster, but the performance of other programs
will be reduced. Be aware that selecting this option may result in 100% CPU usage by Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office.

Network connection transfer rate

When you back up data to Acronis Cloud, you can change the connection speed used by Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office. Set the connection speed that will allow you to use Internet and network
resources without annoying slowdowns.

To set up the connection speed, select one of the following options:

l Maximum
The data transfer rate is maximum within a system configuration.
l Limit upload speed to
You can specify a maximum value for data upload speed.

Snapshot for backup

Warning!
This option is for advanced users only. Do not change the default setting if you are not sure which
option to choose.

79 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

During a disk or partition backup process, which often takes a long time, some of the backed-up
files may be in use, locked, or being modified in one way or another. For example, you may work on
a document and save it from time to time. If Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office backed up files one
by one, your open file would likely be changed since the backup start, and then saved in the backup
to a different point in time. Therefore, the data in the backup would be inconsistent. To eliminate it,
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office creates a so-called snapshot that fixes the data to back up to a
particular point in time. This is done before the backup starts and guarantees that the data is in
consistent state.

Select an option from the Snapshot for backup list:

l No snapshot—A snapshot will not be created. The files will be backed up one by one as an
ordinary copy operation.
l VSS—This option is default for disk-level and the Entire PC backups, and guarantees data
consistency in the backup.

Warning!
This is the only recommended option for backing up your system. Your computer may not start
after recovery from a backup created with a different snapshot type.

l Acronis snapshot—A snapshot will be created with the Acronis driver used in previous versions
of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.
l VSS without writers—This option is default for file-level backups. VSS writers are special VSS
components for notifying applications that a snapshot is going to be created, so that the
applications prepare their data for the snapshot. The writers are needed for applications that
perform large number of file operations and require data consistency, for example databases.
Because such applications are not installed on home computers, there is no need to use writers.
In addition, this reduces the time required for file-level backups.

Selecting a data center for backup

Location: Options > Advanced > Data center

Note
This option is only available for online backup.

When you create a backup to Acronis Cloud, your data is uploaded to one of the Acronis data
centers located in different countries. Initially, the data center is defined as the one closest to your
location when you create your Acronis account. Afterwards, your online backups and synced files
are stored in the same data center, by default.

We recommend that you set the data center for a backup manually, when you are in a different
country and your default data center is not the closest to your current location. This will significantly
increase the data upload rate.

80 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Note
You cannot change the data center for a pre-existing backup.

Laptop power settings

Location: Settings > Battery saver

Note
This setting is only available on computers with batteries (laptops, computers with UPS).

Long-term backups may consume the battery power quite fast. When you work on your laptop and
there is no power supply around you or when your computer has switched to UPS after a blackout,
it's reasonable to save the battery charge.

To save the battery charge

l On the sidebar, click Settings > Battery saver, select the Do not back up when battery power
is less than check box, and then use the slider to set the exact battery level for the charge saving
to start.

When this setting is turned on, if you unplug your laptop power adapter or use a UPS for your
computer after a blackout, and the remaining battery charge is equal or below the level in the slider,
all current backups are paused and scheduled backups will not start. Once you plug the power
adapter back in or the power supply is restored, the paused backups will be resumed. The
scheduled backups that have been missed because of this setting will be started as well.

This setting does not block backup functionality completely. You can always start a backup
manually.

Local mobile backups do not depend on this setting. Your mobile data is backed up to local storage
on your computer as usual.

Wi-Fi networks for backup to Acronis Cloud

Location: Settings > Wi-Fi networks for backup

When you back up your data to Acronis Cloud, you can be concerned about the security of your
personal data when it is transferred by unprotected Wi-Fi networks. To avoid the risk of theft of your
personal data, we strongly recommend that you only use protected Wi-Fi networks.

To protect your data

1. On the sidebar, click Settings > Wi-Fi networks for backup, and then click Set networks.
2. In the Wi-Fi networks for backup window which contains all currently available and saved
unavailable Wi-Fi networks, select the check boxes next to the networks that you want to use to
back up your data.

81 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

When the networks are selected and your computer loses a connection to any of them, all current
backups are paused and scheduled backups will not start. Once the computer connects to any of
these networks, the suspended backups will be resumed. The scheduled backups that have been
missed because of this setting will be started as well.

To back up your data by using a new Wi-Fi network, simply select it in the Wi-Fi networks for
backup window. This can be done whenever you need to use new network.

Local mobile backups do not depend on this setting. Your mobile data is backed up to local storage
on your computer, as usual.

Operations with backups

Backup operations menu

The backup operations menu provides quick access to additional operations that can be performed
with the selected backup.

82 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

The backup operations menu can contain the following items:

l Rename (not available for backups to Acronis Cloud)—Set a new name for a backup in the list.
The backup files will not be renamed.
l Reconfigure (for backups manually added to the backup list)—Configure the settings of a backup
created by a previous version. This item may also appear for backups created on another
computer and added to the backup list without importing their settings.
Without backup settings, you cannot refresh the backup by clicking Back up now. Also, you
cannot edit and clone the backup settings.
l Reconfigure (for online backups)—Bind a selected online backup to the current computer. To do
this, click this item and reconfigure settings of the backup. Note that only one online backup can
be active on one computer.

83 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l Validate the latest version—Start quick validation of the last backup slice.
l Validate all versions—Start validation of all backup slices.
l Clean up versions—Delete backup versions you no longer need.
l Clone settings—Create a new empty backup box with the settings of the initial backup and
named (1) [the initial backup name]. Change the settings, save them, and then click Back up
now on the cloned backup box.
l Move—Move all of the backup files to another location. The subsequent backup versions will be
saved to the new location.
If you change the backup destination by editing the backup settings, only new backup versions
will be saved to the new location. The earlier backup versions will remain in the old location.
l Delete—Depending on a backup type, you can completely delete the backup from its location or
choose whether you want to delete the backup box only. When you delete a backup box, the
backup files remain in the location and you will be able to add the backup to the list later. Note
that when you delete a backup completely, the deletion cannot be undone.
l Open location—Open the folder containing the backup files.
l Search files—Find a specific file or folder in a backup by entering its name into the search field.
l Convert to VHD (for disk-level backups)—Convert a selected Acronis backup version (.tibx file) to
virtual hard disks (.vhd(x) files). The initial backup version will not be modified.

Backup activity and statistics

On the Activity tab and the Backup tab, you can view additional information on a backup, such as
backup history and file types the backup contains. The Activity tab contains a list of operations
performed on the selected backup starting from its creation, the operation statuses, and statistics.
This comes in handy when you need to find out what was happening to the backup in background
mode, for example the number and statuses of scheduled backup operations, size of backed-up
data, results of backup validation, etc.

When you create the first version of a backup, the Backup tab displays a graphical representation of
the backup content by file types.

The Activity tab

Note
Nonstop backup and mobile backups do not have an activity feed.

To view a backup activity

1. On the sidebar, click Backup.

2. In the backup list, select the backup, the history of which you want to view.
3. On the right pane, click Activity.

84 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

What you can view and analyze:

l Backup operations and their statuses (successful, failed, canceled, interrupted, and so on)
l Operations performed on the backup, and their statuses
l Error messages
l Backup comments
l Backup operation details, including:
o Backed up—Size of the data that the last backup version contains.
For file-level backups, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office calculates the size of files to back up.
The value of this parameter is equal to the value of the Data to recover for full backup
versions. For differential and incremental versions, it is usually less than the Data to recover,
because in this case Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office additionally uses data from the
previous versions for recovery.
For disk-level backups, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office calculates the size of the hard drive
sectors that contain data to back up. Because sectors may contain hard links to the files, even
for full disk-level backup versions the value of this parameter can be less than the value of the
Data to recover parameter.
o Speed—Backup operation speed.
o Time spent—Time spent for the backup operation.
o Data to recover—Size of the data that can be recovered from the last backup version.
o Method—Backup operation method (full, incremental, or differential).

For more information, refer to the Knowledge Base article: https://kb.acronis.com/content/60104.

The Backup tab

When a backup is created, you can view statistics on types of the backed-up files that the last
backup version contains:

Point to a color segment to see the number of files and the total size for each data category:

l Pictures
l Video files

85 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l Audio files
l Documents
l System files
l Other file types, including hidden system files

Data to recover shows the size of the original data that you selected to back up.

Sorting backups in the list

By default, the backups are sorted by the date they were created, starting from the newest to oldest.
To change the order, select the appropriate sorting type in the upper part of the backup list. You
have the following options:

Command Description

Name This command sorts all backups in alphabetical order.

To reverse the order, select Z —> A.

Date created This command sorts all backups from newest to oldest.

To reverse the order, select Oldest on top.

Date updated This command sorts all backups by date of the last version. The newer the last

Sort backup version, the higher the backup will be placed in the list.

by To reverse the order, select Least recent on top.

Size This command sorts all backups by size, from biggest to smallest.

To reverse the order, select Smallest on top.

Source type This command sorts all backups by the source type.

Destination This command sorts all backups by the destination type.

type

Replicating backups to Acronis Cloud

Why replicate?
Even though backing up your data provides protection, we recommend that you also replicate all
local backups to Acronis Cloud, to protect from incidental corruption of your computer. Of course,
you can create two backup plans, one to back up to your local computer and another one to Acronis
Cloud. But automatic replication saves time when setting up the backup plans and creating a replica
is faster than creating another backup. A replica is a copy of your backup and it can be used as a
safeguard and accessed from anywhere.

86 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Replication activation
Replication is not activated by default. You can activate it for any local backup of a disk, partition, or
entire machine, that uses the local destination (to an external or internal disk) that you configured in
Acronis True Image (2020 or 2021) or Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office. You can activate the
replication in a special tab of a backup plan.

To activate the replication of a backup to Acronis Cloud:

1. From the backup list, select the backup that you want to replicate, and then open the Replica
tab.
2. Click Replicate. Now, replication is activated and will start once the normal backup is created.
You are free to close Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office. Both the backup and replication
processes will continue in background mode.
3. [optional step] Click Options > Advanced > Replication to Acronis Cloud to see the data center
where your backup replication is stored and to configure the cleanup settings for Acronis Cloud
to optimize usage of its space.

Protection of replicated data

Replicated data is uploaded to Acronis Cloud by using Secure Socket Layer (SSL).

In the Cloud, data is stored according to your encryption settings. If no encryption password is set,
the replicated data is stored unencrypted. Otherwise, data is encrypted by using AES-256.

Validating backups
The validation procedure checks whether you will be able to recover data from a backup.

For example, backup validation is important before you recover your system. If you start recovery
from a corrupted backup, the process will fail and your computer may become unbootable. We
recommend that you validate system partition backups under bootable media. Other backups may
be validated in Windows. See also Preparing for recovery and Basic concepts.

To validate an entire backup in Windows

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, and then click Backup on the sidebar.
2. In the backup list, click the down arrow icon next to the backup to validate, and then click
Validate.

To validate a specific backup version or an entire backup in a standalone version of Acronis

Cyber Protect Home Office (bootable media)

1. On the Recovery tab, find the backup that contains the version that you want to validate. If the
backup is not listed, click Browse for backup, and then specify the path to the backup. Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office adds this backup to the list.
2. Right-click the backup or a specific version, and then click Validate Archive. This opens the

87 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Validate Wizard.
3. Click Proceed.

Backup to various places

You can save versions of a backup to different destinations by changing the backup destination
when editing the backup settings. For example, after you save the initial full backup to an external
USB hard drive, you can change the backup destination to a USB stick by editing the backup settings.

The subsequent incremental or differential backups will be written to the USB stick.

Note
You cannot continue backing up to an optical disc.

Note
Acronis Secure Zone and FTP servers can contain an entire backup only.

Splitting backups on the fly

When free space on the destination storage (CD-R/RW or DVD-R/RW) is insufficient to complete the
current backup operation, the program displays a warning message.

To complete the backup, perform one of the following

l Free up some space on the disk, and then click Retry.

l Click Browse, and then select another storage device.
l Click Format to erase all data on the disk, and then proceed with the backup.

When versions of a backup are stored in different locations, you may need to specify the locations
during recovery.

Adding an existing backup to the list

You may have Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office backups created by a previous product version or
copied from another computer. Every time you start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, it scans
your computer for such backups and adds them to the backup list automatically.

If you have backups that are not shown in the list, you can add them manually.

To add backups manually

1. In the Backup section, at the bottom of the backup list, click the arrow icon, and then click Add
existing backup. The program opens a window where you can browse for backups on your
computer.
2. Select a backup version (a .tibx file), and then click Add.
The entire backup will be added to the list.

88 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Notarized backup
By using Blockchain technology, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office can protect your files from
unauthorized modification. This gives you a guarantee that you can recover your data from the
same file that was backed up. We recommend that you use this type of backup to protect your legal
document files or any other files that require proved authenticity. Refer to Using Blockchain
technology for details.

To create a notarized backup of your files and folders

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

2. On the sidebar, click Backup.
3. Click Add backup.
4. [Optional] To rename the backup, click the arrow next to the backup name, click Rename, and
then enter a new name.
5. Click the Backup source area, and then select Files to notarize.
6. In the opened window, select the check boxes next to the files and folders that you want to back
up, and then click OK.

7. Click the Backup destination area, and then select a destination for backup:
l Acronis Cloud—Sign in to your Acronis account, and then click OK.
If you do not have an Acronis account, click Create account, type your email address,
password, and then click the Create account button. Refer to Acronis account for details.
l Your external drive—When an external drive is plugged into your computer, you can select it
from the list.

89 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 l NAS—Select an NAS from the list of found NAS devices. If you have only one NAS, Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office will suggest using it as a backup destination by default.
l Browse—Select a destination from the folder tree.
8. [optional step] Click Options to set the options for the backup. For more information see Backup
options.
To exclude files with a digital signature from the backup, select the Do not notarize digitally
signed files check box on the Exclusions tab. Refer to Excluding items from backup for details.
9. [optional step] Click the Add a comment icon, and then type a comment to the backup version.
Backup comments will help you to find the necessary version later, when recovering your data.
10. Perform one of the following:
l To run the backup immediately, click Back up now.
l To run the backup later or on a schedule, click the down arrow to the right of the Back up
now button, and then click Later.

Note
When you back up your data to Acronis Cloud, the first backup may take a considerable amount of
time to complete. Further backup processes will likely be much faster, because only changes to files
will be transferred over the Internet.

Additionally, watch the English-language video instructions at https://goo.gl/WjUoPZ.

Using Blockchain technology

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office uses the Blockchain technology to provide top-level security for
your backed-up files. This technology gives you the guarantee that your files have not been modified
by fraudulent software, and when it is time to recover, you recover data from exactly the same file
that was backed up.

What is Blockchain?
Blockchain is a database that contains information about transactions and their sequence. In
general, a transaction represents an event, such as a financial operation or an operation with
different kinds of assets. The transactions are united in blocks, which are written to the database
one by one and form a block chain. Every transaction and every block has its own unique
identification number. What is very important is that every block stores information about all
previous blocks of the chain. Once written to the database, the information about a transaction
cannot be changed in any way or by anyone, and the transaction sequence cannot be modified
either. Any attempt to change any piece of information in the database can be easily identified by
any user of the database, because there would be no information about the false transaction or
false block in all subsequent blocks. This technology guarantees that data stored in the database is
valid, belongs to a specific person, and has not been modified by anyone. See more information
about Blockchain at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain_(database).

90 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

How Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office uses the Blockchain technology
To protect your files from unauthorized modification, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office uses the
Acronis Notary technology. This is a universal solution for timestamping and fingerprinting any data
objects and streams. Since it is impractical to store large amount of data in a Blockchain database,
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office sends only file hash codes to the Acronis Notary service.

A hash code is a unique number of fixed size that is produced by a hash function. The code
mathematically defines an arbitrary set of data, for example, a backup file. Any change of the
backup file leads to a change of its hash code. Therefore, to check if the file was changed, you only
need to compare the hash codes generated in the initial and current states of the file. If the codes
match, this is a guarantee that the file has not been modified by anyone.

When Acronis Notary receives hash codes of your files, it calculates a new single hash code and
sends it to the Ethereum Blockchain-based database. See more information about Ethereum at
https://www.ethereum.org/.

Once the hash code is in the database, the files that were used to calculate this hash code are
notarized by Acronis Notary. You can easily verify the file authenticity at any time by using the
procedure described in Verifying file authenticity. Every notarized file has a notarization certificate,
which is documentary proof that the file is protected with the Blockchain technology. A certificate
contains general information about the file and technical details that allow you to manually verify
the file authenticity. Refer to Manual verification of a file's authenticity for details.

Verifying file authenticity

By using Blockchain technology, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office can protect your backed-up files
from unauthorized modification. This gives you a guarantee that you can recover data from exactly
the same file that was backed up.

To verify a file's authenticity in Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

2. On the sidebar, click Backup.
3. From the backup list, select the notarized backup which contains the file that you want to verify.
4. On the right panel, open the Recovery tab.

5. Browse to the required file, click the Menu icon ( ), and then click one of the following:
l View certificate—The certificate containing the detailed information about the file security
will be opened in the web browser.
l Verify—Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office will check the file authenticity.

To verify a file's authenticity in the File verification tool

91 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

1. Open the File verification tool with one of the following methods:
l In a web browser, open https://notary.acronis.com/verify.
l On the sidebar of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, click Backup, select a notarized backup,
and then click Open File verification tool on the right panel.
2. In File Explorer, browse to the file that you want to verify, and then drag it to the web browser
window.

If a notarized backup is stored on Acronis Cloud, you can also verify a backed-up file's authenticity in
the Acronis Cloud web application.

To verify a file's authenticity in Acronis Cloud

1. Go to https://www.acronis.com/my/online-backup/webrestore/, and then log in to your Acronis

account.
2. On the sidebar, click Backups.
3. From the backup list, select the notarized backup which contains the file that you want to verify.
4. Browse to the required file and select it with a check mark. Then, click Verify on the right
sidebar.

Manual verification of a file's authenticity

The easiest way to verify a file's authenticity is to use the Verify command in Acronis Cyber Protect
Home Office or in the Acronis Cloud web application. Refer to Verifying file authenticity for details.
In addition to this easy method, you can perform the verification procedure yourself, step by step.

To verify a file's authenticity manually

Step 1. Calculate MD5 hash of the file

1. Start Windows PowerShell.

2. For example, to calculate the md5 hash for the picture.png file located in C:\Users\picture.png,
type:

$($(CertUtil -hashfile "C:\Users\picture.png" MD5)[1] -replace " ","")

Example of an md5 hash: eea16ade1edf2750a46bb6bffb2e45a2

3. Check that the calculated md5 hash is equal to an eTag in the DATA field in your notarization
certificate. Refer to Verifying file authenticity for details about obtaining a file certificate.

Step 2. Check that a ROOT is stored in the blockchain

1. Open a blockchain explorer, for example https://etherscan.io/.

2. Enter the TRANSACTION ID from the certificate into the search field.
3. Check that the Data field in the Event Logs tab is equal to the ROOT value in your certificate.

Step 3. Check that the hash is included in the tree

1. Download the command line utility from the GitHub repository:

https://github.com/acronis/notary-verifyhash/releases.

92 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

2. Follow the instructions at: https://github.com/acronis/notary-verifyhash.

Acronis ASign

What is Acronis ASign?

Acronis ASign is an online-service that allows multiple people to sign a file electronically. The file
should be preliminarily uploaded to Acronis Cloud via backup, archiving, or sync. To further protect
the signed files, they are notarized and protected via Acronis Notary.

The ASign solution can be used for signing any electronic documents, including different kinds of
contracts, agreements, certificates, financial documents, and official letters.

Signing a file
To sign a file on Acronis Cloud

1. Go to https://www.acronis.com/my/online-backup/webrestore/, and then log in to your Acronis

account.
2. Browse to the required file, click on the file name, and then select Send for signature in the
opened menu.
3. Type the email addresses of the people who you want to sign the file, and then send them
invitations.
After the file is signed by all signees, Acronis Notary notarizes the file and generates a signature
certificate.

For the full description of the feature, refer to the English-language Acronis ASign web help at
https://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/ATI2017ASign/.

Cleaning up backups, backup versions, and replicas

To delete backups and backup versions that you no longer need, use the tools provided by Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office.

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office stores information on the backups in a metadata information
database. Therefore, deleting unneeded backup files in File Explorer will not delete the information
about these backups from the database. This will result in errors when the program tries to perform
operations on the backups that no longer exist.

Deleting an entire backup and its replica

In the Backup section, click the down arrow icon next to the backup to delete, and then click Delete.

Depending on the backup type, this command completely deletes the backup from its location, or
allows you to choose whether you want to delete the backup entirely (with all its files) or just
remove it from the list. When you remove the backup from the displayed list, the backup files
remain in the location and you will be able to add the backup to the list later. Note that if you delete
a backup entirely, the deletion cannot be undone.

93 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

When you delete a backup, its replica is deleted automatically together with it. You cannot delete a
local backup and still save its replica. However, you can delete a replica alone and keep the local
backup.

Deleting an entire backup replica

You can delete a replica with its original backup or separately. To delete it with the backup, delete
the backup in the way described above.

To delete a replica without deleting the backup, in the Backup section, click the down arrow icon
next to the backup with the replica to delete, and then click Delete replica.

Cleaning up backup versions automatically

1. Go to the Backup section.
2. From the backup list, select the backup for which you want to clean up replica versions, and then
click Options.
3. On the Backup scheme tab, select Custom scheme, select a backup method, and then click
Turn on automatic cleanup.
4. Configure cleanup rules for the backup.
Refer to Custom schemes for details.

Note
After the cleanup, some auxiliary files may stay in the storage. Do not delete them!

Cleaning up replica versions automatically

1. Go to the Backup section.
2. From the backup list, select the backup for which you want to clean up replica versions, and then
click Options.
3. On the Advanced tab, open the Acronis Cloud cleanup tab.
l Use the Store no more than … recent backup versions option to enter a value that limits
the maximum number of replica versions that are stored.
l Select the Delete backup versions that are older than check box and enter a value that
limits the maximum age of the older versions. The most recent versions will be kept and all
other versions will be automatically deleted.

Cleaning up backup versions manually

When you want to delete backup versions that you no longer need, use the tools provided in the
application. If you delete backup version files outside Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, for
example in File Explorer, this will result in errors during operations with the backups.

Versions of the following backups cannot be deleted manually:

94 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l Backups stored on CD, DVD, BD, or Acronis Secure Zone.
l Nonstop backups.
l Notarized backups.

To clean up specific backup versions

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

2. In the Backup section, click the down arrow icon next to the backup to clean up, and then click
Clean up versions.
The Clean up backup versions window opens.
3. Select the required versions and click Delete.
4. Click Delete in the confirmation request.

Please wait for the cleanup operation to complete. After the cleanup, some auxiliary files may stay
in the storage. Do not delete them.

Cleaning up versions that have dependent versions

When you select a backup version to delete, remember that this version may have dependent
versions. In this case, the dependent versions will be selected for deletion as well, because data
recovery from such versions becomes impossible.

l When you select a full version - the program also selects all dependent incremental and
differential versions till the next full version. In other words, the entire backup version chain will
be deleted.
l When you select a differential version - the program also selects all dependent incremental
versions within the backup version chain.
l When you select an incremental version - the program also selects all dependent incremental
versions within the backup version chain.

See also

Full, incremental and differential backups.

Removing data from Acronis Cloud.

Cleaning up space on Acronis Cloud

1. Go to https://www.acronis.com/my/online-backup/webrestore/, and then log in to your Acronis
account. The Acronis Cloud web application opens.
2. On the left sidebar of the web application, click Account.
3. On the Acronis Cloud line, click Clean up.
4. Choose which versions you want to delete:
l Versions older than some period.
l All old versions except for several recent ones.

95 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Warning!
Be careful! Deleted versions cannot be restored.

One more way to clean up is to delete a cloud backup that you no longer need. In this case, all
version history for the backup is deleted from Acronis Cloud.

Removing data from Acronis Cloud

Because the available space on Acronis Cloud is limited, you need to manage your cloud space by
cleaning up the obsolete data or the data you do not need anymore. Cleanup can be done in
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office and also via the Acronis Cloud web application.

Deleting an entire backup

The most drastic option is deleting the entire backup from Acronis Cloud. When a backup is deleted,
all of its data is permanently erased. Deleted data cannot be recovered.

In Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office:

Click the down arrow icon next to the backup to delete, and then click Delete. The backup and all its
versions, settings, and schedule will be deleted.

In the Acronis Cloud web application:

1. Go to https://www.acronis.com/my/online-backup/webrestore/, and then log in to your Acronis

account.
2. On the Backups tab, move over the backup that you want to delete.
3. Click the size of the backup, and then the detailed view will appear.
4. Click Delete in the detailed view.

Note that the backup will be deleted from Acronis Cloud, but all of its settings and schedule will
remain in the Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office application.

Deleting the versions of a backup to cloud

In Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office:

1. Click the down arrow icon next to the backup which versions you want to delete, and then click
Clean up versions.
The list of backup versions opens.
2. Select the versions that you want to delete and click Delete.

Note
The quota in Acronis Cloud could take up to one day to update.

In the Acronis Cloud web application:

96 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

1. Go to https://www.acronis.com/my/online-backup/webrestore/, and then log in to your Acronis
account.
2. On the Backups tab, click on the size of the backup which versions you want to delete.
The details view of the backup opens.
3. In the details view, click Clean up.
You can select to delete versions older than a period selected by you, or clean up all versions
except a number of recent ones.
4. Configure what to delete and click Clean up now.
5. In the confirmation dialog, click Delete.

The status of the cleanup procedure is displayed when the operation is completed.

Deleting the versions of a backup replica to cloud

In Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office:

1. In the Backup section, locate a local backup that is replicated to cloud, click the down arrow and
select Clean up versions.
The Clean up backup versions dialog opens.
2. Under Delete versions from, select Acronis Cloud.
The list of backup replica versions appears.
3. Select the replica versions that you want to delete and click Delete.
4. In the confirmation dialog, click Delete.

Note
The quota in Acronis Cloud could take up to one day to update.

In the Acronis Cloud web application:

1. Go to https://www.acronis.com/my/online-backup/webrestore/, and then log in to your Acronis

account.
2. On the Backups tab, click on the size of the backup replica which versions you want to delete.
The details view of the backup replica opens.
3. In the details view, click Clean up.
You can select to delete versions older than a period selected by you, or clean up all versions
except a number of recent ones.
4. Configure what to delete and click Clean up now.
5. In the confirmation dialog, click Delete.

The status of the cleanup procedure is displayed when the operation is completed.

One-time cleanup
When your Acronis Cloud is full or is running out of space, we recommend that you use the cleanup
tool in the Acronis Cloud web application. This tool allows you to free up a considerable amount of

97 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

space in the cloud, fast and easy.

Note
You can clean up the backups one by one separately, even the encrypted ones. The password will
be requested.

1. Go to https://www.acronis.com/my/online-backup/webrestore/, and then log in to your Acronis

account.
2. On the Backups tab, move over the backup that you want to delete.
3. Click Clean up button.
4. In the opened window, configure the cleanup settings, and then click Clean up now.

To perform a one-time clean-up for all non-encrypted backups, use the following option:

1. Go to Account tab.
2. Click Clean up button.

98 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Recovering data

Recovering disks and partitions

Recovering your system after a crash

When your computer fails to boot, it is advisable to at first try to find the cause using the
suggestions given in Trying to determine the crash cause. If the crash is caused by corruption of the
operating system, use a backup to recover your system. Make the preparations described in
Preparing for recovery and then proceed with recovering your system.

Trying to determine the crash cause

A system crash can be due to two basic factors:

l Hardware failure
In this scenario, it is better to let your service center handle the repairs. However, you may want
to perform some routine tests. Check the cables, connectors, power of external devices, etc.
Then, restart the computer. If there is a hardware problem, the Power-On Self Test (POST) will
inform you about the failure.
If the POST does not reveal a hardware failure, enter BIOS and check whether it recognizes your
system hard disk drive. To enter BIOS, press the required key combination (Del, F1, Ctrl+Alt+Esc,
Ctrl+Esc, or some other, depending on your BIOS) during the POST sequence. Usually the
message with the required key combination is displayed during the startup test. Pressing this
combination takes you to the setup menu. Go to the hard disk autodetection utility which usually
comes under "Standard CMOS Setup" or "Advanced CMOS setup". If the utility does not detect
the system drive, it has failed and you need to replace the drive.
l Operating system corruption (Windows cannot start up)
If the POST correctly detects your system hard disk drive, then the cause of the crash is probably
a virus, malware or corruption of a system file required for booting. In this case, recover the
system using a backup of your system disk or system partition. Refer to Recovering your system
for details.

Preparing for recovery

We recommend that you perform the following actions before recovery:

l Scan the computer for viruses if you suspect that the crash occurred due to a virus or malware
attack.
l Under bootable media, try a test recovery to a spare hard drive, if you have one.
l Validate the image under bootable media. A backup that can be read during validation in
Windows, may not always be readable in a Linux environment.
Under bootable media, there are two ways to validate a backup:

99 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 o To validate a backup manually, on the Recovery tab, right-click a backup and select Validate
Archive.
o To validate a backup automatically before recovery, on the Options step of the Recovery
Wizard, select the Validate backup archive before recovery check box.

l Assign unique names (labels) to all partitions on your hard drives. This will make finding the disk
containing your backups easier.
When you use the bootable media, it creates disk drive letters that might differ from the way
Windows identifies drives. For example, the D: disk identified in the bootable media might
correspond to the E: disk in Windows.

Recovering your system to the same disk

Before you start, we recommend that you complete the procedures described in Preparing for
recovery.

To recover your system

1. Attach the external drive if it contains the backup to be used for recovery and make sure that the
drive is powered on.
2. Arrange the boot order in BIOS so as to make your Acronis bootable media (CD, DVD or USB
drive) the first boot device. See Arranging boot order in BIOS or UEFI BIOS.
If you use a UEFI computer, pay attention to the boot mode of the bootable media in UEFI BIOS.
It is recommended that the boot mode matches the type of the system in the backup. If the
backup contains a BIOS system, then boot the bootable media in BIOS mode; if the system is
UEFI, then ensure that UEFI mode is set.

100 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

3. Boot from Acronis bootable media and select Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.
4. On the Home screen, select My disks below Recover.

5. Select the system disk or partition backup to be used for recovery.

When the backup is not displayed, click Browse and specify path to the backup manually.

Note
If the backup is located on a USB drive, and the drive is not recognized correctly, check the USB
port version. If it is a USB 3.0 or USB 3.1, try connecting the drive to a USB 2.0 port.

6. Select Recover whole disks and partitions at the Recovery method step.

101 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

7. [Optional] At the Recovery point step, select the date and time to recover your system to.
8. Select the system partition (usually C) on the What to recover screen. If the system partition has
a different letter, select the partition using the Flags column. It must have the Pri, Act flags. If
you have the System Reserved partition, select it, too.

102 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 9. At the Settings of partition C (or the letter of the system partition, if it is different) step check
the default settings and click Next if they are correct. Otherwise, change the settings as required
before clicking Next. Changing the settings will be needed when recovering to the new hard disk
of a different capacity.
10. Carefully read the summary of operations at the Finish step. If you have not resized the
partition, the sizes in the Deleting partition and Recovering partition items must match.
Having checked the summary click Proceed.

103 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

11. When the operation finishes, exit the standalone version of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office,
remove Acronis bootable media and boot from the recovered system partition. After making
sure that you have recovered Windows to the state you need, restore the original boot order.

Recovering your system to a new disk under bootable media

Before you start, we recommend that you complete the preparations described in Preparing for
recovery. You do not need to format the new disk, as this will be done in the process of recovery.

Note
It is recommended that your old and new hard drives work in the same controller mode (for
example, IDE or AHCI). Otherwise, your computer might not start from the new hard drive.

To recover your system to a new disk

1. Install the new hard drive to the same position in the computer and use the same cable and
connector that was used for the original drive. If this is not possible, install the new drive to
where it will be used.
2. Attach the external drive if it contains the backup to be used for recovery and make sure that the
drive is powered on.

104 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

3. Arrange the boot order in BIOS so as to make your bootable media (CD, DVD or USB stick) the
first boot device. See Arranging boot order in BIOS or UEFI BIOS.
If you use an UEFI computer, pay attention to the boot mode of the bootable media in UEFI BIOS.
It is recommended that the boot mode matches the type of the system in the backup. If the
backup contains a BIOS system, then boot the bootable media in BIOS mode; if the system is
UEFI, then ensure that UEFI mode is set.
4. Boot from the bootable media and select Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.
5. On the Home screen, select My disks below Recover.
6. Select the system disk or partition backup to be used for recovery. When the backup is not
displayed, click Browse and specify path to the backup manually.

Note
If the backup is located on a USB drive, and the drive is not recognized correctly, check the USB
port version. If it is a USB 3.0 or USB 3.1, try connecting the drive to a USB 2.0 port.

7. If you have a hidden partition (for example, the System Reserved partition or a partition created
by the PC manufacturer), click Details on the wizard's toolbar. Remember the location and size
of the hidden partition, because these parameters need to be the same on your new disk.

8. Select Recover whole disks and partitions at the Recovery method step.
9. On the What to recover step, select the boxes of the partitions to be recovered.
If you select an entire disk, MBR and Track 0 of the disk will also be recovered.

105 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Selecting partitions leads to appearance of the relevant steps Settings of partition. Note that
these steps start with partitions which do not have an assigned disk letter (as usually is the case
with hidden partitions). The partitions then take an ascending order of partition disk letters. This
order cannot be changed. The order may differ from the physical order of the partitions on the
hard disk.
10. On the Settings of the hidden partition step (usually named Settings of Partition 1-1), specify the
following settings:
l Location—Click New location, select your new disk by either its assigned name or capacity,
and then click Accept.

106 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 l Type—Check the partition type and change it, if necessary. Ensure that the System Reserved
partition (if any) is primary and marked as active.
l Size—Click Change default in the Partition size area. By default the partition occupies the
entire new disk. Enter the correct size in the Partition size field (you can see this value on the
What to recover step). Then drag this partition to the same location that you saw in the
Backup Information window, if necessary. Click Accept.

107 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

11. On the Settings of Partition C step, specify the settings for the second partition, which in this
case is your system partition.
l Click New location, and then select unallocated space on the destination disk that will receive
the partition.

108 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 l Change the partition type, if necessary. The system partition must be primary.
l Specify the partition size, which by default equals the original size. Usually there is no free
space after the partition, so allocate all the unallocated space on the new disk to the second
partition. Click Accept, and then click Next.

109 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

12. Carefully read the summary of operations to be performed and then click Proceed.

When the recovery is complete

Before you boot the computer, disconnect the old drive (if any). If Windows "sees" both the new and
old drive during the boot, this will result in problems booting Windows. If you upgrade the old drive
to a larger capacity new one, disconnect the old drive before the first boot.

Remove the bootable media and boot the computer to Windows. It may report that new hardware
(hard drive) is found and Windows needs to reboot. After making sure that the system operates
normally, restore the original boot order.

Acronis Universal Restore

When you recover your system to dissimilar hardware, the target computer could fail to boot. This is
because the new hardware is incompatible with critical drivers included in the image. Acronis
Universal Restore will help you make the target computer bootable. Refer to Acronis Universal
Restore for details.

110 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Recovering partitions and disks
You can recover your disks from backups located on local storage, network storage, or Acronis
Cloud.

Note
Depending on your Internet connection speed, disk recovery from Acronis Cloud may take a long
time.

To recover partitions or disks

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

2. If you want to recover your data from Acronis Cloud, make sure that you are signed in to your
Acronis account.
3. In the Backup section, select the backup which contains the partitions or disks you want to
recover, then open the Recovery tab, and then click Recover disks.
4. In the Backup version list, select the backup version you want to recover by its backup date and
time.

5. Select the Disks tab to recover disks or Partitions tab to recover specific partitions. Select the
objects you need to recover.
6. In the recovery destination field below the partition name, select the destination partition.
Unsuitable partitions are marked by a red border. Note that all data on the destination partition
will be lost because it is replaced by the recovered data and file system.

111 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Note
To recover to the original partition, at least 5 % of the partition space must be free. Otherwise,
the Recover now button will be unavailable.

7. [Optional] To set up additional parameters for the disk recovery process, click Recovery
options.
8. After you finish with your selections, click Recover now to start recovery.

Partition properties
When you recover partitions to a basic disk, you can change properties of these partitions. To open
the Partition Properties window, click Properties next to the selected target partition.

You can change the following partition properties:

l Letter
l Label
l Type
You can make the partition primary, primary active, or logical.
l Size

112 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 You can resize the partition by dragging the right-side border with your mouse, on the horizontal
bar on the screen. To assign the partition a specific size, enter the appropriate number into the
Partition size field. You can also select the position of unallocated space—before or after the
partition.

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI)

With Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office you also can convert BIOS to UEFI systems.

What is UEFI?
Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is a specification that provides a better software
interoperability by setting standard syntax for boot and runtime services. For more information on
UEFI, visit https://www.uefi.org.

The following operating systems support UEFI technology:

l Windows 8 (x86) and later x86 editions of Windows.

l Windows Vista SP1 (x64) and later x64 editions of Windows.

Why UEFI?
l Compatibility with BIOS - UEFI-based systems still can boot BIOS-based operating systems due
to a Compatibility Support Module (CSM).
l Booting from large disks - UEFI-based systems support a GPT partitions layout that allows a
disk size larger than 2^32 sectors.
l CPU-independent architecture - UEFI is similar for all processor architectures.
l CPU-independent drivers - UEFI specification includes an EFI Byte Code (EBC) and allows
creating EBC images (drivers), that can be run on any system.
l Flexible pre-OS environment - UEFI-based systems can boot on any hardware.
l Modular design - UEFI allows updating its single component while not affecting the others.

Note
Since UEFI is a new technology, not all systems support working with it. Please, apply to your
hardware manufacturer to find out, whether your computer supports UEFI.

How to enable UEFI in BIOS?

Below a typical approach to turn on/off UEFI in BIOS is described:

1. Enter a BIOS setup program by pressing a key, mentioned in a message on the screen, during
boot-up. Usually this key is [Del] or [F2].
2. Invoke a Boot Options menu using arrow keys.
3. Enter UEFI Booting item and select Enable (or Disable if you need to turn OFF UEFI in your
system).
4. Navigate to Save & Exit Setup and press Enter to save changes and boot the system.

If you need assistance with turning UEFI on, contact your hardware manufacturer.

113 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

How to migrate an original system to a larger hard drive?
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office now allows migrating or restoring systems from a previously
created archive, to hard drives larger than 2^32 bytes (2 TB for disks with standard 512-bytes sized
logical sector or 16 TB for disks with 4 KB (4096-bytes) sized logical sector).

You can do it using Acronis media or booting to UEFI-based operating systems with Acronis Cyber
Protect Home Office installed:

To migrate a system using Acronis Media

1. Boot your system from an Acronis media.

2. Select Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office (Full version) in the boot menu to continue booting
from the media.
3. Navigate to the required wizard (Restore or Clone) and follow instructions.

To migrate a system in UEFI-based operating system

1. Boot to an UEFI-capable Windows operating system.

2. Run Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, go to the Backup and recovery tab, click Recover on
the toolbar and follow instructions.

Partition layouts
A partition layout defines how an operating system organizes partitions on a hard drive:

l MBR (Master Boot Record) - a 512-byte boot sector, which is the first sector of a hard disk, used
to hold a disk's primary partition table.
MBR is a standard partition scheme and is used on most of the hard drives. The main MBR
limitation is that it supports hard disk's size up to 2 TB only, that makes it impossible to use
modern large size hard drives - the space beyond 2 TB remains inaccessible for the users.
l GPT (GUID Partition Table) - a newer standard for a partition table layout for hard disks.
GPT allows disks/partitions size up to 9.4 ZB (9.4 x 10^21 bytes).
A table below displays which operating systems support reading GPT disks and/or booting from
such a disk:

OS can read GPT disks OS can boot from GPT disks

Windows XP x32 NO NO

Windows XP x64 YES NO

Windows Vista x32 YES NO

Windows Vista x64 YES NO

Windows Vista x64 SP1 or later YES YES

Windows 7 x32 YES NO

114 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Windows 7 x64 YES YES

Windows 8 x32 YES YES

Windows 8 x64 YES YES

Windows 8.1 x32 YES YES

Windows 8.1 x64 YES YES

Windows 10 x32 YES YES

Windows 10 x64 YES YES

Windows 11 YES YES

Table 1. Destination disk is larger than 2 TB

A table below displays the available options if you want to migrate a source disk to a large size
(more than 2 TB) hard disk.

If your source disk is MBR, you have to select whether you want the destination disk to remain MBR,
or you want to convert it to GPT using Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

Each selection has its own advantages and limitations depending on your system parameters.
Mostly it concerns the destination disk's bootability and capability of using the entire space on large
disks.

My system is BIOS-booted (Windows My system is UEFI-booted (Windows or

or Acronis bootable media) Acronis bootable media)

My source The partition style will remain MBR after You can select one of the required migration
disk is MBR cloning, Acronis Bus driver will be methods:
and my OS installed to the cloned operating system.
l Copy a source partition without changes
does not Also, you will not be able to use the disk
support space beyond 2 TB since MBR does not The partition style will remain MBR, but on
UEFI support hard drives larger than 2 TB. To operation completion, the operating system
use the entire disk space, you need to will not boot from UEFI. Acronis Bus driver will
change a partition style to GPT or restart be installed to the cloned operating system.
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office after Also, you will not be able to use the disk space
operation completion and use Acronis beyond 2 TB since MBR does not support hard
Extended Capacity Manager to make disk drives larger than 2 TB. To use the entire disk
space beyond 2 TB visible for Add New space, you need to change a partition style to
Disk tool. GPT or restart Acronis Cyber Protect Home
Office after operation completion and use
Acronis Extended Capacity Manager to make
disk space beyond 2 TB visible for Add New
Disk tool.

l Convert the partition style to GPT

115 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 The destination partition will be converted to
GPT style. It can be used as a non-system disk,
because your operating system does not
support UEFI. The entire disk space will be
available.

My source The partition style will remain MBR after A partition style on your destination disk will be
disk is MBR migration. Acronis Bus driver will be converted to GPT automatically. This disk may
and my OS installed to the cloned operating system. be used for booting in UEFI. Also, the entire
supports You will not be able to use the disk space disk space will be available.
UEFI beyond 2 TB since MBR does not support
hard drives larger than 2 TB. To use the
entire disk space, you need to change a
partition style to GPT or restart Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office after
operation completion and use Acronis
Extended Capacity Manager to make disk
space beyond 2 TB visible for Add New
Disk tool.

My source You can select one of the required You can select one of the required migration
disk is MBR migration methods: methods:
and OS is
l Copy a source partition without l Copy a source partition without changes
non-
changes
Windows, The partition style will remain MBR, but you
or no OS The partition style will remain MBR, but will not be able to use the disk space beyond 2
you will not be able to use the disk space TB since MBR does not support hard drives
beyond 2 TB since MBR does not support larger than 2 TB. To use the entire disk space,
hard drives larger than 2 TB. To use the you need to change a partition style to GPT or
entire disk space, you need to change a restart Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office after
partition style to GPT or restart Acronis operation completion and use Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office after Extended Capacity Manager to make disk
operation completion and use Acronis space beyond 2 TB visible for Add New Disk
Extended Capacity Manager to make disk tool.
space beyond 2 TB visible for Add New
l Convert the partition style to GPT
Disk tool.
The destination partition will be converted to
l Convert the partition style to GPT
GPT style. The destination disk cannot be used
On operation completion, partition style for booting, since no Windows operating
will be converted to GPT. The destination system is installed on your source disk. Also,
disk cannot be used for booting, since no the entire disk space will be available.
Windows operating system is installed on
your source disk. The entire disk space
will be available.

My source The partition style will remain GPT after The operation will not affect neither partition
disk is GPT migration. After operation completion, layout nor bootability of the disk: partition
and my OS the system will fail booting from BIOS, style will remain GPT, the destination disk will

116 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 supports because your operating system cannot be bootable in UEFI. The entire disk space will
UEFI support booting from GPT on BIOS. The be available.
entire disk space will be available.

My source The operation will not affect neither The operation will not affect neither partition
disk is GPT partition layout nor bootability of the layout nor bootability of the disk: partition
and OS is disk: partition style will remain GPT, the style will remain GPT, the destination disk will
non- destination disk will not be bootable. The not be bootable in UEFI. The entire disk space
Windows, entire disk space will be available. will be available.
or no OS

Table 2. Destination disk is less than 2 TB

A table below displays the available option if you want to migrate a source disk to a hard disk less
than 2 TB.

If your source disk is MBR, you have to select whether you want the destination disk to remain MBR,
or you want to convert it to GPT using Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

Each selection has its own advantages and limitations depending on your system parameters.
Mostly it concerns a destination disk's bootability.

My system is BIOS-booted (Windows or My system is UEFI-booted (Windows

Acronis bootable media) or Acronis bootable media)

My source The operation will not affect neither partition After operation completion, the
disk is MBR layout nor bootability of the disk: partition style partition style will remain MBR, but the
and my OS will remain MBR, the destination disk will be operating system will fail booting from
does not bootable in BIOS. The entire disk space will be UEFI, since your operating system does
support UEFI available. not support it.

My source The operation will not affect neither partition The destination partition will be
disk is MBR layout nor bootability of the disk: partition style converted to GPT style that will make
and my OS will remain MBR, the destination disk will be the destination disk bootable in UEFI.
supports bootable in BIOS. The entire disk space will be The entire disk space will be available.
UEFI available.

My source You can select one of the required migration You can select one of the required
disk is MBR methods: migration methods:
and OS is
l Copy a source partition without changes l Copy a source partition without
non-
changes
Windows, or The partition style will remain MBR. The
no OS destination disk will not be bootable, because The partition style will remain MBR. The
there is no Windows operating system destination disk will not be bootable,
detected in your system. because there is no Windows operating
system detected in your system.
l Convert the partition style to GPT
l Convert the partition style to GPT
The destination disk will be converted to GPT
style and used as a non-system disk, because The destination partition will be

117 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 your operating system does not support converted to GPT style and used as a
booting from GPT on BIOS. non-system disk, because there is no
Windows operating system detected in
your system.

My source After operation completion, the partition style After operation completion, the
disk is GPT will remain GPT, the system will fail booting on partition style will remain GPT, the
and my OS BIOS, because your operating system cannot operating system will be bootable on
supports support booting from GPT on BIOS. UEFI.
UEFI

My source After operation completion, the partition style After operation completion, the
disk is GPT will remain GPT, the system will fail booting partition style will remain GPT, the
and OS is from BIOS, because your operating system system will fail booting, because there
non- does not support booting from GPT on BIOS. is no Windows operating system
Windows, or detected in your system.
no OS

Migration method
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office allows you to select a partition layout for a target disk after
recovery operation completion:

l MBR (Master Boot Sector) - a 512-byte boot sector, which is the first sector of a hard disk, used
to hold a disk's primary partition table.
l GPT (GUID Partition Table) - a standard for a partition table layout for hard disks. GPT allows
disks/partitions size up to 9.4 ZB (9.4 x 10^21 bytes).

Using this wizard you may convert your partitions layout while recovering or recover them as is, not
changing the layout.

l Copy partitions without changes - select this option to migrate your system as is, not changing
the partition layout. Note, in this case the disk space in excess of 2TB will be inaccessible. To
allocate the disk space beyond 2TB, you may use Acronis Extended Capacity Manager.
l Copy partitions and use a disk as non-system, GPT style - select this option to convert your
partition to a GPT layout.

With Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office you also can convert BIOS to UEFI systems.

BIOS-booted system, MBR, UEFI not supported

In this step of the wizard, you need to select the destination hard disk.

Currently your system contains:

System: BIOS-booted

Source partition style: MBR

Operating system on the source disk: Windows, booting in UEFI is not supported

118 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Destination disk size: less than 2 TB

If you migrate the system to the selected disk:

System: BIOS-booted

Partition style: MBR

Operating system: Windows, booting in UEFI is not supported

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

You can find more information about the migration procedure in Migration method section.

BIOS-booted system, MBR, UEFI supported

In this step of the wizard, you need to select the destination hard disk.

Currently your system contains:

System: BIOS-booted

Source partition style: MBR

Operating system on the source disk: Windows, booting in UEFI is supported

Destination disk size: less than 2 TB

If you migrate the system to the selected disk:

System: BIOS-booted

Partition style: MBR

Operating system: Windows, booting in UEFI is supported

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

You can find more information about the migration procedure in Migration method section.

BIOS-booted system, MBR, no Windows

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office allows you to select a partition layout for a destination disk after
the operation completion.

Currently your system contains:

System: BIOS-booted

Source partition style: MBR

Operating system on the source disk: non-Windows or no OS

Destination disk size: less than 2 TB

With these system parameters, you can select one of the following:
1. Copy partitions without changes

119 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

You may leave MBR partition style on the destination disk.

Destination disk after migration:

System: BIOS-booted

Partition style: MBR

Operating system: non-Windows or no OS

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

2. Copy partitions and use a disk as non-system, GPT style

You may convert the partition style to GPT.

Destination disk after migration:

System: not bootable in BIOS

Partition style: GPT

Operating system: non-Windows or no OS

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

Warning!
After migration, the destination disk can be used only as non-system. This option is not available if
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office is run in Windows XP x32 operating system.
You can find more information about the migration procedure in Migration method section.

BIOS-booted system, GPT, UEFI supported

In this step of the wizard, you need to select the destination hard disk.

Currently your system contains:

System: BIOS-booted

Source partition style: GPT

Operating system on the source disk: Windows, booting in UEFI is supported

If you migrate the system to the selected disk:

System: not bootable in BIOS

Partition style: GPT

Operating system: Windows, booting in UEFI is supported

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

120 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Warning!
After migration, the operating system will not be able to boot from the destination disk in BIOS. If
you want to boot from the destination disk after migration, you need to enable UEFI booting in your
system (see Unified Extensible Firmware Interface section), and then restart the operation.
You can find more information about the migration procedure in Migration method section.

BIOS-booted system, GPT, no Windows

In this step of the wizard, you need to select the destination hard disk.

Currently your system contains:

System: BIOS-booted

Source partition style: GPT

Operating system on the source disk: non-Windows or no OS

If you migrate the system to the selected disk:

System: BIOS-booted

Partition style: GPT

Operating system: non-Windows or no OS

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

You can find more information about the migration procedure in Migration method section.

UEFI-booted system, MBR, UEFI not supported

In this step of the wizard, you need to select the destination hard disk.

Currently your system contains:

System: UEFI-booted

Source partition style: MBR

Operating system on the source disk: Windows, booting in UEFI is not supported

Destination disk size: less than 2 TB

If you migrate the system to the selected disk:

System: not bootable in UEFI

Partition style: MBR

Operating system: Windows, booting in UEFI is not supported

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

121 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Warning!
The operating system may fail booting in UEFI from the destination disk.
You can find more information about the migration procedure in Migration method section.

UEFI-booted system, MBR, UEFI supported

In this step of the wizard, you need to select the destination hard disk.

Currently your system contains:

System: UEFI-booted

Source partition style: MBR

Operating system on the source disk: Windows, booting in UEFI is supported

If you migrate the system to the selected disk:

After migration, the destination partition style will be converted to GPT and you will be able
to boot from it.

Destination disk after migration:

System: UEFI-booted

Partition style: GPT

Operating system: Windows, booting in UEFI is supported

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

You can find more information about the migration procedure in Migration method section.

UEFI-booted system, MBR, no Windows

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office allows you to select a partition layout for a destination disk after
the operation completion.

Currently your system contains:

System: UEFI-booted

Source partition style: MBR

Operating system on the source disk: non-Windows or no OS

Destination disk size: less than 2 TB

With these system parameters, you can select one of the following:
1. Copy partitions without changes

You may leave MBR partition style on the destination disk.

Destination disk after migration:

122 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 System: UEFI-booted

Partition style: MBR

Operating system: non-Windows or no OS

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

2. Copy partitions and use a disk as non-system, GPT style

You may convert the partition style to GPT.

Destination disk after migration:

System: not bootable in UEFI

Partition style: GPT

Operating system: non-Windows or no OS

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

Warning!
After migration, the destination disk can be used only as non-system.
You can find more information about the migration procedure in Migration method section.

UEFI-booted system, GPT, UEFI supported

In this step of the wizard, you need to select the destination hard disk.

Currently your system contains:

System: UEFI-booted

Source partition style: GPT

Operating system: Windows, booting in UEFI is supported

If you migrate the system to the selected disk:

System: UEFI-booted

Partition style: GPT

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

You can find more information about the migration procedure in Migration method section.

UEFI-booted system, GPT, no Windows

In this step of the wizard, you need to select the destination hard disk.

Currently your system contains:

System: UEFI-booted

Source partition style: GPT

123 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Operating system: non-Windows or no OS

If you migrate the system to the selected disk:

System: UEFI-booted

Partition style: GPT

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

You can find more information about the migration procedure in Migration method section.

About recovery of dynamic/GPT disks and volumes

Recovery of dynamic volumes

You can recover dynamic volumes to the following locations on the local hard drives:

l Dynamic volume.

Note
Manual resizing of dynamic volumes during recovery to dynamic disks is not supported. If you
need to resize a dynamic volume during recovery, it should be recovered to a basic disk.

o Original location (to the same dynamic volume).

The target volume type does not change.
o Another dynamic disk or volume.
The target volume type does not change. For example, when recovering a dynamic striped
volume over a dynamic spanned volume the target volume remains spanned.
o Unallocated space of the dynamic group.
The recovered volume type will be the same as it was in the backup.
l Basic volume or disk.
The target volume remains basic.
l Bare-metal recovery.
When performing a so called "bare-metal recovery" of dynamic volumes to a new unformatted
disk, the recovered volumes become basic. If you want the recovered volumes to remain
dynamic, the target disks should be prepared as dynamic (partitioned and formatted). This can be
done using third-party tools, for example, Windows Disk Management snap-in.

Recovery of basic volumes and disks

l When recovering a basic volume to an unallocated space of the dynamic group, the recovered
volume becomes dynamic.
l When recovering a basic disk to a dynamic disk of a dynamic group consisting of two disks, the
recovered disk remains basic. The dynamic disk to which the recovery is performed becomes
"missing" and a spanned/striped dynamic volume on the second disk becomes "failed".

124 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Partition style after recovery
The target disk's partition style depends on whether your computer supports UEFI and on whether
your system is BIOS-booted or UEFI-booted. See the following table:

My system is BIOS-booted (Windows or My system is UEFI-booted (Windows or

Acronis bootable media) Acronis bootable media)

My source The operation will not affect neither After operation completion, the partition
disk is MBR partition layout nor bootability of the disk: style will be converted to GPT style, but the
and my OS partition style will remain MBR, the operating system will fail booting from UEFI,
does not destination disk will be bootable in BIOS. since your operating system does not
support UEFI support it.

My source The operation will not affect neither The destination partition will be converted
disk is MBR partition layout nor bootability of the disk: to GPT style that will make the destination
and my OS partition style will remain MBR, the disk bootable in UEFI. See Example of
supports destination disk will be bootable in BIOS. recovery to UEFI system.
UEFI

My source After operation completion, the partition After operation completion, the partition
disk is GPT style will remain GPT, the system will fail style will remain GPT, the operating system
and my OS booting on BIOS, because your operating will be bootable on UEFI.
supports system cannot support booting from GPT
UEFI on BIOS.

Example of recovery to a UEFI system

Here is an example for transferring a system with the following conditions:

l The source disk is MBR and the OS supports UEFI.

l The target system is UEFI-booted.
l Your old and new hard drives work in the same controller mode (for example, IDE or AHCI).

Before you start the procedure, ensure that you have:

l Acronis bootable media.

Refer to Creating Acronis bootable media for details.
l Backup of your system disk created in disk mode.
To create this backup, switch to disk mode, and then select the hard drive that contains your
system partition. Refer to Backing up disks and partitions for details.

125 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

To transfer your system from an MBR disk to a UEFI-booted computer

1. Boot from the Acronis bootable media in UEFI mode and select Acronis Cyber Protect Home
Office.
2. Run the Recovery wizard and follow the instructions described in Recovering your system.
3. On the What to recover step, select the check box next to the disk name to select the entire
system disk.
In the example below, you need to select the Disk 1 check box:

4. On the Finish step, click Proceed.

When the operation finishes, the destination disk is converted to GPT style so that it is bootable in
UEFI.

126 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

After the recovery, ensure that you boot your computer in UEFI mode. You may need to change the
boot mode of your system disk in the user interface of the UEFI boot manager.

Arranging boot order in BIOS or UEFI BIOS

To boot your computer from Acronis bootable media, you need to arrange boot order so the media
is the first booting device. The boot order is changed in BIOS or UEFI BIOS, depending on your
computer firmware interface. The procedure in both cases is very similar.

To boot from Acronis bootable media

1. If you use a USB flash drive or external drive as a bootable media, plug it into the USB port.
2. Turn your computer on. During the Power-On Self Test (POST), you will see the key combination
that you need to press in order to enter BIOS or UEFI BIOS.
3. Press the key combination (such as, Del, F1, Ctrl+Alt+Esc, Ctrl+Esc). The BIOS or UEFI BIOS
setup utility will open. Note that utilities may differ in appearance, sets of items, names, etc.

Note
Some motherboards have a so-called boot menu opened by pressing a certain key or key
combination, for instance, F12. The boot menu allows selecting the boot device from a list of
bootable devices without changing the BIOS or UEFI BIOS setup.

4. If you use a CD or DVD as a bootable media, insert it in the CD or DVD drive.

5. Make your bootable media (CD, DVD or USB drive) device the first booting device:
a. Navigate to the Boot order setting by using the arrow keys on your keyboard.
b. Place the pointer on the device of your bootable media and make it the first item in the list.

127 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 You can usually use the Plus Sign and the Minus Sign keys to change the order.

6. Exit BIOS or UEFI BIOS and save the changes that you made. The computer will boot from
Acronis bootable media.

Note
If the computer fails to boot from the first device, it tries to boot from the second device in the list,
and so on.

Disk recovery from Cloud

Disk recovery from Acronis Cloud is very similar to the recovery from an ordinary hard disk drive.

l When you can start Windows and Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, refer to Recovering
partitions and disks.
l When Windows cannot start, refer to Recovering your system from Acronis Cloud.

How it works
Your computer should be connected to the Internet either by an Ethernet cable or via Wi-Fi. Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office supports several wireless security protocols, including WPA-Personal,
WPA2-Personal, and WPA2-Enterprise.

Recovery to the original location

128 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

When you recover a disk to the original location, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office does not
download the entire disk space to your computer. Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office scans your
disk searching for data changes and recovers only those files that are different from files in the
image. This technology significantly reduces the amount of data you need to download in order to
recover your disk.

Recovery to a new location

When you recover a disk to a different location or to an unallocated space, the process is very
similar to a recovery from a local storage. The only difference is in the data writing method. Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office downloads and writes data by separate blocks, and not continuously.
This technology increases recovery speed and reliability of the entire process.

What if recovery has been interrupted

Since disk recovery from Acronis Cloud uses an Internet connection and usually takes a long time,
the probability of the recovery interruption is higher comparing to recovery from an ordinary hard
disk.

Possible reasons of recovery interruption:

l Internet connection has been lost.

l Connection to Acronis Cloud has been lost.
l You canceled the recovery, deliberately or accidentally.
l Electricity supply problem.

When recovery is not complete due to a connection problem, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office
automatically tries to reconnect to Acronis Cloud and resume the recovery process. It is
recommended that you check your Internet connection settings in this case. If all the automatic
attempts fail, run the recovery again manually when connection is restored.

In other cases run recovery again manually and make sure the recovery is complete.

Regardless of an interruption reason, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office does not start recovery
from the very beginning. Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office resumes the process and downloads
only the data that was not recovered.

Recovering your system from Acronis Cloud

Note
Depending on your Internet connection speed, disk recovery from Acronis Cloud may take a long
time.

Before you start, we recommend that you complete the preparations described in Preparing for
recovery. If you recover your system to a new disk, you do not need to format the new disk, as this
will be done in the process of recovery.

129 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Before starting this procedure, make sure that your computer is connected to the Internet by an
Ethernet cable or over Wi-Fi.

To recover a system disk from Acronis Cloud

1. Arrange the boot order in BIOS so as to make your Acronis bootable media (CD, DVD or USB
stick) the first boot device. See Arranging boot order in BIOS.
2. Boot from the bootable media and select Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.
3. On the Home screen, select My disks below Recover.

4. To add the online backup of the system disk or system partition to the list of available backups,
click Browse.
5. In the directory tree of the opened window, select Acronis Cloud and enter credentials of your
Acronis account.

130 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

6. Select the backup you want to use for recovery, and click OK.
7. On the Archive selection step, select the online backup and click Next.

131 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

8. On the Recovery method step, select Recover whole disks and partitions.
9. On the What to recover step, select the system partition (usually C) and the System Reserved
partition (if any). You can also recognize these partitions by the Pri, Act flags.

132 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

10. On the Settings of partition C (or the letter of the system partition, if it is different) step, change
the settings, if necessary. For example, you need to change settings when recovering to the new
hard disk of a different capacity.
11. Carefully read the summary of operations at the Finish step. If you have not resized the
partition, the sizes in the Deleting partition and Recovering partition items must match. Click
Proceed.
12. When recovery is complete, exit the standalone version of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office,
remove the bootable media. Boot from the recovered system partition. After you check that you
have recovered Windows to the state you need, restore the original boot order.

Recovering files and folders

You can browse and recover backed-up files and folders in Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, in
File Explorer, or in Acronis Cloud. You can recover files and folders both from file-level and disk-level
backups.

To recover data in Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office

133 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

1. On the sidebar, click Backup.
2. From the backup list, select the backup which contains the files or folders that you want to
recover, and then open the Recovery tab.
3. [Optional] On the toolbar, in the Version drop-down list, select the required date and time of the
backup. By default, the latest backup is recovered.
4. Select the check box for the corresponding files or folders that you want to recover, and click
Next.

5. [Optional] By default, the data is restored in the original location. To change it, click Browse on
the toolbar, and then select the required destination folder.
6. [Optional] Set the options for the recovery process (recovery process priority, file-level security
settings, etc.). To set the options, click Recovery options. The options you set here will be
applied only to the current recovery operation.
7. To start the recovery process, click the Recover now button.
The selected file version is downloaded to the specified destination.
You can stop the recovery by clicking Cancel. Keep in mind that the aborted recovery may still
cause changes in the destination folder.

To recover data in File Explorer

1. Double-click the corresponding .tibx file, and then browse to the file or folder that you want to
recover.
2. Copy the file or folder to a hard disk.

134 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Note
The copied files lose the "Compressed" and "Encrypted" attribute. If you need to keep these
attributes, it is recommended to recover the backup.

To recover data in Acronis Cloud

1. On left sidebar, click BACKUPS.

2. From the backups list, select the backup which contains the data that you want to recover.
3. Select the backup version containing the required data. To do this, see the date of the last
backup operation.
4. From the list of files and folders, select the ones that you want to recover.
5. [Optional] You can recover a specific version of a file (not a folder). To do this, click Versions on
the right sidebar, and then click the download icon on the required version line.
6. To start the recovery, click DOWNLOAD on the right sidebar.
The selected data will be copied to the default downloads folder.

Note
If you selected several files and folders, they will be placed into a zip archive.

Searching backup content

While recovering data from local backups, you can search for specific files and folders stored in the
selected backup.

To search for files and folders

1. Start recovering data as described in Recovering partitions and disks or Recovering files and
folders.
2. When selecting files and folders to recover, enter the file or folder name into the Search field.
The program shows search results.
You can also use the common Windows wildcard characters: * and ?. For example, to find all files
with extension .exe, enter *.exe. To find all .exe files with names consisting of five symbols and
starting with “my”, enter My???.exe.

135 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

3. By default, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office searches the folder selected on the previous step.
To include the entire backup in the search, click the down arrow, and then click in entire
backup.
To return to the previous step, delete the search text, and then click the cross icon.
4. After the search is complete, select the files that you want to recover, and then click Next.

Note
Pay attention to the Version column. The files and folders that belong to different backup
versions cannot be recovered at the same time.

Recovering Office 365 data

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office allows you to protect your personal Office 365 account from
losing your e-mail messages, files and folders, profile information, and other data. When you have a
cloud backup of your account data, you can browse it and recover specific items.

What items can be recovered?

The following items can be recovered from a mailbox backup:

l Entire mailbox
l E-mail messages
l Attachments

The following items can be recovered from a OneDrive backup:

136 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l Entire OneDrive
l Any files and folders that were backed up

Recovering Office 365 data

To browse and recover your data

1. Open Online Dashboard by doing one of the following:

l Follow the link: https://cloud.acronis.com.
l On the sidebar of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, click Account, and then click Open
Online Dashboard.
2. Sign in to your Acronis account.
3. On the sidebar, click Resources, find the Office 365 backup box, and then click Recover.
4. Browse a list of your backups. If needed, use the filter to find a backup by content.
5. After selecting a backup, click Recover..., and choose the data that you want to restore:
l Entire OneDrive or specific files and folders.
l Entire mailbox or specific messages.
When you choose to recover specific items, the Online Dashboard opens the list of the backed-
up items. You can browse them, view their contents, and use search to find a specific item (not
available for some data types).
After selecting items, you can choose an operation to perform (depending on data type, some
operations may be unavailable):
l Show content—click to view the item details or open it in full size.
l Send as email—click to send the message to selected recipients.
l Show versions—click to view the versions of the item.
l Recover—click to specify a location for the items that you recover. You can also recover
sharing permissions for some items.
l Download—click to download the selected file.
6. Click Start recovery.

Recovery options
You can configure options for the disk/partition and file recovery processes. After you installed the
application, all options are set to the initial values. You can change them for your current recovery
operation only or for all further recovery operations as well. Select the Save the settings as
default check box to apply the modified settings to all further recovery operations by default.

Note, that disk recovery options and file recovery options are fully independent, and you should
configure them separately.

If you want to reset all the modified options to their initial values that were set after the product
installation, click the Reset to initial settings button.

137 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Disk recovery mode
Location: Recovery options > Advanced > Disk recovery mode

With this option you can select the disk recovery mode for image backups.

l Recover sector-by-sector - select this check box if you want to recover both used and unused
sectors of disks or partitions. This option will be effective only when you choose to recover a
sector-by-sector backup.

Pre/Post commands for recovery

Location: Recovery options > Advanced > Pre/Post commands

You can specify commands (or even batch files) that will be automatically executed before and after
the recovery procedure.

For example, you may want to start/stop certain Windows processes, or check your data for viruses
before recovery.

To specify commands (batch files):

l Select a command to be executed before the recovery process starts in the Pre-command field.
To create a new command or select a new batch file, click the Edit button.
l Select a command to be executed after the recovery process ends in the Post-command field. To
create a new command or select a new batch file, click the Edit button.

Please do not try to execute interactive commands, i.e. commands that require user input (for
example, "pause"). These are not supported.

Edit user command for recovery

You can specify user commands to be executed before or after recovery:

l In the Command field type-in a command or select it from the list. Click ... to select a batch file.
l In the Working directory field type-in a path for command execution or select it from the list of
previously entered paths.
l In the Arguments field enter or select command execution arguments from the list.

Disabling the Do not perform operations until the command execution is complete parameter
(enabled by default), will permit the recovery process to run concurrently with your command
execution.

The Abort the operation if the user command fails (enabled by default) parameter will abort the
operation if any errors occur in command execution.

You can test the command you entered by clicking the Test command button.

138 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Validation option
Location: Recovery options > Advanced > Validation

l Validate backup before recovery—Enable this option to check the backup integrity before
recovery.
l Check the file system after recovery—Enable this option to check the file system integrity on
the recovered partition.

Note
Only FAT16/32 and NTFS file systems can be checked.

Note
The file system will not be checked if a reboot is required during recovery, for example, when
recovering the system partition to its original place.

Computer restart
Location: Recovery options > Advanced > Computer restart

If you want the computer to reboot automatically when it is required for recovery, select the Restart
the computer automatically if needed for the recovery check box. This may be used when a
partition locked by the operating system has to be recovered.

File recovery options

Location: Recovery options > Advanced > File recovery options

You can select the following file recovery options:

l Recover files with their original security settings - if the file security settings were preserved
during backup (see File-level security settings for backup), you can choose whether to recover
them or let the files inherit the security settings of the folder where they will be recovered to. This
option is effective only when recovering files from file/folder backups.
l Set current date and time for recovered files - you can choose whether to recover the file
date and time from the backup or assign the files the current date and time. By default the file
date and time from the backup will be assigned.

Overwrite file options

Location: Recovery options > Advanced > Overwrite file options

Choose what to do if the program finds a file in the target folder with the same name as in the
backup.

139 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Note
This option is available only while restoring files and folders (not disks and partitions).

Select the Overwrite existing files check box if you want to overwrite the files on the hard disk
with the files from the backup. If the check box is cleared, the more recent files and folders will be
kept on the disk.

If you do not need to overwrite some files:

l Select the Hidden files and folders check box to turn off overwriting of all hidden files and
folders. This option is available for file-level backups to local destinations and network shares.
l Select the System files and folders check box to turn off overwriting of all system files and
folders. This option is available for file-level backups to local destinations and network shares.
l Select the More recent files and folders check box to turn off overwriting of new files and
folders.
l Click Add specific files and folders to manage the list of custom files and folders that you do
not want to overwrite. This option is available for file-level backups to local destinations and
network shares.
o To turn off overwriting of specific files, click the plus sign to create an exclusion criterion.
o While specifying the criteria, you can use the common Windows wildcard characters. For
example, to preserve all files with extension .exe, you can add *.exe. Adding My???.exe will
preserve all .exe files with names consisting of five symbols and starting with “my”.

To delete a criterion, select it in the list, and then click the minus sign.

Performance of recovery operation

Location: Recovery options > Advanced > Performance

You can configure the following settings:

Operation priority
Changing the priority of a backup or recovery process can make it run faster or slower (depending
on whether you raise or lower the priority), but it can also adversely affect the performance of other
running programs. The priority of any process running in a system, determines the amount of CPU
usage and system resources allocated to that process. Decreasing the operation priority will free
more resources for other CPU tasks. Increasing backup or recovery priority may speed up the
process by taking resources from the other currently running processes. The effect will depend on
total CPU usage and other factors.

You can set up the operation priority:

l Low (enabled by default)—The backup or recovery process will run slower, but the performance
of other programs will be increased.
l Normal—The backup or recovery process will have the equal priority with other processes.

140 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l High—The backup or recovery process will run faster, but the performance of other programs
will be reduced. Be aware that selecting this option may result in 100% CPU usage by Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office.

Notifications for recovery operation

Location: Recovery options > Notifications

Sometimes a backup or recovery procedure can last an hour or longer. Acronis Cyber Protect Home
Office can notify you when it is finished via e-mail. The program can also duplicate messages issued
during the operation or send you the full operation log after operation completion.

By default all notifications are disabled.

Free disk space threshold

You may want to be notified when the free space on the recovery storage becomes less than the
specified threshold value. If after starting a backup Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office finds out that
the free space in the selected backup location is already less than the specified value, the program
will not begin the actual recovery process and will immediately inform you by displaying an
appropriate message. The message offers you three choices - to ignore it and proceed with the
recovery, to browse for another location for the recovery or to cancel the recovery.

If the free space becomes less than the specified value while the recovery is being run, the program
will display the same message and you will have to make the same decisions.

To set the free disk space threshold

l Select the Show notification message on insufficient free disk space check box.
l In the Size box, type or select a threshold value and select a unit of measure.

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office can monitor free space on the following storage devices:

l Local hard drives

l USB cards and drives
l Network shares (SMB)

Note
The message will not be displayed if the Do not show messages and dialogs while processing
(silent mode) check box is selected in the Error handling settings.

Note
This option cannot be enabled for CD/DVD drives.

Email notification
1. Select the Send e-mail notifications about the operation state check box.
2. Configure email settings:

141 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 l Enter the email address in the To field. You can enter several email addresses in a semicolon-
delimited format.
l Enter the outgoing mail server (SMTP) in the Server settings field.
l Set the port of the outgoing mail server. By default the port is set to 25.
l If required, select the SMTP authentication check box, and then enter the user name and
password in the corresponding fields.
3. To check whether your settings are correct, click the Send test message button.

If the test message sending fails

1. Click Show extended settings.

2. Configure additional email settings:
l Enter the e-mail sender address in the From field. If you are not sure what address to specify,
then type any address you like in a standard format, for example aaa@bbb.com.
l Change the message subject in the Subject field, if necessary.
l Select the Log on to incoming mail server check box.
l Enter the incoming mail server (POP3) in the POP3 server field.
l Set the port of the incoming mail server. By default the port is set to 110.
3. Click the Send test message button again.

Additional notification settings

l To send a notification concerning process completion, select the Send notification upon
operation's successful completion check box.
l To send a notification concerning process failure, select the Send notification upon operation
failure check box.
l To send a notification with operation messages, select the Send notification when user
interaction is required check box.
l To send a notification with full log of operations, select the Add full log to the notification
check box.

142 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Archiving data

What is data archiving?

Data archiving is a tool that allows you to move your big or rarely used files to Acronis Cloud, NAS,
an external hard drive, or a USB flash drive. Every time you run this tool, it analyzes the data in the
selected folder and suggests uploading the found files to Acronis Cloud or moving them to local
storage. You can select the files and folders that you want to archive. After moving to an archive, the
local copies of these files will be deleted. The links to the files are stored in a special location called
Acronis Drive. You can access the location as an ordinary folder in File Explorer. Double-clicking a file
link will open the file as if it was stored in the local folder. If the file is archived to Acronis Cloud, it
will be downloaded back to your computer, first. You can also access and manage it right in Acronis
Cloud.

Data archiving has the following main features:

l Free storage space saving

As a rule, storage space of modern high-capacity hard drives is mostly occupied by user data,
such as photographs and documents, and not by the operating system or applications. Since
most of the data is used occasionally, there is no need to keep them on a local drive. Data
archiving helps you free up storage space for frequently used files.
l Cloud archiving and local archiving
You can choose a destination type for your archive: Acronis Cloud or local storage, such as an
internal hard drive, external hard drive, NAS, or a USB flash drive. Every time you choose Acronis
Cloud as a destination, the selected data is stored in the same cloud archive. Local archives are
independent from each other and may have different names, destinations, encryption settings,
and so on, though you can select an existing archive as a destination instead of creating a new
one. The number of local archives is not limited.
l Easy access of cloud archive from any device
When you archive your files to Acronis Cloud, you can access them with Acronis Cyber Protect
Home Office, the Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office mobile application, and the Acronis Cloud
web application from any device running Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android, including tablets
and smartphones.
l Data protection in the cloud archive
Your data stored in Acronis Cloud is protected from corruption or disaster. For example, in case
of your local hard drive failure, you can download your files to your new hard drive. Moreover,
your data is stored in encrypted state. You can be sure that no one except you can access your
data.
l File sharing
When your files are uploaded to Acronis Cloud, you can create public links to share the files with
your friends or to post them to forums and social networks.
l File versions

143 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 For the files that have been changed and uploaded to Acronis Cloud several times, Acronis Cyber
Protect Home Office keeps all the modifications in different file versions. You can choose a
previous file version and download it to your device.

What is excluded from archives?

To reduce archive size and eliminate a possibility to corrupt your system, by default Acronis Cyber
Protect Home Office excludes the following data from archives:

l pagefile.sys
l swapfile.sys
l The Temp folder
l The System Volume Information folder
l The Recycle Bin
l Web browser temporary data:
o Temporary Internet files
o Cache
l .tibx files
l .tib.metadata files
l .tmp files
l .~ files

See the full file list in the Knowledge Base article: https://kb.acronis.com/content/58297.

Cloud archiving vs. Online backup

When you archive your data to Acronis Cloud, it is similar to an online backup, but there are a
number of differences.

Online backup Cloud archiving

Feature Data protection from operating Cleanup of local storage device and moving data to
purpose system corruption, hardware Acronis Cloud.
failures, and loss of separate files.

Data l Overall protection of all data on Protection of rarely used and old files, mostly your
protection a computer, especially an personal documents, photographs, and so on.
operating system.
l Protection of frequently used
files.

Source data Manual selection. Manual selection of automatically found files.

selection

Source data The source data is kept in the The source data is deleted from the original location.
handling original location. This gives you a guarantee that your data will not get

144 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Online backup Cloud archiving

into the wrong hands if your hard drive or laptop is

stolen.

Data change The data to back up is changed The data to archive is changed rarely. The files have
frequency frequently. Usually a backup has few versions.
many versions updated from time
to time.

Archiving your data

Data archiving helps you free up your storage space by moving your old or rarely used files to
Acronis Cloud or local storage. Refer to What is data archiving for details.

To archive your data

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, and then go to the Archive section.
2. [Optional step] To learn basics of the data archiving feature, view the Getting Started slides.
3. Do one of the following:
l To analyze files in your default Windows user folder, usually located at C:\Users\[username],
click Analyze Home folder.
l To analyze files in a custom folder, click the down-arrow, click Select different folder, and
then select the folder to analyze.
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office analyzes files on your computer. Note that this process may
take several minutes.
4. In the left area, select a data category. Then, in the right area, select the files and folders that you
want to archive.
When selecting found files, you can sort them, for example, by size or by age (last modified date).
To sort the files, click the appropriate column header.
5. Click Select destination, and then select Acronis Cloud or a custom local destination for the
archived files.
6. [optional step] Click Options to set the options for the archive, including Data center and
Encryption. Refer to Data archiving options for details.
7. Click Archive.
8. Confirm that you want to move your files to the archive and automatically delete them from your
computer.

Additionally, watch the English-language video instructions at https://goo.gl/eEkNj2.

145 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Data archiving options

Data center
When you archive your files to Acronis Cloud, they are uploaded to one of the Acronis data centers
located in different countries. Initially, the data center is defined as the one closest to your location
when you create your Acronis account. Afterwards, your archived files are stored in the same data
center, by default.

We recommend that you set the data center for an archive manually, when you are in a different
country and your default data center is not the closest to your current location. This will significantly
increase the data upload rate.

Note
You cannot change the data center after starting the archiving process.

To select a data center

1. When configuring the first archiving process, click Options.

2. Select the country that is closest to your current location.

Encryption
To protect the archived data from unauthorized access, you can encrypt the archive with industry-
standard AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) cryptographic algorithm with a 256-bit long key.

Note
You cannot set or change the archive encryption option for a pre-existing archive.

To encrypt an archive:

1. When configuring the first archiving process, click Options.

2. Select the Encrypt archive by using the AES-256 algorithm check box.
3. Enter the password for the archive into the corresponding field. We recommend that you use a
password longer than seven symbols and containing both letters (in upper and lower cases
preferably) and numbers to make it more difficult to guess.

Note
A password cannot be retrieved. Memorize the password that you specify for an archive
protection.

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office asks for the password every time you try to modify the archive.
To access the archive, you must specify the correct password.

146 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Accessing your archived files
When your files are successfully archived, you can access them in:

l File Explorer
Start File Explorer, and then click Acronis Drive under Favorites.
You can work with the files in read-only mode. To modify a file, copy it to a different folder, first.
l Acronis Cloud (applicable to the cloud archive only)
Open the Acronis Cloud web application in one of the following ways:
o Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, click Archive, and then click View in your web
browser.
o Go to https://www.acronis.com/my/online-backup/webrestore/, and then log in to your
account.

147 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Sharing data
You can share files and folders stored in backups and archives in Acronis Cloud.

1. On the Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office sidebar, click Account.

2. In the Acronis Cloud Storage section, click Browse my data.
You are redirected to the Acronis Cloud browser page.
3. Depending on what you want to share, do the following:
l If you want to share a file or folder from a backup, on the left sidebar, click BACKUPS. Select
the required file or folder with a check mark.
l If you want to share a file or folder from an archive, on the left sidebar, click ARCHIVES. Select
the required file or folder with a check mark.
4. On the right sidebar, click Share link.
5. [Optional] You can configure the sharing options. To do that, in the link window, click Link
settings. You can apply a password, set the expiration date, and limit the amount of downloads.
6. In the link window, click Copy link and close it.

You can now share this link. To see the shared files, on the left sidebar, click SHARING. You can
select any file here, and on the right sidebar copy its link, configure the link settings, or delete it.

148 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Protecting family data

What is family data protection?

Family data protection is a unified cross-platform solution that allows you to track and control the
protection status of all computers, smartphones, and tablets sharing the same account. Since users
of these devices must be signed in to the same account, usually they are members of the same
family. In general, each of them can use this feature, but there is often a family member who is
more experienced in technology than the others. So, it's reasonable to make that person
responsible for protection of the family data.

To track and control the protection status of your family's devices, use the web-based Online
Dashboard, which is accessible from any computer connected to the Internet. With this web
application, your family IT administrator can:

l Control the current statuses of all backups on all family devices running Windows, macOS, iOS,
and Android.
l Add a new device to the list.
l Manually start any backup on any computer.
l Create new backups of any type (entire machine, file-level, disk-level) on PCs and Macs.
l Change settings of existing backups.
l Recover data from any backup located in Acronis Cloud, including backups from PCs, Macs, and
devices running iOS and Android.
l Resolve some product-related issues.

Adding a new device to Online Dashboard

To use all of the advantages of Online Dashboard, including remote management of your backups,
you first need to add your devices to the device list.

To add a new device

1. Install Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office on your device.

l You can download the installation files for Windows and macOS at the Acronis website.
l To install Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office on iOS and Android devices, follow the
instructions in Installing Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office for mobile devices.
2. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office and sign in to your account.

Alternatively, you can add a device via the Online Dashboard interface.

To add a new device via Online Dashboard

1. On the device that you want to add, open Online Dashboard at: https://cloud.acronis.com.
2. Sign in with your account.
3. On the Resources tab, click Add.

149 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

4. Download and install Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.
5. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office and sign in to the same Acronis account.

Backing up data remotely

With the web-based Online Dashboard, you can configure and run a backup on any computer (PC or
Mac) that shares the same account.

Before backing up, ensure that you have access to a computer

1. Open Online Dashboard at: https://cloud.acronis.com.

2. Sign in with your account.
3. On the Resources tab, find the computer that you want to back up.
l If you cannot find the computer, you first need to add it to the list. To do this, install Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office on that computer, start the application, and then sign in with your
account. Refer to Adding a new device for details.
l If the computer is offline, make sure that it is turned on and connected to the Internet.

To create the first backup on a computer

1. Open Online Dashboard, and then find the computer that contains the data that you want to
back up.
2. Click Enable backup, and then configure settings for the new backup, including:
l Backup type (entire machine, disk-level, or file-level)
l Data to back up
l Backup destination
l Schedule
l Retention rules
l Data encryption
3. When the backup is configured, click Apply, and then click Run now.

To create a new version of an existing backup

1. Open Online Dashboard, and then find the computer that contains the data that you want to
back up.
2. Click Back up now, and then select the backup that you want to update.

To change settings of an existing backup

1. Open Online Dashboard, and then find the computer that is the source of the backup.
2. Click the gear icon, click Backup, and then find the backup that you want to reconfigure.
3. Click the gear icon next to the backup name, and then click one of the following:
l To change the main settings, click Edit.
l To change additional options, click Backup options.
4. Click Save changes.

To create a new backup

150 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

1. Open Online Dashboard, and then find the computer that contains the data that you want to
back up.
2. Click the gear icon, and then click Backup.
3. Click Add backup plan.
l To create a backup with the predefined settings, click Apply. The entire machine will be
backed up to Acronis Cloud.
l To create a backup with custom settings, click Create new, change the settings, and then click
Apply.
4. To start backup, click Run now.

Recovering data with Online Dashboard

The web-based Online Dashboard allows you to recover data from any online backup uploaded
from your family devices, including PCs, Macs, smartphones, and tablets.

To recover data from an online backup

1. Open Online Dashboard at: https://cloud.acronis.com.

2. Sign in with your account.
3. On the Resources tab, find the device that is the source of the data that you want to recover. If
the device is offline, make sure that it is turned on and connected to the Internet.
4. If you recover data from:
l A computer—Click Recover. The Acronis Cloud web application will open, where you can
browse and recover your data.
l A mobile device—Click Recover. On the left panel, select the backup version by the backup
date and time. Then, on the right panel, select the items that you want to recover, and then
click Download.

Email notifications
Sometimes a backup operation can last a long time. To track the status of your backups and when
they are finished, you can configure email notifications via the Online Dashboard.

To configure email notifications

1. Open Email notifications on the Online Dashboard. You can do it in two ways:
l On the Online Dashboard, click the account icon in the top-right corner, and then select Email
notifications.
l In your Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office application, click Settings, and then click Change
email notification settings.
2. In Send notifications about, choose the information you are interested in:
l Errors
l Warnings
l Successful backups

151 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

3. In the Recipients' email addresses field, type the destination address. You can enter several
addresses, separated by semicolons.
4. [Optional step] In Subject, change the email notification subject.
You can use the following variables:
l [computer_name]—name of computer
l [operation_status]—status with which operation was completed
l [backup_name]—name of backup
The default subject is [computer_name] - [operation_status] - [backup_name].

After saving the settings, you will receive information from Acronis servers about all backups on all
of your family devices running Windows and macOS.

152 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Protection
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office provides the following protection for your data:

l Active Protection runs constantly in the background to protect your machines in real time while
you work as usual.
l Antivirus scans run on-demand to perform in-depth search for malicious software throughout
the whole system.
l Vulnerability assessment is a daily scan that runs in the background, detects vulnerabilities in
your system and apps, and then assesses their severity.

Note
You can turn the protection on or off in the Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office UI only. You cannot
stop the process manually through Task Manager or any other external tool.

If you have a license covering Active Protection, but the corresponding component was not installed,
you can add it. For more information, refer to "Configuring Active Protection" (p. 156).

If you have a license covering Real-time Protection, Antivirus scan, Videoconference protection, and
Web filtering, but the corresponding component was not installed, you can add it. For more
information, refer to "Configuring Active Protection" (p. 156).

The Protection dashboard

The Protection dashboard contains statistical data on the Active protection, Antivirus scan, and
Vulnerability assessment processes, provides control over the protection status, and access to the
protection settings.

To access the Protection dashboard, click Protection in the Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office side
bar.

On the Overview tab of the dashboard, you can:

l Install missing protection components. To do this, click Install and follow the instructions
displayed.
l View statistics about the active protection status.
l View the number of detected issues, quarantined items, and protection exclusions.
l View the latest report of the Antivirus scan. To view this, click Scan report.
l View the next scheduled scan time.
l Manually run full or quick Antivirus scan. To do this, click Run full scan or Run quick scan.
l View the latest report of the detected vulnerabilities, and run a new scan from it. To view this,
click Detected vulnerabilities.
l Stop the entire protection for a predefined period of time (30 minutes, 1 hour, 4 hours, until
restart). To do this, click Turn off protection and choose the period.

153 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Note
By turning the protection off, you deactivate Active Protection. Scheduled on-demand scans will
not start.

On the Activity tab of the dashboard, you can view a log of the changes that you applied to your
protection status and settings.

Active protection
To protect your computer from malicious software in real-time, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office
uses the Acronis Active Protection technology.

Active Protection constantly checks your computer while you continue working as usual. In addition
to your files, Acronis Active Protection protects the Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office application
files, your backups, and the Master Boot Records of your hard drives.

Active protection consists of several protection levels that you can enable independently from each
other:

l Anti-ransomware protection
l Real-time protection
l Web filtering

Anti-ransomware protection
Ransomware encrypts files and demands a ransom for the encryption key. Cryptomining malware
performs mathematical calculations in the background, thus stealing the processing power and
network traffic of your machine.

When the Anti-ransomware Protection service is on, it monitors in real time the processes
running on your computer. When it detects a third-party process that tries to encrypt your files or
mine cryptocurrency, the service informs you about it and asks if you want to allow the process to
continue or to block the process.

To allow the process to continue the activity, click Trust. If you are not sure if the process is safe and
legal, we recommend that you click Quarantine. After this, the process will be added to
Quarantine and blocked from any activities.

After blocking a process, we recommend that you check if your files have been encrypted or
corrupted in any way. If they are, click Recover modified files. Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office
will search the following locations for the latest file versions to recover.

l Temporary file copies that were preliminarily created during the process verification
l Local backups
l Cloud backups

154 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

If Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office finds a good temporary copy, the file is restored from that
copy. If temporary file copies are not suitable for restore, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office
searches for backup copies locally and in the cloud, compares the creation dates of the copies found
in both locations, and restores your file from the latest available non-corrupt copy.

Note
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office does not support file recovery from password-protected
backups.

To configure Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office to automatically recover files after blocking a
process, select the Automatically recover files after blocking a process check box in the Active
Protection settings. See Configuring Active Protection.

Real-time Protection
When Real-time Protection is enabled, it constantly checks the files you interact with to protect
your machine from suspicious activity, viruses, and other malicious threats in real time.

Real-time Protection comes with the following additional protection options:

l Behavior analysis – to identify malicious processes, Active Protection uses behavioral heuristics. It
compares the chain of actions performed by a process with the chains of events recorded in the
database of malicious behavior patterns. This approach enables Active Protection to detect new
malware by its typical behavior.
l Exploit prevention – Active Protection analyzes the behavior of processes running on the machine
and detects abnormal activity. It prevents infected processes from spreading and exploiting the
vulnerabilities of other software installed on the system. Active Protection employs several
exploit prevention methods:
o Memory protection detects and prevents suspicious modifications of the execution rights on
memory pages. Malicious processes apply such modifications to page properties, to enable the
execution of shellcodes from non-executable memory areas like stack and heaps.
o Privilege escalation protection detects and prevents attempts for elevation of privileges made
by an unauthorized code or application. Privilege escalation is used by malicious code to gain
full access of the attacked machine, and then perform critical and sensitive tasks.
Unauthorized code is not allowed to access critical system resources or modify system
settings.
o Code injection protection detects and prevents malicious code injection into remote processes.
Code injection is used to hide malicious intent of an application behind clean or benign
processes, to evade detection by anti-malware products.

You can choose one of the following types of scanning:

l Smart on-access detection means that the program runs in the background and actively and
constantly scans your machine system for viruses and other malicious threats for the entire
duration that your system is powered on. Malware will be detected in both cases when a file is
being executed and during various operations with the file such as opening it for reading/editing.

155 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l On execution detection means that only executable files will be scanned at the moment they are
run to ensure they are clean and will not cause any damage to your machine or data. Copying of
an infected file will remain unnoticed.

You can view the results of real-time protection checks in the Activity tab of the Protection
dashboard.

Web filtering
Malware is often distributed by malicious or infected sites and uses the so called "Drive-by
download" method of infection.

Web filtering helps to protect you from potentially harmful websites and untrusted web resources
by blocking the access when you try to open them. To determine which websites are potentially
harmful, Web filtering uses the Protection updates database. The Web filtering database also
includes information about websites that contain scam and phishing URLs. You can modify the rules
defined in the database by configuring exceptions to the Web filtering list.

Web filtering has two modes of operation:

l Complete block—the access to the website will be completely blocked.

l Notify only—a notification will be displayed, but users will be able to access the website.

Configuring Active Protection

To access Active Protection settings

1. Click Protection on the sidebar, then click Settings, and go to the Active Protection tab.
2. [optional step] If Active Protection is not installed, click Install under Get Active Protection and
Antivirus scan, and then follow the instructions displayed.

To configure Anti-ransomware Protection

1. Switch on the Anti-ransomware Protection toggle to enable Anti-ransomware Protection.

When enabled, it protects your computer from potentially harmful applications and processes
that run in the background.
2. Select the options that you want to enable.
l Automatically recover files after blocking a process – Though a process was blocked,
there is still a possibility that your files were modified. If this check box is selected, Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office recovers the files as follows.
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office searches the following locations for the latest file versions
to recover.
o Temporary file copies that were preliminarily created during the process verification
o Local backups
o Cloud backups
If Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office finds a good temporary copy, the file is restored from
that copy. If temporary file copies are not suitable for restore, Acronis Cyber Protect Home

156 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Office searches for backup copies locally and in the cloud, compares the creation dates of the
copies found in both locations, and restores your file from the latest available unmodified
copy.

Note
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office does not support file recovery from password-protected
backups.

l Protect backup files from ransomware – Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office will protect its
own processes and your backups from ransomware. Your archives are also protected.
l Protect network shares and NAS – Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office will monitor and
protect the network shares and NAS devices you have access to. You can also specify a
recovery location for files affected by a ransomware attack.
l Protect your computer from illicit cryptomining – Select this check box to defend your
computer from cryptomining malware.
3. Click OK.

To configure Real-time Protection

1. [optional step] If Real-time Protection is not installed, click Install under Get full protection,
and then follow the instructions displayed.
2. Switch on the Real-time Protection toggle to enable Real-time Protection.
When enabled, Real-time Protection checks for malware all the files you interact with.
3. Select when the files should be checked.
l Smart on-access – all system activities are monitored, and the files are scanned once you
access them.
l On execution – only executable files are scanned as they are launched to make sure that they
will not damage your machine.
4. Select from the drop-down list what to do with detected objects.
l Block and notify– The process suspected of malware activity will be blocked, and you will get
a notification.
l Quarantine – The process suspected of malware activity will be blocked, and the executable
file will be moved to the quarantine folder.
5. Enable the additional protection options.
l Detect malicious behavior in processes – enables Active Protection to detect new malware
by its typical behavior and block it.
l Detect and prevent malicious processes from exploiting the software vulnerabilities
on a system (experimental) – enables Active protection to detect and block processes that
try to exploit bugs and vulnerabilities of other processes on the system.

Note
All detected objects are blocked immediately. They will not be moved to quarantine, nor
added to the detected issues list.

157 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

To configure Web filtering

1. [optional step] If Web filtering is not installed, click Install under Get full protection, and then
follow the instructions displayed.
2. Switch on the Web filtering toggle to protect you from potentially harmful websites and
untrusted web resources.
3. From the Action on malicious URL detection drop-down menu, select what to do with
detected malicious URLs.
l Complete block – The access to the website will be completely blocked.
l Block and notify – The website will be blocked with the ability to proceed.
4. To configure the list of trusted or blocked websites, click Manage exceptions.
a. To add a new URL to the list, click Add URL.
b. Enter a valid URL name. Its domain will be added to exceptions.

Note
All addresses from the domain that you entered will be treated as trusted or blocked. For
example, if you entered xyz.com as a trusted domain, all paths or sub-domains under
xyz.com are treated as trusted.

c. From the drop-down menu, select Allowed or Blocked. The allowed websites will not be
scanned for threats. The blocked websites will not open, or you will get notified at such an
attempt.
d. Click Add URL.
e. Click Apply.

Antivirus scans
Antivirus scan is one of the components of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office Antivirus and Anti-
malware Protection. It protects your computer by checking for malware on demand – manually or at
predefined intervals that you can configure.

You can select between two types of scans.

l Full scan checks the entire machine for viruses. Full scan will detect malware by examining all
files and processes (or a subset of files and processes), except for excluded files or folders that
you defined in the excludes lists.
l Quick scan checks only specific files and folders. Quick scan will detect malware by examining
specific folders which are considered the most likely virus storages.

You can also choose what to scan: archive files, external drives, or only new and changed files.

Note
You can configure Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office to prevent your computer from entering sleep
or hibernate mode if a scan operation is running. Keep in mind that this option is selected by
default.

158 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

By default, when the CPU load is high, the priority of antivirus scans is decreased to let other
applications perform properly. This results in slower scans. You can disable this option to speed up
the scanning.

To view the Scan details report window, containing antivirus scan details, click the Scan report
button.

Configuring Antivirus scans

To access the Antivirus settings, click Protection on the side bar, then click Settings, and go to the
Antivirus tab.

To configure Action on detection:

Select the options that you want to enable.

l Quarantine —This option is set by default. When Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office detects a
potential malware threat, it stops the process and moves the suspicious file to the quarantine
folder.
l Notify only —When a suspicious process is detected, you will get a notification about the
potential malware threat.

To configure scan type:

Select the type of scan you want to perform:

l Full—This option is set by default. Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office will check the entire PC.
l Quick— Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office will check only the specific folders that are
considered the most likely storages of threats.

To schedule antivirus scans:

Select one of the check boxes to configure the time when the scanning process shall start.

l Daily—the scan will be run every day at a specified time.

l Weekly—the scan will be run on a specified day of week. Set the day of week and time.
l Monthly—the scan will be run on a specified day of month.
l At system startup—the scan will be run at each start of your operating system.
l Do not schedule—the scan run is not planned for a specific time.

To configure what to scan:

Select the following check boxes:

l Do not scan archive files larger than. Select a value by using the arrows.
l Scan external drives
l Scan network shares and NAS
l Scan only new and changed files

To configure system behavior during Antivirus scans:

159 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Sometimes, the system might be shut down before the Antivirus scan is completed. For such cases,
select the Run missed tasks at the startup check box to configure Acronis Cyber Protect Home
Office to resume the scan when the system starts again by selecting.

Moreover, you can enable the Prevent the sleep or hibernate mode option to prevent your
computer from shutting down if a scan operation is running.

The priority of antivirus scans can be decreased in case of a CPU overload to let other applications
perform properly. This option is enabled by default which might slow down the scanning. To speed
up the scans, clear the Give priority to other applications check box.

After configuring the Antivirus scans, click OK .

Vulnerability assessment
Vulnerability assessment is one of the components of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office Antivirus
and Anti-malware Protection. It is a daily scan that runs in the background, detects vulnerabilities in
your system and apps, and then assesses their severity. You can also run the scan manually when
needed.

Note
To update the vulnerabilities database, a stable internet connection is required.

To view the vulnerabilities:

1. On the left sidebar, click PROTECTION.

2. On the Overview tab, under Vulnerability assessment, click Detected vulnerabilities. The
report is displayed.
3. To run a new scan, click Run scan.
4. [optional] To display the Detailed information window, click the info icon next to the
vulnerability name.
5. [optional] To view a detailed description of the vulnerability, click the arrow next to its name. A
webpage containing this information will be displayed.
6. To resolve the detected issues, install the latest updates of the affected applications. Then, scan
again to ensure that the vulnerabilities are fixed. If they persist, it means that some apps might
still put your system at risk. To protect your data fully, back up the operating system and enable
Anti-malware Protection.

To configure the vulnerability assessment:

1. On the left sidebar, click PROTECTION, then click Settings.

2. Go to the Vulnerability assessment tab, and switch the toggle on or off to enable or disable the
vulnerability scan.

160 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Managing detected issues
The list of detected issues is populated when the Antivirus scans are configured to Block and notify
action on detection. You should review the list and decide whether to trust or move to quarantine.

To check and manage the detected issues:

1. There are two ways to access the detected issues:

l On the Protection dashboard, click Detected issues.
l On the Protection dashboard, click Settings, and go to the Advanced tab:
a. [optional step] If the Real-time Protection, Antivirus scan, Videoconference protection, and
Web filtering component is missing, click Install and follow the instructions displayed.
b. Under Detected issues, click Manage.
2. Select a check box of an issue in the list and select how to process it.
l To add the file or process to the list of Protection excludes, click Trust.

Note
If you select to trust a file or process, it will be excluded from future Antivirus scans.

l To move a file or process to quarantine, click Quarantine.

3. Click Close.

Managing files in Quarantine

Based on your settings, Active protection and Antivirus scans can move blocked files to quarantine.
Quarantine is a special storage that is used to isolate infected and suspected files from your
computer and data. When you place an application file in quarantine, the risk of potential harmful
actions from the blocked application is minimized.

By default, files are kept for 30 days in quarantine and then deleted from your PC. You can review
the files in quarantine and decide whether to keep or delete them before that period expires. You
can also change the default period to keep files in quarantine.

To restore or delete files from quarantine:

1. On the Protection dashboard, click Quarantine.

2. In the Quarantine list, select an item.
l To return the item to its original location, click Restore.
l To delete and item, click Delete from PC.
3. Click Close.

To setup the period for automatic deletion of files from the quarantine:

1. On the Protection dashboard, click Settings, and click the Advanced tab.
2. In the Quarantine section, select the number of days to keep the quarantined items.

161 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

3. Click OK.

Configuring Protection exclusions

Active protection and Antivirus scans use the definitions from the Protection database to determine
potential threats. If you trust some executable files and folders, you can add them to the Protection
exclusions list, so Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office will skip them during scanning.

Note
If the Real-time Protection, Antivirus scan, and Web filtering component is not installed, you can
only add executable files to Protection exclusions, not folders.

After you install this component, the existing Active protection exclusions will also apply to the
Antivirus scan.

To add a file or folder to the Protection exclusions list

1. On the Protection dashboard, click Protection exclusions.

2. From the Add exclusion menu, select what you want to exclude.
l Add file—to exclude executable or other files from scanning and Active protection.
l Add folder—[optional, if the Real-time Protection, Antivirus scan, and Web filtering
component is installed] to exclude folders from scanning and Active protection.
3. Browse for the item that you want to exclude and click Open.
4. Add another item to exclude or click Save to update the list.

To remove files or folders from the Protection exclusions list

1. On the Protection dashboard, click Protection exclusions.

2. In the list of Protection exclusions, select the check boxes for the items that you want to remove
and click Remove.
3. Click Save to update the list.

To configure protection exclusions for Web filtering, see Configuring Active Protection.

Videoconference app protection

Zoom, Cisco Webex Meetings, and Microsoft Teams are widely used for web conferencing and
communication. Anti-ransomware by Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office protects these
collaboration applications by default as follows.

l Protecting application processes from code injections

l Preventing suspicious operations by application processes

Downloading Protection updates

By default, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office downloads Protection updates automatically. You can
check the status of the Protection databases and components or disable the automatic downloads

162 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

of Protection updates.

To check the status of Protection updates:

1. On the Protection dashboard, click Settings, then click the Advanced tab.
2. Locate the Protection updates section in the bottom.
The latest database version and download date are displayed in the bottom of the section.

To disable automatic downloading of Protection updates:

Note
To ensure maximum protection, we do not recommend disabling the automatic protection updates.

1. On the Protection dashboard, click Settings, then click the Advanced tab.
2. Locate the Protection updates section in the bottom.
3. Clear the Download Protection updates automatically check box.

To download the latest Protection updates:

If the automatic downloading of Protection updates is disabled, you can check for updates and
download them manually.

1. On the Protection dashboard, click Settings, then click the Advanced tab.
2. Locate the Protection updates section in the bottom.
3. Click Check for updates. This option is available only when the Download Protection updates
automatically check box is not selected.
4. If the Protection updates are not latest, click Update.

163 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Synchronizing data

About the Sync feature

The main highlights of the Sync feature:

l You can have the same data - documents, photos, videos, etc. - on all of your computers. Your
data is within easy reach anywhere and anytime. No more emailing files to yourself or carrying a
USB drive all the time.
l You can create as many syncs as you need.
l The Acronis Cloud keeps your synced files and versions of those files. This lets you roll back to a
previous file version whenever you need it.

Note
An Acronis Cloud Storage subscription is required to use this feature. Refer to Subscription
information for details.

l You can also access the Cloud using a web browser, without having to install our application.
l When you create a sync between two or more computers directly, an Acronis Cloud subscription
is not required.

What you can and cannot synchronize

You can synchronize data stored in two or more folders. Let's consider where these folders may be
located and what data they may contain.

Storage types
A synchronization process may be established between:

l Two or more folders on two or more computers.

l One or more computers and Acronis Cloud.
Acronis Cloud always contains the last versions of the synced files. At the same time you cannot
select a folder on Acronis Cloud to participate in a sync, such folder is created automatically.

Within one sync process you may assign only one sync folder on every computer.

Note
You cannot select for synchronization a single file. To synchronize the file, select for synchronization
the folder that contains that file.

Data types
You can synchronize the following data:

164 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l Files (your photos, music, videos, documents, etc.), except those listed below

Note
Only the native FAT32 and NTFS file attributes are synchronized. If the synced folders belong to
different file systems, the program synchronizes only the attributes supported by the both file
systems.

l Other folders inside the sync folder (that is, sync subfolders) and their content

You cannot synchronize the following data:

l Disks and partitions

l System files and folders
l Hidden files and folders
l Temporary files and folders
l System registry
l Databases
l Data of e-mail programs (including Microsoft Outlook and others)
l Other data that cannot be represented as separate files or folders (for example, contacts from
your address book)
l Windows libraries (Documents, Music, etc.)

Sync icons
While working with syncs you will see special icons. The icons give you the following information:

l Type and current state of your syncs (the icons are shown in the notification area).
l Current state of synced files and folders (the icons are shown in File Explorer).

The notification area

Sync state icons:

Icon Description

The synchronization is working in normal mode.

The synchronization is paused.

An error occurred during the last synchronization.

File Explorer
Sync state icons for files and folders:

165 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Icon Description

The file or folder is synchronized.

The file or folder is being synced at the moment.

The file or folder has not been synchronized because of an error.

Sync type icons for synced folders:

Icon Description

Sync with Acronis Cloud.

Sync between computers synced through a local area network.

Creating a sync
Before you begin a new sync creation, make sure that the following conditions are met:

l You have an Acronis account.

l If you plan to include Acronis Cloud in your sync, you must have a subscription to Acronis Cloud
Storage. Refer to "Subscription information" (p. 33) for details.
l Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office or Acronis True Image (2012 or later) is installed on every
computer.
l If you connect your computers through a local area network, make sure that local connection is
established.
l Every computer has connection to the Internet.

To sync files and folders

1. On the sidebar, click Sync.

2. If you are not signed in, enter your Acronis account credentials.
3. Click Add sync.
4. Decide if you want to include Acronis Cloud in your new sync, and then choose the appropriate
sync type.
5. Select the folder that you want to synchronize, and then click OK.
6. To join this sync, start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office on your other computers, select this
sync in the Sync section, click Join sync, and then select the folder that you want to synchronize.

166 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Versions of synchronized files
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office gives you an opportunity to undo the changes that were made to
your files as a result of synchronization. If you find that one of your files contains an undesirable
change, you can view previous versions of this file and then choose and rollback to its correct
version. See details in Reverting to a previous file version.

All versions are stored on the Acronis Cloud which is accessible via the Internet. To use the Acronis
Cloud, you must have a subscription to the Acronis Cloud service. See details in Subscription
information.

To delete obsolete versions, run the cleanup operation in the Acronis Cloud web application. See
details in How to clean up your space on Acronis Cloud.

Warning!
If you use a trial version of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, all stored versions, including the
latest one, are deleted from the Cloud when the trial period expires.

Reverting to a previous file version

If you store sync history on the Acronis Cloud, you can revert the current version of a synchronized
file to its previous version. This is useful when you want to undo some undesirable sync operation.

To revert to a previous file version

1. In the Sync section, find the sync box with the needed file. Then click the Acronis Cloud link.
2. After the list of sync items opens in your Web browser, select the file which you want to revert to
a previous version. Then click the gear icon at the right-hand side. Select View versions in the
opened menu.
3. Select the version to which you want to rollback. The version's exact date and time will be
displayed. Your current version will be reverted to the state it was at that point in time.
4. Click Recover to proceed. The selected version will become the latest version on the Cloud.
Then, it will be downloaded to the computer that owns the sync.

How to recover a deleted file

Sometimes you may delete a file from a sync by mistake. Then, you need to recover the deleted file.
This may be possible for the syncs that keep file versions on Acronis Cloud.

One condition - the deleted file must not be removed during Cloud clean-up.

To recover a deleted file:

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

2. On the sidebar, click Sync, select the sync that contains the file to recover, and then click the
Acronis Cloud link.

167 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

3. Click the Files tab and then select the sync from which you deleted the file.
4. After you select the sync, a list of files and folders appears.
5. Select the Show deleted check box and then select the deleted file you want to recover.
6. Click the Recover button to recover the deleted file to its folder.

Deleting a sync
1. On the sidebar, click Sync.
2. If you are not signed in, enter your Acronis account credentials.
3. From the sync list, select the sync that you want to delete, click the arrow icon, and then click
Delete.

This operation will only break the link between synchronized folders. The files that were
synchronized will remain in their locations and will not be modified in any way.

168 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Disk cloning and migration
This operation copies the entire contents of one disk drive to another disk drive. This may be
necessary, for example, when you want to clone your operating system, applications, and data to a
new, larger capacity disk. You can do it two ways:

l Use the Clone disk utility.

l Back up your old disk drive, and then recover it to the new one.

See Also: Difference between Backup and Disk Clone

Disk cloning utility

The Clone disk utility allows you to clone your hard disk drive by copying the partitions to another
hard disk.

Before you start:

l When you want to clone your system to a higher-capacity hard disk, we recommend that you
install the target (new) drive where you plan to use it and the source drive in another location,
e.g. in an external USB enclosure. This is especially important for laptops.

Note
It is recommended that your old and new hard drives work in the same controller mode (for
example, IDE or AHCI). Otherwise, your computer might not start from the new hard drive.

Note
If you clone a disk with Windows to an external USB hard drive, you might not be able to boot
from it. We recommend cloning to an internal SSD or HDD instead.

l The Clone disk utility does not support multiboot systems.

l On program screens, damaged partitions are marked with a red circle and a white cross inside in
the upper left corner. Before you start cloning, you should check such disks for errors and correct
the errors by using the appropriate operating system tools.
l We strongly recommend that you create a backup of the entire original disk as a safety
precaution. It could be your data saver if something goes wrong with your original hard disk
during cloning. For information on how to create such a backup, see Backing up partitions and
disks. After creating the backup, make sure that you validate it.

Clone Disk wizard

Before you start, we recommend that you read general information about Disk cloning utility.If you
use an UEFI computer and you decided to start the cloning procedure under bootable media, pay
attention to the boot mode of the bootable media in UEFI BIOS. It is recommended that the boot
mode matches the type of the system in the backup. If the backup contains a BIOS system, then
boot the bootable media in BIOS mode; if the system is UEFI, then ensure that UEFI mode is set.

169 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

To clone a disk

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

2. On the sidebar, click Tools, and then click Clone disk.
3. On the Clone Mode step, choose a transfer mode.
l Automatic—Recommended in most cases.
l Manual—Manual mode will provide more data transfer flexibility. Manual mode can be useful
if you need to change the disk partition layout.

Note
If the program finds two disks, one partitioned and another unpartitioned, it will automatically
recognize the partitioned disk as the source disk and the unpartitioned disk as the destination
disk. In such case, the next steps will be bypassed and you will be taken to the Summary screen.

4. On the Source Disk step, select the disk that you want to clone.

Note
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office does not support cloning of dynamic disks.

5. On the Destination Disk step, select the destination disk for the cloned data.
If the selected destination disk contains partitions, you will need to confirm deletion of the
partitions. Note that the real data destruction will be performed only when you click Proceed on
the last step of the wizard.

Note
If any disk is unpartitioned, the program will automatically recognize it as the destination and
bypass this step.

6. [This step is only available if the source disk has an OS installed]. On the Disk Usage step, select
how you are going to use the clone.
l To replace a disk on this machine—the system disk data will be copied, and the clone will
be bootable. Use this clone for replacing the system disk with a new one on this PC.
l To use on another machine—the system disk data will be copied, and the clone will be
bootable. Use this clone to transfer all the data to another PC on a bootable disk.
l To use as a data disk—the disk data will be copied. Use this clone as a non-bootable data
drive.
7. [This step is only available in the manual cloning mode]. On the Move method step, choose a
data move method.
l As is—a new partition will be created for every old one with the same size and type, file
system and label. The unused space will become unallocated.
l Proportional—the new disk space will be proportionally distributed between cloned
partitions.
l Manual—you will specify a new size and other parameters yourself.

170 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 8. [This step is only available in the manual cloning mode]. On the Change disk layout step, you
can edit settings of the partitions that will be created on the destination disk. Refer to Manual
partitioning for details.
9. [Optional step] On the What to exclude step, you can specify files and folders that you do not
want to clone. Refer to Excluding items from cloning for details.
10. On the Finish step, ensure that the configured settings suit your needs, and then click Proceed.

If the cloning operation is stopped for some reason, you will have to configure and start the
procedure again. You will not lose your data, because Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office does not
alter the original disk and data stored on it during cloning.

Manual partitioning
The manual transfer method enables you to resize partitions on the new disk. By default, the
program resizes them proportionally.

To edit a partition

171 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

1. Select the partition, and then click Edit. This will open the Partition Settings window.

2. Specify the following settings for the partition:

l Size and position
l File system
l Partition type (available only for MBR disks)
l Partition letter and label
Refer to Partition settings for details.
3. Click Accept.

Warning!
Clicking any previous wizard step on the sidebar in this window will reset all size and location
changes that you've selected, so you will have to specify them again.

Excluding items from cloning

If you do not want to clone specific files from a source disk (for example, when your target disk is
smaller than the source one), you can opt to exclude them in the What to exclude step.

Note
We do not recommend excluding hidden and system files when cloning your system partition.

172 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

You have two ways to exclude files and folders:

l Exclude by files and folders - this tab allows you to select specific files and folders from the
folder tree.
l Exclude by masks - this tab allows you to exclude a group of files by mask or an individual file by
name or path.
To add an exclusion criterion, click Add, type a file name, a path or a mask, and then click OK. You
can add as many files and masks as you like.

Examples of exclusion criteria:

l You can enter explicit file names:

o file.ext - all such files will be excluded from cloning.
o C:\file.ext - the file.ext file on the C: disk will be excluded.
l You can use wildcard characters (* and ?):
o *.ext - all files with a .ext extension will be excluded.
o ??name.ext - all files with a .ext extension, having six letters in their names (starting with any
two symbols (??) and ending with name), will be excluded.
l You can enter path to a folder:
o C:\my pictures - my pictures folder on the C: disk will be excluded.

You can edit and remove exclusion criteria using the corresponding buttons on the right pane.

173 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Migration method
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office allows you to select a partition layout for a target disk after clone
operation completion:

l MBR (Master Boot Sector) - a 512-byte boot sector, which is the first sector of a hard disk, used
to hold a disk's primary partition table.
l GPT (GUID Partition Table) - a standard for a partition table layout for hard disks. GPT allows
disks/partitions size up to 9.4 ZB (9.4 x 10^21 bytes).

Using this wizard you may convert your partitions layout while cloning operation or clone them as is,
not changing the layout.

l Copy partitions without changes - select this option to migrate your system as is, not changing
the partition layout. Note, in this case the disk space in excess of 2TB will be inaccessible. To
allocate the disk space beyond 2TB, you may use Acronis Extended Capacity Manager.
l Copy partitions and use a disk as non-system, GPT style - select this option to convert your
partition to a GPT layout.

With Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office you also can convert BIOS to UEFI systems. For more
information, see Unified Extensible Firmware Interface.

BIOS-booted system, MBR, UEFI not supported

In this step of the wizard, you need to select the destination hard disk.

Currently your system contains:

System: BIOS-booted

Source partition style: MBR

Operating system on the source disk: Windows, booting in UEFI is not supported

Destination disk size: less than 2 TB

If you migrate the system to the selected disk:

System: BIOS-booted

Partition style: MBR

Operating system: Windows, booting in UEFI is not supported

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

You can find more information about the migration procedure in Migration method section.

BIOS-booted system, MBR, UEFI supported

In this step of the wizard, you need to select the destination hard disk.

174 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Currently your system contains:
System: BIOS-booted

Source partition style: MBR

Operating system on the source disk: Windows, booting in UEFI is supported

Destination disk size: less than 2 TB

If you migrate the system to the selected disk:

System: BIOS-booted

Partition style: MBR

Operating system: Windows, booting in UEFI is supported

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

You can find more information about the migration procedure in Migration method section.

BIOS-booted system, MBR, no Windows

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office allows you to select a partition layout for a destination disk after
the operation completion.

Currently your system contains:

System: BIOS-booted

Source partition style: MBR

Operating system on the source disk: non-Windows or no OS

Destination disk size: less than 2 TB

With these system parameters, you can select one of the following:
1. Copy partitions without changes

You may leave MBR partition style on the destination disk.

Destination disk after migration:

System: BIOS-booted

Partition style: MBR

Operating system: non-Windows or no OS

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

2. Copy partitions and use a disk as non-system, GPT style

You may convert the partition style to GPT.

Destination disk after migration:

175 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 System: not bootable in BIOS

Partition style: GPT

Operating system: non-Windows or no OS

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

Warning!
After migration, the destination disk can be used only as non-system. This option is not available if
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office is run in Windows XP x32 operating system.
You can find more information about the migration procedure in Migration method section.

BIOS-booted system, GPT, UEFI supported

In this step of the wizard, you need to select the destination hard disk.

Currently your system contains:

System: BIOS-booted

Source partition style: GPT

Operating system on the source disk: Windows, booting in UEFI is supported

If you migrate the system to the selected disk:

System: not bootable in BIOS

Partition style: GPT

Operating system: Windows, booting in UEFI is supported

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

Warning!
After migration, the operating system will not be able to boot from the destination disk in BIOS. If
you want to boot from the destination disk after migration, you need to enable UEFI booting in your
system (see Unified Extensible Firmware Interface section), and then restart the operation.
You can find more information about the migration procedure in Migration method section.

BIOS-booted system, GPT, no Windows

In this step of the wizard, you need to select the destination hard disk.

Currently your system contains:

System: BIOS-booted

Source partition style: GPT

Operating system on the source disk: non-Windows or no OS

176 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 If you migrate the system to the selected disk:
System: BIOS-booted

Partition style: GPT

Operating system: non-Windows or no OS

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

You can find more information about the migration procedure in Migration method section.

UEFI-booted system, MBR, UEFI not supported

In this step of the wizard, you need to select the destination hard disk.

Currently your system contains:

System: UEFI-booted

Source partition style: MBR

Operating system on the source disk: Windows, booting in UEFI is not supported

Destination disk size: less than 2 TB

If you migrate the system to the selected disk:

System: not bootable in UEFI

Partition style: MBR

Operating system: Windows, booting in UEFI is not supported

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

Warning!
The operating system may fail booting in UEFI from the destination disk.
You can find more information about the migration procedure in Migration method section.

UEFI-booted system, MBR, UEFI supported

In this step of the wizard, you need to select the destination hard disk.

Currently your system contains:

System: UEFI-booted

Source partition style: MBR

Operating system on the source disk: Windows, booting in UEFI is supported

177 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 If you migrate the system to the selected disk:
After migration, the destination partition style will be converted to GPT and you will be able
to boot from it.

Destination disk after migration:

System: UEFI-booted

Partition style: GPT

Operating system: Windows, booting in UEFI is supported

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

You can find more information about the migration procedure in Migration method section.

UEFI-booted system, MBR, no Windows

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office allows you to select a partition layout for a destination disk after
the operation completion.

Currently your system contains:

System: UEFI-booted

Source partition style: MBR

Operating system on the source disk: non-Windows or no OS

Destination disk size: less than 2 TB

With these system parameters, you can select one of the following:
1. Copy partitions without changes

You may leave MBR partition style on the destination disk.

Destination disk after migration:

System: UEFI-booted

Partition style: MBR

Operating system: non-Windows or no OS

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

2. Copy partitions and use a disk as non-system, GPT style

You may convert the partition style to GPT.

Destination disk after migration:

System: not bootable in UEFI

Partition style: GPT

178 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Operating system: non-Windows or no OS

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

Warning!
After migration, the destination disk can be used only as non-system.
You can find more information about the migration procedure in Migration method section.

UEFI-booted system, GPT, UEFI supported

In this step of the wizard, you need to select the destination hard disk.

Currently your system contains:

System: UEFI-booted

Source partition style: GPT

Operating system: Windows, booting in UEFI is supported

If you migrate the system to the selected disk:

System: UEFI-booted

Partition style: GPT

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

You can find more information about the migration procedure in Migration method section.

UEFI-booted system, GPT, no Windows

In this step of the wizard, you need to select the destination hard disk.

Currently your system contains:

System: UEFI-booted

Source partition style: GPT

Operating system: non-Windows or no OS

If you migrate the system to the selected disk:

System: UEFI-booted

Partition style: GPT

Disk size: the entire disk space is available

You can find more information about the migration procedure in Migration method section.

179 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Migrating your system from an HDD to an SSD
First of all, make sure that Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office detects your new SSD both in
Windows and under the Acronis bootable media. If there is a problem, see What to do if Acronis
Cyber Protect Home Office does not recognize your SSD.

SSD size
As SSDs usually have less capacity than HDDs, the occupied space on your old hard disk may exceed
the size of your SSD. If this is the case, migration is not possible.

To reduce amount of data on your system disk, try the following:

l Move your data files from the old hard disk to another location, such as another hard disk drive,
internal or external.
l Create .zip archives of data files (for example, your documents, pictures, audio files, etc.), and
then delete the original files.
l Clean up the hard disk using the Windows Disk Cleanup utility.

Note that for stable operation, Windows needs to have several GB of free space on the system
partition.

Which migration method to choose

If your system disk consists of a single partition (not counting the hidden System Reserved
partition), you can try to migrate to the SSD using the Clone tool. For more information see Cloning
a hard disk.

However, we recommend to use the backup and recovery method in most cases. This method
provides more flexibility and control over migration. See Migrating to an SSD using the backup and
recovery method.

What to do if Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office does not recognize

your SSD
Sometimes Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office may not recognize an SSD.

In such a case, check whether the SSD is recognized in BIOS.

If the BIOS of your computer does not show the SSD, verify that the power and data cables are
properly connected. You may also try to update the BIOS and SATA drivers. If these suggestions do
not help, contact the Support team of your SSD manufacturer.

If the BIOS of your computer does show the SSD

1. Depending on your operating system, type cmd in the Search field or in the Run field, and then
press Enter.

180 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

2. At the command line prompt type, enter:

diskpart
list disk

The screen will show the disks connected to your computer. Find out the disk number for your
SSD. Use its size as the reference.
3. To select the disk, run the following command:

select disk N

Here N is the disk number of your SSD.

4. To remove all information from the SSD and overwrite the MBR with the default one, run the
command:

clean
exit
exit

Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office and check whether it detects the SSD. If it detects the SSD,
use the Add new disk tool to create a single partition on the disk occupying the entire disk space.
When creating a partition, check that the free space before partition is 1 MB. For more information,
see Adding a new hard disk.

To check whether your Acronis bootable media recognizes the SSD

1. Boot from the Acronis bootable media.

2. Select Tools & Utilities -> Add New Disk in the main menu and the Disk selection screen will
show the information about all hard disks in your system. Use this for checking whether the SSD
is detected in the recovery environment.
3. If the screen shows your SSD, just click Cancel.

If the bootable media does not recognize the SSD and the SSD controller mode is AHCI, you can try
to change the mode to IDE (or ATA in some BIOS brands) and see whether this solves the problem.

Warning!
Attention! Do not start Windows after changing the mode; it may result in serious system problems.
You must return the mode to AHCI before starting Windows.

If after changing the mode the bootable media detects the SSD, you may use the following
procedure for recovery or cloning under bootable media:

1. Shut down the computer.

2. Boot to BIOS, change the mode from AHCI to IDE (or ATA in some BIOS brands).
3. Boot from Acronis bootable media.
4. Recover or clone the disk.

181 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

5. Boot to BIOS and change IDE back to AHCI.
6. Start Windows.

What to do if the above suggestions do not help

You can try to create a WinPE-based media. This may provide the necessary drivers. For more
information, see Creating Acronis bootable media.

Migrating to SSD using the backup and recovery method

You can use the following procedure for all supported operating systems. First, let's consider a
simple case: your system disk consists of a single partition. Note that for Windows 7 and later, the
system disk may have a hidden System Reserved partition.

We recommend that you migrate your system to an empty SSD that does not contain partitions (the
disk space is unallocated). Note that if your SSD is new and has never been used before, it does not
contain partitions.

To migrate your system to an SSD

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

2. Create Acronis bootable media, if you do not have it yet. To do this, in the Tools section, click
Create bootable media and follow the instructions on the screen.
3. Back up your entire system drive (in the disk backup mode) to a hard disk other than your
system hard disk and the SSD.
4. Switch off the computer and remove your system hard disk.
5. Mount the SSD into the slot where the hard disk was.

Note
For some SSD brands you may need to insert the SSD into a PCI Express slot.

6. Boot from your Acronis bootable media.

7. Validate the backup to make sure that it can be used for recovery. To do this, click Recovery on
the left pane and select the backup. Right-click, select Validate Archive in the shortcut menu
and then click Proceed.
8. After the validation finishes, right-click the backup and select Recover in the shortcut menu.
9. Choose Recover whole disks and partitions at the Recovery method step and then click Next.
10. Select the system disk at the What to recover step.
11. Click New location and then select the SSD as the new location for your system disk, then click
Accept.
12. At the next step click Proceed to start recovery.
13. After the recovery is complete, exit the standalone version of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.
14. Try to boot from the SSD and then make sure that Windows and applications work correctly.

182 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

If your system hard disk also contains a hidden recovery or diagnostic partition, as is quite often the
case with notebooks, the procedure will differ. You will usually need to resize the partitions
manually during recovery to the SSD. For instructions see Recovering a disk with a hidden partition.

183 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Tools
Protection tools

l "Acronis Universal Restore" (p. 231)

l "Acronis Startup Recovery Manager" (p. 197)
l "Acronis Media Builder" (p. 185)
l "Acronis Secure Zone" (p. 204)
l "Try&Decide" (p. 199)

Disk cloning

l "Disk cloning utility" (p. 169)

Security and privacy

l "Acronis DriveCleanser" (p. 214)

l "System Clean-up" (p. 219)

Disk management

l "Adding a new hard disk" (p. 209)

Image mounting

l "Mounting a backup image" (p. 227)

l "Unmounting an image" (p. 228)

Acronis Cloud Backup Download

Acronis Cloud Backup Download is a tool that lets you safely download cloud backups even if the
internet connection is unstable. The download will not be canceled halfway through if the
connection drops, it will be paused and can be resumed later. In addition, recovery from a
downloaded backup is significantly faster than recovery from the cloud.

To install Acronis Cloud Backup Download

1. Download the tool in one of the following ways:

l In Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, go to the Tools section. Click Acronis Cloud Backup
Download to go to the download page. Then, select and download the required version of the
tool.
l Go to https://www.acronis.com/my/online-backup/webrestore/, and then log in to your
Acronis account. On the sidebar, click Backups, and then select the backup whose files you
want to recover. In the details view, click Download. Then, in the Download cloud backups
window, click Download the tool. Then, select and download the required version of the tool.
l Go to the download page at https://go.acronis.com/cloud-backup-download. Then, select and
download the required version of the tool.

184 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Note
The tool will be downloaded even if you already have installed it previously.

2. Extract and run the executable file.

3. Accept the license agreement and sign in.

To download a cloud backup

Important
You can only download backups of disks, partitions, or the entire machine in the TIBX format. File or
folder backups cannot be downloaded with Acronis Cloud Backup Download.

1. Start the Acronis Cloud Backup Download tool and sign in.
2. In the Acronis Cloud Backup Download window, select the backup that you want to download.
3. In the Select backup to download window, select particular backups or the entire backup set.
4. [optional step] If the backup is encrypted, enter the password.
5. Select the download destination, and then click Save.

The download of the .tibx file starts. You can pause or cancel it if needed.

How to use the downloaded backup

l To continue backing up the data, add the backup to Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office as
described in "Adding an existing backup to the list" (p. 88).
l Recover the data from the backup as described in "Recovering disks and partitions" (p. 99).
l Create Bootable Media as described in "Creating Acronis bootable media" (p. 186).
l Create an Acronis Survival Kit as described in "Creating an Acronis Survival Kit" (p. 24).
l Mount the downloaded backup as described in "Mounting a backup image" (p. 227).

Acronis Media Builder

Acronis Media Builder allows you to make a USB flash drive, external drive, or a blank CD/DVD
bootable. In case Windows cannot start, use the bootable media to run a standalone version of
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office and recover your computer.

You can create several types of bootable media:

l Acronis bootable media

This type is recommended for most users.
l WinPE-based media with the Acronis plug-in
Running Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office in the preinstallation environment may provide
better compatibility with your computer’s hardware because the preinstallation environment
uses Windows drivers.
We recommend that you create this type of media, when Acronis bootable media did not help
you boot your computer.

185 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 To use this option, you need one of the following components to be installed:
o Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK).
This component is required for creating WinPE 3.0.
o Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (ADK).
This component is required for creating WinPE 4.0, WinPE 5.0, and WinPE 10.0.
l WinRE-based media with the Acronis plug-in
This type of bootable media is similar to WinPE-based media, but it has an important
advantage—you do not need to download WADK or WAIK from the Microsoft website. Windows
Recovery Environment is already included in Windows Vista and later versions of Windows.
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office uses these files from your system to create WinRE-based
media. Similar to WinPE-based media, you can add your drivers for better compatibility with your
hardware. However, WinRE-based media can be used only on the computer where it was created
or on a computer with the same operating system.

Notes

l We recommend that you create a new bootable media after each Acronis Cyber Protect Home
Office update.
l If you use non-optical media, the media must have a FAT16 or FAT32 file system.
l Acronis Media Builder supports only x64 WinPE 3.0, WinPE 4.0, WinPE 5.0, and WinPE 10.0.
l Your computer must have:
o For WinPE 3.0—at least 256 MB RAM
o For WinPE 4.0—at least 512 MB RAM
o For WinPE 5.0—at least 1 GB RAM
o For WinPE 10.0—at least 512 MB RAM
l If Acronis Media Builder does not recognize your USB flash drive, you can try using the procedure
described in the Acronis Knowledge Base article at https://kb.acronis.com/content/1526.
l When booting from the bootable media, you cannot perform backups to disks or partitions with
Ext2/Ext3/Ext4, ReiserFS, and Linux SWAP file systems.
l When booting from the bootable media and using a standalone version of Acronis Cyber Protect
Home Office, you cannot recover files and folders encrypted with the encryption available in
Windows XP and later operating systems. For more information, see File-level security settings for
backup. However, backups encrypted using the Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office encryption
feature can be recovered.
l If you decide to create a bootable media on a drive that already has a Survival Kit, Acronis Media
Builder will attempt to overwrite and update only the hidden partition with the bootable media
without formatting the whole drive.

Creating Acronis bootable media

1. Plug in a USB flash drive, or an external drive (HDD/SSD), or insert a blank CD or DVD.
2. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.
3. In the Tools section, click Bootable Rescue Media Builder.

186 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

4. Choose a creation method.
l Simple—This is the easiest option. Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office will choose the optimal
media type for your computer. If you use Windows 7 or a later version, WinRE-based media
will be created.
l Advanced—This option allows you to choose a media type. This means you can create the
bootable media not only for your computer, but for a computer running a different Windows
version. Refer to Acronis Media Builder for details.
If you select a Linux-based media, choose Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office components to
be placed on the media. Ensure that the components that you select are compatible with the
target computer architecture. Refer to Removable media settings for details.
If you select a WinRE-based or WinPE-based media, then:
o Select an architecture type of the media—32-bit or 64-bit. Note that 32-bit bootable media
can work only on 32-bit computers, and 64-bit media is compatible with both 32-bit and 64-
bit computers.
o Select a toolkit that you want to be used for creating the bootable media. If you choose
WAIK or WADK and you do not have the selected kit installed on your computer, then you
first need to download it from the Microsoft website, and then install the required
components—Deployment Tools and Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE).
If you already have WinPE files on your computer and they are stored in a non-default
folder, then just specify their location and the Acronis plug-in will be added to the existing
WinPE image.
o For better compatibility with your hardware, you can select drivers to be added to the
media.
5. Select a destination for the media:
l CD
l DVD
l External drive
l USB flash drive
If your drive has an unsupported file system, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office will suggest
formatting it to FAT file system.

Warning!
Formatting permanently erases all data on a disk.

l ISO image file

You will need to specify the .iso file name and the destination folder.
When the .iso file is created, you can burn it onto a CD or DVD. For example, in Windows 7 and
later, you can do this by using a built-in burning tool. In File Explorer, double-click the created
ISO image file, and then click Burn.
l WIM image file (available only for WinPE-based media)

187 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office adds the Acronis plug-in to the .wim file from Windows AIK
or Windows ADK. You will need to specify a name for the new .wim file and the destination
folder.
To create a bootable media by using a .wim file, you first need to convert it to an .iso file. Refer
to Creating an .iso file from a .wim file for details.

Note
If Acronis Media Builder detects a previously created Survival Kit on this drive, it will attempt
to overwrite and update only the hidden partition with the bootable media without
formatting the whole drive.

6. Click Proceed.

Acronis bootable media startup parameters

Here, you can set Acronis bootable media startup parameters in order to configure the media boot
options for better compatibility with different hardware. Several options are available (nousb,
nomouse, noapic, etc.). These parameters are provided for advanced users. If you encounter any
hardware compatibility problems while testing boot from the Acronis bootable media, it may be
best to contact the Acronis Support team.

To add startup parameters

1. Enter a command into the Parameters field. You can type several commands, separated by
spaces.
2. Click Next to continue.

Additional parameters that can be applied prior to booting Linux kernel

Description
The following parameters can be used to load Linux kernel in a special mode:

l acpi=off

Disables ACPI and may help with a particular hardware configuration.

l noapic

Disables APIC (Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller) and may help with a particular
hardware configuration.

l nousb

Disables loading of USB modules.

l nousb2

Disables USB 2.0 support. USB 1.1 devices still work with this option. This option allows using some
USB drives in USB 1.1 mode, if they do not work in USB 2.0 mode.

188 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l quiet

This parameter is enabled by default and the startup messages are not displayed. Deleting it will
result in the startup messages being displayed as the Linux kernel is loaded and the command shell
being offered prior to running the Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office program.

l nodma

Disables DMA for all IDE disk drives. Prevents kernel from freezing on some hardware.

l nofw

Disables FireWire (IEEE1394) support.

l nopcmcia

Disables PCMCIA hardware detection.

l nomouse

Disables mouse support.

l [module name]=off

Disables the module (e.g. sata_sis=off).

l pci=bios

Forces to use PCI BIOS, and not to access the hardware device directly. For instance, this parameter
may be used if the machine has a non-standard PCI host bridge.

l pci=nobios

Disallows use of PCI BIOS; only direct hardware access methods are allowed. For instance, this
parameter may be used if you experience crashes upon boot-up, probably caused by the BIOS.

l pci=biosirq

Uses PCI BIOS calls to get the interrupt routing table. These calls are known to be buggy on several
machines and they hang the machine when used, but on other computers it is the only way to get
the interrupt routing table. Try this option, if the kernel is unable to allocate IRQs or discover
secondary PCI buses on your motherboard.

l vga=ask

Gets the list of the video modes available for your video card and allows selecting a video mode
most suitable for the video card and monitor. Try this option, if the automatically selected video
mode is unsuitable for your hardware.

Adding drivers to an existing .wim image

Sometimes a basic WinPE disk with Acronis plug-in does not have drivers for your specific hardware,
for example, for storage device controllers. The easiest way to add them is to select the Advanced

189 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

mode in Acronis Media Builder and specify the drivers to add. You can add the drivers manually to
an existing .wim file before creating an ISO file with Acronis plug-in.

Warning!
Attention! You can only add drivers which have the .inf filename extension.

The following procedure is based on an MSDN article that can be found at

https://technet.microsoft.com/.

To create a custom Windows PE image

1. If you don't have the .wim file with the Acronis plug-in, start Acronis Media Builder and create it
by choosing WIM file as a destination for the WinPE-based media. Refer to Creating Acronis
bootable media for details.
2. Depending on your version of Windows AIK or Windows ADK, do one of the following:
l In the Start menu, click Microsoft Windows AIK, right-click Windows PE Tools Command
Prompt, and then select Run as administrator.
l In the Start menu, click Microsoft Windows AIK, right-click Deployment Tools Command
Prompt, and then select Run as administrator.
l In the Start menu, click Windows Kits, click Windows ADK, right-click Deployment and
Imaging Tools Environment, and then select Run as administrator.
3. Run the Copype.cmd script to create a folder with Windows PE files. For example, from a
command prompt, type:

copype amd64 C:\winpe_x64

4. Copy your .wim file, for example, to folder C:\winpe_x64\. By default, this file is named
AcronisBootablePEMedia.wim.
5. Mount the base image to a local directory by using the DISM tool. To do this, type:

Dism /Mount-Wim /WimFile:C:\winpe_x64\AcronisBootablePEMedia.wim /index:1

/MountDir:C:\winpe_x64\mount

6. Add your hardware driver, by using the DISM command with the Add-Driver option. For example,
to add the Mydriver.inf driver located in folder C:\drivers\, type:

Dism /image:C:\winpe_x64\mount /Add-Driver /driver:C:\drivers\mydriver.inf

7. Repeat the previous step for each driver that you need to add.
8. Commit the changes by using the DISM command:

Dism /Unmount-Wim /MountDir:C:\winpe_x64\mount /Commit

9. Create a PE image (.iso file) from the resulting .wim file. Refer to Creating an .iso file from a .wim
file for details.

190 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Creating an .iso file from a .wim file
To create a bootable media by using a .wim file, you need to convert it to an .iso file first.

To create a PE image (.iso file) from the resulting .wim file

1. Depending on your version of Windows AIK or Windows ADK, do one of the following:
l In the Start menu, click Microsoft Windows AIK, right-click Windows PE Tools Command
Prompt, and then select Run as administrator.
l In the Start menu, click Microsoft Windows AIK, right-click Deployment Tools Command
Prompt, and then select Run as administrator.
l In the Start menu, click Windows Kits, click Windows ADK, right-click Deployment and
Imaging Tools Environment, and then select Run as administrator.
2. Run the Copype.cmd script to create a folder with Windows PE files. For example, from a
command prompt, type:

copype amd64 C:\winpe_x64

3. Replace the default boot.wim file in your Windows PE folder with the newly created .wim file (for
example, AcronisBootablePEMedia.wim). If the AcronisBootablePEMedia.wim file is located on
c:\, then:
For WinPE 3.0, type:

copy c:\AcronisBootablePEMedia.wim c:\winpe_x64\ISO\sources\boot.wim

For WinPE 4.0, WinPE 5.0 or WinPE 10.0, type:

copy "c:\AcronisBootablePEMedia.wim" c:\winpe_x64\media\sources\boot.wim

4. Use the Oscdimg tool. To create an .iso file, type:

oscdimg -n –bc:\winpe_x64\etfsboot.com c:\winpe_x64\ISO c:\winpe_x64\winpe_x64.iso

Alternatively, to make the media bootable on both BIOS and UEFI computers, type:

oscdimg -m -o -u2 -udfver102 -bootdata:2#p0,e,bc:\winpe_

x64\fwfiles\etfsboot.com#pEF,e,bc:\winpe_x64\fwfiles\efisys.bin c:\winpe_x64\media
c:\winpe_x64\winpe_x64.iso

5. Burn the .iso file to a CD by using a third-party tool, and you will have a bootable Windows PE
disc with Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

191 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Making sure that your bootable media can be used
when needed
To maximize the chances of your computer's recovery, you must test that your computer can boot
from the bootable media. In addition, you must check that the bootable media recognizes all of your
computer's devices, such as the hard drives, mouse, keyboard, and network adapter.

If you purchased a boxed version of the product that has a bootable CD and you did not update
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, you can test this CD. Otherwise, create a new bootable media.
Refer to Creating Acronis bootable media for details.

To test the bootable media

Note
If you use external drives for storing your backups, you must attach the drives before booting from
the bootable CD. Otherwise, the program might not detect them.

1. Configure your computer to enable booting from the bootable media. Then, make your bootable
media device (CD-ROM/DVD-ROM or USB drive) the first boot device. Refer to Arranging boot
order in BIOS for details.
2. If you have a bootable CD, press any key to start booting from the CD, when you see the "Press
any key to boot from CD" prompt. If you do not press a key within five seconds, you will need to
restart the computer.
3. After the boot menu appears, choose Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

Note
If your wireless mouse does not work, try replacing it with a wired one. The same
recommendation applies to the keyboard.

Note
If you do not have a spare mouse or keyboard, contact the Acronis Support team. They will build
a custom bootable CD that will have drivers for the models of your mouse and keyboard. Be
aware that finding the appropriate drivers and making the custom bootable CD may take some
time. Furthermore, this may be impossible for some models.

4. When the program starts, we recommend that you try recovering some files from your backup. A
test recovery allows you to make sure that your bootable CD can be used for recovery. In
addition, you can make sure that the program detects all of the hard drives you have in your
system.

Note
If you have a spare hard drive, we strongly recommend that you try a test recovery of your
system partition to this hard drive.

192 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

To test recovery, as well as check the drives and network adapter

1. If you have file backups, start Recovery Wizard by clicking Recovery -> File Recovery on the
toolbar.

Note
If you have only disk and partition backup, Recovery Wizard also starts and the recovery
procedure is similar. In such a case, you need to select Recover chosen files and folders at the
Recovery Method step.

2. Select a backup at the Archive location step, and then click Next.

3. When recovering files with the bootable CD, you are able to select only a new location for the
files to be recovered. Therefore, just click Next at the Location selection step.
4. After the Destination window opens, check that all of your drives are shown under My
Computer.

Note
If you store your backups on the network, verify that you can access the network.

193 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Note
If no computers are visible on the network, but the Computers Near Me icon is found under
My Computer, specify the network settings manually. To do this, open the window available at
Tools & Utilities > Options > Network adapters.

Note
If the Computers Near Me icon is not available under My Computer, there may be problems
either with your network card or with the card driver provided with Acronis Cyber Protect Home
Office.

5. Select the destination for the files, and then click Next.
6. Select several files for recovery by selecting their check boxes and then click Next.

194 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

7. Click Proceed on the Summary window to start recovery.
8. After the recovery finishes, exit the standalone Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

Now, you can be reasonably sure that your bootable CD will help you when you need it.

Selecting video mode when booting from the bootable media

When booting from the bootable media the optimal video mode is selected automatically
depending on the specifications of your video card and monitor. However, sometimes the program
can select the wrong video mode, which is unsuitable for your hardware. In such case you can select
a suitable video mode as follows:

1. Start booting from the bootable media. When the boot menu appears, hover the mouse over
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office item and press the F11 key.
2. When the command line appears, type vga=ask and click OK.

195 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

3. Select Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office in the boot menu to continue booting from the
bootable media. To see the available video modes, press the Enter key when the appropriate
message appears.
4. Choose a video mode you think best suitable for your monitor and type its number in the
command line. For instance, typing 338 selects video mode 1600x1200x16 (see the below figure).

196 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

5. Wait until Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office starts and make sure that the quality of the
Welcome screen display on your monitor suits you.

To test another video mode, close Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office and repeat the above
procedure.

After you find the optimal video mode for your hardware, you can create a new bootable media that
will automatically select that video mode.

To do this, start Acronis Media Builder, select the required media components, and type the mode
number with the "0x" prefix (0x338 in our instance) in the command line at the Bootable media
startup parameters step, then create the media as usual.

Acronis Startup Recovery Manager

The Acronis Startup Recovery Manager lets you start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office without
loading the operating system. With this feature, you can use Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office by
itself to recover damaged partitions, even if the operating system won't boot. Unlike booting from
Acronis removable media, you will not need a separate media or network connection to start
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

Note
Acronis Startup Recovery Manager cannot be used on tablets running Windows.

To activate Acronis Startup Recovery Manager

197 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.
2. In the Tools section, click All tools, and then double-click Activate Acronis Startup Recovery
Manager.
3. In the opened window, click Activate.

If a failure occurs, turn on the computer and press F11 when you see the "Press F11 for Acronis
Startup Recovery Manager" message. This will start a standalone version of Acronis Cyber Protect
Home Office that differs only slightly from the complete version.

To deactivate Acronis Startup Recovery Manager

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

2. In the Tools section, click All tools, and then double-click Activate Acronis Startup Recovery
Manager.
3. In the opened window, click Deactivate.

Additional information
Disk letters in standalone Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office might sometimes differ from the way
Windows identifies drives. For example, the D: disk identified in the standalone Acronis Cyber
Protect Home Office might correspond to the E: disk in Windows. The disk labels and information on
partition sizes, file systems, drive capacities, their manufacturers, and model numbers can help in
correctly identifying the disks and partitions.

You won't be able to use the previously activated Acronis Startup Recovery Manager if the
Try&Decide is turned on. Rebooting the computer in the Try mode will allow you to use Acronis
Startup Recovery Manager again.

Does Acronis Startup Recovery Manager affect other loaders?

When Acronis Startup Recovery Manager is activated, it overwrites the master boot record (MBR)
with its own boot code. If you have any third-party boot managers installed, you will need to

198 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

reactivate them after the Startup Recovery Manager has been activated. For Linux loaders (e.g. LiLo
and GRUB), you might consider installing them to a Linux root (or boot) partition boot record
instead of MBR before activating Acronis Startup Recovery Manager.

UEFI boot mechanism is different from the BIOS one. Any OS loader or other boot program has its
own boot variable that defines a path to the corresponding loader. All loaders are stored on a
special partition called EFI System Partition. When you activate Acronis Startup Recovery Manager in
UEFI-booted system, it changes the boot sequence by writing its own boot variable. This variable is
added to the list of variables and does not change them. Since all loaders are independent and do
not affect each other, there is no need to change anything before or after activating Acronis Startup
Recovery Manager.

Try&Decide
Note
To install Try&Decide, you can select this component when installing Acronis Cyber Protect Home
Office, or add it later as described in "Installing and uninstalling Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office"
(p. 14).

When you turn Try&Decide on, your computer is in the Try mode. After that you can perform any
potentially dangerous operations without worrying that you might damage your operating system,
programs or data. When you turn Try&Decide off, you decide if you want to apply the changes to
your computer or you want to discard them.

When Try&Decide can help

We recommend that you turn Try&Decide on before you try to:

l Change any system settings, when you are not sure how these changes may affect your
computer.
l Install system updates, drivers, etc.
l Install unfamiliar applications.
l Open email attachments from unknown senders.
l Visit websites that might contain potentially troublesome content.

Note
Remember that if you download email from a POP mail server, create new files or edit existing
documents while in the Try mode, and then decide to discard your changes, those files, document
changes, and mail will no longer exist. In this case, save the new files and edited documents, for
example, to a USB flash drive and unplug it before discarding the changes.

How Try&Decide works after a computer restart

You can leave the Try&Decide turned on as long as you like, because this mode "survives" across
reboots of your operating system.

199 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

When your computer reboots for whatever reason while working in the Try mode, before booting of
the operating system starts, you will be shown a dialog offering you two choices – stop the mode
and discard changes or continue working in the mode. This will allow you to discard the changes
that have resulted in a system crash. On the other hand, if you reboot, for example, after installing
an application, you can continue working in the Try mode after starting Windows.

Every "soft" reboot of your computer while in the Try mode results in adding up to 500 MB of
Try&Decide's housekeeping data into the storage selected for storing virtual changes.

Limitations in using Try&Decide

l Try&Decide is not compatible with the Memory integrity feature of Windows (turned on by
default in Windows 11). To avoid compatibility issues with Try&Decide, you can turn off Memory
integrity in the Windows Security settings.
l If you use Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 10, in the Try mode the program may use free disk
space quite intensively, even when your computer is idle. This is due to housekeeping activities
such as indexing that run in the background.
l While working in the Try mode you will experience slowing down of the system performance.
Furthermore, the process of applying changes may take a long time, especially if you leave the Try
mode turned on days on end.
l Try&Decide cannot track changes in disk partitions, so you will be unable to use the Try mode for
virtual operations with partitions such as resizing partitions or changing their layout. In addition,
you must not use the Try&Decide and disk defragmentation or disk error checking utilities at the
same time, because this can irreparably corrupt the file system, as well as make the system disk
unbootable.

200 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l When the Try mode is started, you won't be able to use the previously activated Acronis Startup
Recovery Manager. Rebooting the computer in the Try mode will allow you to use Acronis Startup
Recovery Manager again.
l Try&Decide and Nonstop Backup cannot work simultaneously. Starting the Try mode suspends
Nonstop Backup. Nonstop Backup will resume after you stop the Try mode.
l When the Try mode is started, you won't be able to use the Hibernate power saving mode.
l Try&Decide cannot be used for protecting dynamic disks.
l Try&Decide cannot work when a partition in your system is encrypted with BitLocker.
l Try&Decide cannot protect Acronis Secure Zone or use it as a storage for the virtual changes.

Using Try&Decide
1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.
2. In the Tools section, click Try&Decide.
3. Set up the Try&Decide options, if necessary. Refer to Try&Decide options and notifications for
details.
4. To start the Try mode, click the Try&Decide icon. The program starts tracking all changes made
to the OS and files and temporarily stores all the changes on the selected disk.

5. Perform all the changes you wanted to try.

Note
When the disk space in the location selected for storing virtual changes is minimal for applying
the changes, the program asks you whether to apply or discard the changes. If you ignore the
alert message, the program will automatically restart the system when the disk is full, and
discard the changes.

6. To stop the Try mode, click the Try&Decide icon in the Try&Decide window.

201 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

7. Choose one of the following:
l Select Apply changes if you want to keep the changes made to the system.
l Select Apply changes with reboot if you want to speed up the applying process. When you
click the button, Try&Decide restarts your computer and applies the changes during the
reboot.
l Select Discard changes if you want to return your system to the state it was in prior to
turning on the Try mode. When you select this option, a pop-up window is displayed with the
following options: Reboot to discard changes and Do not reboot. If you select the Do not
reboot option, the Try&Decide feature remains on, and the changes will not be discarded.

Note
If you have chosen Discard Changes and rebooted the computer with multiple operating
systems installed, you won’t be able to boot other operating systems except the one used for
working in the Try mode. A second reboot will recover the original MBR and make other
operating systems bootable.

Try&Decide options and notifications

You can change Try&Decide options in the Try&Decide window. To restore the default values of the
settings, click Reset settings to default.

Protected partitions
To change this setting:

1. Click the partition letter next to the setting name. The Partition Selection window opens.
2. Select the partitions that you want to protect, and then click OK.

202 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 By default, Try&Decide protects the system partition (Disk C), though you may choose to protect
any other partitions in your system.

Storage for virtual changes

To change this setting:

1. Click the partition letter next to the setting name. The Storage for Virtual Changes window
opens.
2. Select the partition that you want to use as a storage for virtual changes, and then click OK.
By default, Try&Decide saves the information to a free space on Disk C.

Note
When choosing to protect more than one partition, you cannot select one of the partitions to be
protected to store virtual changes. In addition, you cannot select an external hard disk drive.

Notifications
To change the default notification settings, click Change alert settings. The Settings window opens.

l On free disk space remaining - If the amount of free space in the storage for virtual changes
becomes less than the specified value, the program displays a notification message.
l On time elapsed since Try&Decide started - The program will notify you if Try&Decide has been
working for longer than the period of time that you specified.

Try&Decide: typical use cases

The Try&Decide feature can help you in various circumstances, for example:

Software evaluation
Sometimes it may be useful to turn on the Try mode before installing new software. For example,
we recommend that you turn it on when you want to:

l Choose antivirus software.

There are known cases when installation of antivirus software cripples functionality of some
applications or they may even refuse to launch after antivirus installation. You can test a trial
version of the antivirus. If you encounter any problems, discard the changes in your system and
try antivirus software from another vendor.
l Install a trial version of a program.
It is well known that the "Add or Remove Programs" component of the Windows Control Panel
cannot give a complete guarantee of cleanly uninstalling applications. If you do not like the
program that you installed, discard the changes in your system. In this case, you can be sure that
Try&Decide removed the program without a trace.
l Install suspicious software.

203 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 If you do not trust the vendor of the software that you want to install, or when the source of the
software is unknown, turn on the Try mode before installing this software. If anything goes
wrong, discard the changes made in the Try mode.

File recovery
You have accidentally deleted some files and then emptied the Recycle Bin. Then you have
remembered that the deleted files contained important data and now you are going to try to
undelete them using the appropriate software. However, sometimes you may do something wrong
while trying to recover deleted files, making things worse than before trying to recover them. So you
can proceed as follows:

l Turn on the Try mode.

l Launch the file undelete utility.
l After the utility scans your disk in search of the deleted file or folder entries, it will present you
the deleted entries it has found (if any) and offer you the opportunity to save whatever it can
recover. There is always a chance that you might pick the wrong file and while recovering it the
utility may overwrite the very file you are trying to recover. If not for the Try&Decide, this error
would be fatal and the file would be lost irretrievably.
l But now you can just discard the changes made in the Try mode and make one more attempt to
recover the files after turning on the Try mode again. Such attempts may be repeated until you
are sure that you have done your best in trying to recover the files.

Web privacy
Suppose you do not want anybody to know, which Web sites you have visited or which pages you
have opened - we all have the right to privacy. But the problem is that to make your Web surfing
more comfortable and fast, the system stores this information and much more: cookies you have
received, search engine queries you have made, URLs you have typed, etc. in special hidden files.
And such information is not deleted completely when you clear your temporary Internet files, delete
cookies, clear history of the recently opened Web pages using the browser's tools. So snoopers may
be able to view the information using special software.

Turn on the Try mode and surf the Web as you please. Afterwards, if you want to remove all traces
of your activity, discard the changes made in the Try mode.

Acronis Secure Zone

The Acronis Secure Zone is a special secure partition that you can create on your computer for
storing backups. The Acronis Secure Zone has a FAT32 file system.

When you create an Acronis Secure Zone, it is displayed in the Other section of File Explorer. You
can navigate through the Acronis Secure Zone as an ordinary partition.

If Acronis Secure Zone is password-protected, any operation, except viewing version details,
requires entering the password.

204 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Acronis Secure Zone cleanup
If there is not enough space in the Acronis Secure Zone for a new backup, you can:

l Cancel the backup operation, increase the size of the Acronis Secure Zone, and then run the
backup again.
l Cancel the backup operation, manually delete some backups in the Acronis Secure Zone, and
then run the backup again.
l Confirm that you want to automatically delete the oldest backup of the same type (file-level or
disk-level) with all subsequent incremental and differential versions. After that, if free space is still
insufficient, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office asks for confirmation and will delete the next full
backup. This will repeat until there is enough free space for the new backup. If after deleting all
the previous backups there is still not enough space, the backup will be canceled.

To prevent the zone overflow:

1. Select a scheduled backup.

2. Click Options.
3. On the Advanced tab, expand the Error handling section.
4. Select the When not enough space in ASZ, delete the oldest backup check box.
5. Click OK.

Refer to Error handling for details.

You cannot use the Acronis Secure Zone as the storage for virtual system changes in the Try mode.
The Try&Decide data will be automatically cleaned up after you stop a Try&Decide session.

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office does not delete nonstop backup versions in the Acronis Secure
Zone automatically. Such versions can only be deleted manually. For more information see Acronis
Nonstop Backup data storage.

Creating and managing Acronis Secure Zone

1. Click the Start button —> Acronis (product folder) —> Acronis Secure Zone .
The Manage Acronis Secure Zone wizard opens.
2. Perform one of the following:
If you want to create the Acronis Secure Zone, specify its location and size.
If you want to modify the Acronis Secure Zone, select an action:
l Increase or decrease size
l Remove
l Change password
Then follow the wizard steps.
3. On the Finish step, click Proceed.

205 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Note
This operation may require a computer restart.

Acronis Secure Zone location

To specify a location for the Acronis Secure Zone

1. Select a hard disk drive to create the Acronis Secure Zone on.
2. Select one or more partitions from which unallocated and/or free space will be taken. The
chosen partitions will be resized if necessary to give space to the Acronis Secure Zone.

Note
The Acronis Secure Zone cannot be created on dynamic disks and volumes.

3. Click Next.

To increase or decrease the size of the Acronis Secure Zone

1. Select the partitions from which space will be used to increase the size of the Acronis Secure
Zone, or that will receive free space after the size of the Acronis Secure Zone is reduced. You can
also select partitions with unallocated space.
2. Click Next.

206 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Size of Acronis Secure Zone
To specify the size of the Acronis Secure Zone, drag the slider to the appropriate position or type an
exact value.

The minimum size is about 50 MB, depending on the geometry of the hard disk. The maximum size
is equal to the disk’s unallocated space plus the total free space on all partitions selected at the
previous step.

When creating/enlarging the Acronis Secure Zone, the program will first use the unallocated space.
If the unallocated space is not enough to achieve the desired size, the selected partitions will be
decreased in size. Resizing of partitions may require the computer to be rebooted.

When reducing the size of the Acronis Secure Zone, if there is any unallocated space on the hard
disk, it will be allocated to the selected partitions along with the space freed up from the Acronis
Secure Zone. Thus, no unallocated space will remain on the disk.

Warning!
Reducing a system partition to the minimum size may prevent your operating system from booting-
up.

207 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Acronis Secure Zone protection
You can set up password protection for the Acronis Secure Zone in order to prevent it from
unauthorized access.

The program will ask for the password at any operation relating to the Acronis Secure Zone such as
data backup and recovery, mounting images or validating backups in the Acronis Secure Zone,
resizing and deleting the Acronis Secure Zone.

To set a password for the Acronis Secure Zone

1. Select Set password.

2. Type the password in the Password field.
3. Retype the previously entered password in the Confirm field.
4. [Optional step] You can also select a secret question that will be asked in case you forget the
password. Select a secret question from the list and enter an answer to it.
5. Click Next to continue.

208 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Note
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office repair or update will not affect the password. However, if the
program is removed and then installed again while keeping the Acronis Secure Zone on the disk,
the password to the Acronis Secure Zone will be reset.

Removing Acronis Secure Zone

Warning!
Acronis Secure Zone deletion will automatically destroy all backups stored in the zone.

Select the partitions to which you want to add the space freed up from Acronis Secure Zone. If you
select several partitions, the space will be distributed proportionally to each partition’s size.

Also, you can choose to remove the Acronis Secure Zone while uninstalling the program.

Adding a new hard disk

If you do not have enough space for your data, you can either replace the old disk with a new
higher-capacity one, or add a new disk only to store data, leaving the system on the old disk.

To add a new hard disk

1. Shut down your computer, and then install the new disk.
2. Turn on your computer.
3. Click the Start button > Acronis (product folder) > Add New Disk.
4. Follow the wizard steps.
5. On the Finish step, ensure that the configured disk layout suits your needs, and then click
Proceed.

Selecting a hard disk

Select the disk that you have added to the computer. If you have added several disks, select one of
them and click Next to continue. You can add the other disks later by restarting the Add New Disk
Wizard.

Note
If there are any partitions on the new disk, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office will warn you that
these partitions will be deleted.

209 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Selecting initialization method
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office supports both MBR and GPT partitioning. GUID Partition Table
(GPT) is a new hard disk partitioning method providing advantages over the old MBR partitioning
method. If your operating system supports GPT disks, you can select the new disk to be initialized as
a GPT disk.

210 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l To add a GPT disk, click Initialize disk in GPT layout.
l To add an MBR disk, click Initialize disk in MBR layout.

After selecting the required initialization method click Next.

Creating new partitions

To use the space on a hard disk, it must be partitioned. Partitioning is the process of dividing the
hard disk's space into logical divisions which are called partitions. Each partition may function as a
separate disk with an assigned drive letter, its own file system, etc.

To create a new partition

1. On the Partition creation step of the wizard, select the unallocated space, and then click Create
new partition.
2. Specify the following settings for the partition being created:
l Size and position
l File system
l Partition type (available only for MBR disks)
l Partition letter and label
Refer to Partition settings for details.
3. Click Accept.

211 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Partition settings

Size
To resize the partition, do one of the following

l Point to the partition border. When the pointer becomes a double-headed arrow, drag the
pointer to enlarge or reduce the partition size.
l Type the desired partition size in the Partition Size field.

To relocate the partition, perform one of the following

l Drag the partition to a new position.

l Type the desired size in either the Free space before or Free space after field.

Note
When you create partitions, the program may reserve some unallocated space for system needs in
front of the created partitions.

File System
You can either leave the partition unformatted, or choose between the following file system types:

212 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l NTFS is a native file system for Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and later operating
systems. Choose it if you use these operating systems. Note, that Windows 95/98/Me and DOS
cannot access NTFS partitions.
l FAT 32 is an improved 32-bit version of the FAT file system that supports volumes up to 2 TB.
l FAT 16 is a DOS native file system. Most operating systems recognize it. However, if your disk
drive is more than 4 GB, it is not possible to format it in FAT16.
l Ext2 is a Linux native file system. It is fast enough, but it is not a journaling file system.
l Ext3 – officially introduced with Red hat Linux version 7.2, Ext3 is a Linux journaling file system. It
is forwards and backwards compatible with Linux Ext2. It has multiple journaling modes, as well
as broad, cross platform compatibility in both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.
l Ext4 is a new Linux file system. It has improvements in comparison to ext3. It is fully backward
compatible with ext2 and ext 3. However, ext3 has only partial forward compatibility with ext4.
l ReiserFS is a journaling file system for Linux. Generally it is more reliable and faster than Ext2.
Choose it for your Linux data partition.
l Linux Swap is a swap partition for Linux. Choose it if you want to add more swap space using
Linux.

Partition letter
Select a letter to be assigned to the partition. If you select Auto, the program assigns the first
unused drive letter in alphabetical order.

Partition label
Partition label is a name, assigned to a partition so that you can easily recognize it. For example, a
partition with an operating system could be called System, a data partition — Data, etc. Partition
label is an optional attribute.

Partition type (these settings are available only for MBR disks)
You can define the new partition as primary or logical.

l Primary - choose this parameter if you are planning to boot from this partition. Otherwise, it is
better to create a new partition as a logical drive. You can have only four primary partitions per
drive, or three primary partitions and one extended partition.

Note
If you have several primary partitions, only one will be active at a time, the other primary
partitions will be hidden and won’t be seen by the OS.

o Mark the partition as active - select this check box if you are planning to install an operating
system on this partition.
l Logical - choose this parameter if you don’t intend to install and start an operating system from
the partition. A logical drive is part of a physical disk drive that has been partitioned and allocated
as an independent unit, but functions as a separate drive.

213 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Security and Privacy Tools

Acronis DriveCleanser
Acronis DriveCleanser allows you to permanently destroy all data on selected hard disks and
partitions. For the destruction, you can use one of the preset algorithms or create your own. Refer
to Algorithm selection for details.

Why do I need it?

When you format your old hard drive before throwing it away, the information is not destroyed
permanently and it can still be retrieved. This is a way that your personal information can end up in
the wrong hands. To prevent this, we recommend that you use Acronis DriveCleanser when you:

l Replace your old hard drive with a new one and do not plan to use the old drive any more.
l Give your old hard drive to your relative or friend.
l Sell your old hard drive.

How to use Acronis DriveCleanser

To permanently destroy data on your disk

1. Click the Start button > Acronis (product folder) > Acronis DriveCleanser.
The Acronis DriveCleanser wizard opens.
2. On the Source selection step, select the disks and partitions that you want to wipe. Refer to
Source selection for details.
3. On the Algorithm selection step, select an algorithm that you want to use for the data
destruction. Refer to Algorithm selection for details.
4. [optional step] You can create your own algorithm. Refer to Creating custom algorithm for
details.
5. [optional step] On the Post-wiping actions step, choose what to do with the partitions and disk
when the data destruction is complete. Refer to Post-wiping actions for details.
6. On the Finish step, ensure that the configured settings are correct. To start the process, select
the Wipe the selected partitions irreversibly check box, and then click Proceed.

Warning!
Be aware that, depending on the total size of selected partitions and the selected data destruction
algorithm, the data destruction may take many hours.

Source selection
On the Source selection step, select partitions and disks where you want to destroy data:

214 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l To select partitions, click the corresponding rectangles. The red mark ( ) indicates that the
partition is selected.
l
To select an entire hard disk, click the disk icon ( ).

Note
Acronis DriveCleanser cannot wipe partitions on dynamic and GPT disks, so they will not be shown.

Algorithm selection
On the Algorithm selection step, perform one of the following:

l To use one of the preset algorithms, select the desired algorithm. Refer to Hard Disk Wiping
Methods for details.
l [For advanced users only] To create a custom algorithm, select Custom. Then continue creating
on the Algorithm definition step. Afterwards, you will be able to save the created algorithm to a
file with *.alg extension.
l To use a previously saved custom algorithm, select Load from file and select the file containing
your algorithm.

215 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Hard Disk Wiping methods
Information removed from a hard disk drive by non-secure means (for example, by simple Windows
delete) can easily be recovered. Utilizing specialized equipment, it is possible to recover even
repeatedly overwritten information.

Data is stored on a hard disk as a binary sequence of 1 and 0 (ones and zeros), represented by
differently magnetized parts of a disk. Generally speaking, a 1 written to a hard disk is read as 1 by
its controller, and 0 is read as 0. However, if you write 1 over 0, the result is conditionally 0.95 and
vice versa – if 1 is written over 1 the result is 1.05. These differences are irrelevant for the controller.
However, using special equipment, one can easily read the «underlying» sequence of 1's and 0's.

Information wiping methods

The detailed theory of guaranteed information wiping is described in an article by Peter Gutmann.
See "Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory" at
https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html.

No. Algorithm Passes Record

(writing
method)

1. United States 4 1 pass – randomly selected symbols to each byte of each sector, 2
Department of – complementary to written during the first pass; 3 – random
Defense symbols again; 4 – writing verification.
5220.22-M

216 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 No. Algorithm Passes Record
(writing
method)

2. United States: 4 1 pass – 0x01 to all sectors, 2 – 0x27FFFFFF, 3 – random symbol

NAVSO P-5239- sequences, 4 – verification.
26 (RLL)

3. United States: 4 1 pass – 0x01 to all sectors, 2 – 0x7FFFFFFF, 3 – random symbol

NAVSO P-5239- sequences, 4 – verification.
26 (MFM)

4. German: VSITR 7 Passes 1 – 6 – alternate sequences of: 0x00 and 0xFF; pass 7 –
0xAA; i.e. 0x00, 0xFF, 0x00, 0xFF, 0x00, 0xFF, 0xAA.

5. Russian: GOST 1 Logical zeros (0x00 numbers) to each byte of each sector for the
P50739-95 sixth to fourth security level systems.

Randomly selected symbols (numbers) to each byte of each sector

for the third to first security level systems.

6. Peter Gutmann's 35 Peter Gutmann's method is very sophisticated. It's based on his
method theory of hard disk information wiping (see Secure Deletion of
Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory).

7. Bruce Schneier's 7 Bruce Schneier offers a seven-pass overwriting method in his

method Applied Cryptography book. 1 pass – 0xFF, 2 – 0x00, and then five
times with a cryptographically secure pseudo-random sequence.

8. Fast 1 Logical zeros (0x00 numbers) to all sectors to wipe.

Creating custom algorithms

Algorithm definition
The Algorithm definition step shows you a template of the future algorithm.

The table has the following legend:

l The first column contains the type of operation (to write a symbol to disk; and to verify written).
l The second column contains the pattern of data to be written to disk.

Each line defines an operation that will be performed during a pass. To create your algorithm, add
as many lines to the table that you think will be enough for secure data destruction.

To add a new pass

217 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

1. Click Add. The Wiping Pass Adjustment window opens.

2. Choose an option:
l Write pattern
Enter a hexadecimal value, for example, a value of this kind: 0x00, 0xAA, or 0xCD, etc. These
values are 1 byte long, but they may be up to 512 bytes long. Except for such values, you may
enter a random hexadecimal value of any length (up to 512 bytes).

Note
If the binary value is represented by the 10001010 (0x8A) sequence, then the complementary
binary value will be represented by the 01110101 (0x75) sequence.

l Write a random number

Specify the length of the random value in bytes.
l Write complementary to previous pass pattern
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office adds a complementary value to the one written to disk
during the previous pass.
l Verify
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office verifies the values written to disk during the previous pass.
3. Click OK.

To edit an existing pass

1. Select the corresponding line, and then click Edit.

The Wiping Pass Adjustment window opens.

218 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Note
When you select several lines, the new settings will be applied to all of the selected passes.

2. Change the settings, and then click OK.

Saving algorithm to a file

1. On the Saving custom algorithm step, select Save to a file, and then click Next.
2. In the window that opens, specify the file name and location, and then click OK.

Post-wiping actions
In the Post-wiping actions window, you can select actions to be performed on the partitions selected
for data destruction. Acronis DriveCleanser offers you three options:

l No action — just destroy data using the algorithm selected below

l Delete partition — destroy data and delete partition
l Format — destroy data and format partition (default).

System Clean-up
The System Clean-up wizard enables you to securely remove all traces of your PC actions, including
user names, passwords, and other personal information.

It can carry out the following operations:

219 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l Securely destroy data in the Windows Recycle Bin.
l Remove temporary files from appropriate Windows folders.
l Clean up hard disk free space of any traces of information previously stored on it.
l Remove traces of file and computer searches on connected disks and computers in the local
area network.
l Clean the recently used documents list.
l Clean the Windows Run list.
l Clean the opened/saved files history.
l Clean the list of network places to which the user has connected using network credentials.
l Clean the Windows prefetch directory, where Windows stores information about programs you
have executed and run recently.

Note
Windows 7 and later operating systems do not store information on file and computer searches.
Furthermore, information on opened/saved files is stored differently in the registry, so the wizard
shows this information in a different way.

Note
Windows stores passwords until the session ends, so cleaning the list of network user credentials
will not take effect until you end the current Windows session by logging out or by rebooting the
computer.

To start the System Clean-up wizard, click the Start button —> Acronis (product folder) —> System
Clean-up.

After you start the wizard, it will search for any traces of user actions stored by Windows. When the
search is finished, its results will be available at the top of the wizard window.

220 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

You can view the search results and manually select the items you wish to remove.

Click the Click here hyperlink text to change the clean-up settings before proceeding.

Click Clean-up to launch removing the found items.

Clean-up settings
In the clean-up settings window you can change the clean-up settings for every system component.
Some of these settings apply to all components.

To change the clean-up settings for a component

l Expand the System Components item in the tree and select the component clean-up settings
which you need to change. You can enable or disable scanning of the component by the Clean-up
wizard. To do this, select or clear the Enable check box.
If required, you can also expand a component and customize the desired data destruction
method, files to clean, clean-up registry search strings you have used for finding computers in the
local network, etc. To do this, click the triangle near the component, select an option from the list
and specify the settings.
l After you set the desired components' properties, click OK to save your settings. These settings
will be used as default next time you launch the Clean-up wizard.

If you have already changed the clean-up settings before, you can always return to the program
defaults by clicking the Restore Defaults button.

System components:

l Recycle Bin
l Temporary files

221 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l Hard disk free space
l Find Computer list
l Find File list
l Recently Used Documents list
l Windows Run List
l Opened/saved files history
l User Credentials
l Windows Prefetch Directory

Default clean-up options

The default clean-up options are available by clicking the Click to change this setting… link on the
Data Destruction Method option page.

To change the default clean-up options

1. Choose on the tree the component clean-up settings which you need to change.
2. After you change the options, click OK to save your settings.

If you have already changed the clean-up settings before, you can always return to the program
defaults by clicking the Restore Defaults button.

General
By default, the summary dialog window is displayed after each clean-up procedure ends (the Show
summary check box is selected). If you do not need this window to be displayed, uncheck the box.

Clean-up options
System Clean-up utilizes a number of the most popular data destruction methods. Here, you can
select the common data destruction method which will be used by default for all other components.

The data destruction methods are described in detail in Hard Disk Wiping Methods of this guide.

Specific clean-up options

You can customize the following clean-up options:

l Data destruction method

l Default options
l Files
l Drive free space
l Computers
l Commands
l Network places filter

222 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Data destruction method
System Clean-up utilizes a number of the most popular data destruction methods. Here, you need
to select the desired data destruction method.

l Use common method - if you leave this parameter selected, the program will use the default
method (the initial setting is Fast method).
If you need another destruction method to be set as a default, click on the corresponding link.
l Use custom method for this component - selecting this parameter allows you to choose one of
the preset data destruction methods from the drop-down list.

The data destruction methods are described in detail in Hard Disk Wiping Methods of this guide.

Files
The Files setting defines the names of files to clean with System Clean-up wizard and can be used
with a search string.

Under the Windows operating system, a search string can represent a full or partial filename. A
search string can contain any alphanumeric symbols, including commas and Windows wildcard
symbols, and can have values similar to the following:

223 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l *.* – to clean all files with any file names and extensions.
l *.doc – to clean all files with a specific extension – Microsoft document files in this case .
l read*.* – to clean all files with any extensions, and names beginning with "read".
l read?.* – to clean all files having five-letter names and any extensions, names beginning with
"read"; the fifth letter is random.
The last search string, for example, will result in the removal of read1.txt, ready.doc files, but
readyness.txt will remain with its longer name (excluding the extension)

You can enter several different search strings separated by semicolons; for example:

*.bak;*.tmp;*.~~~ (without spaces between the search strings)

All files with names corresponding to at least one of the search strings will be cleaned.

Upon entering the Files setting value, you can browse the files matching the search strings. To do
this, click Show Files. You will see a window with the names of the found files. These files will be
cleaned.

Drive free space

Here you can manually specify physical and/or logical drives to clean up free space on. By default,
System Clean-up cleans up free space on all available drives.

If you want to change the settings of this parameter, you can use the Remove button to delete from
the list the drives you don't need to clean free space on.

If you wish to add these drives to the list again, use the Add button.

224 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Computers
The Computers setting is used for cleaning up the registry search strings you have used for finding
computers in the local network. These strings keep information on what has interested you in the
network. These items should also be deleted to maintain confidentiality.

The Computers setting is similar to the Files setting. It is a string that can contain any number of
full or partial computer names separated by semicolons. The deletion of computer search strings is
based on a comparison with the Computers setting value according to Windows rules.

If you simply need to delete all local network computer search strings (suitable in most cases), just
leave the default value of this setting. To restore the default settings:

l Select the Find Computer List component

l Make sure the Enable check box is selected
l Select the Computers setting; make sure its text box is clear.

As a result, all computer search strings will be deleted from the registry.

After entering the Computers setting value, you can browse the search strings found by the System
Clean-up Wizard in the registry. To do so, click Show Computers. You will see the window with full
and partial computer names searched for in the network. These items will be deleted.

225 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Setting commands
Here you can select the commands to remove during Windows Run List clean-up.

This template can contain any command names or their parts separated by semicolons, e.g.:

*help; cmd; reg*

This will result in removing commands with names corresponding to or containing any of the names
or parts of names you entered.

Network places filter

Here you can enter (separated by semicolons) any hostnames or IP addresses of network places,
servers, FTP servers, network shares, etc. to which you have made connection by supplying network
credentials (a user name and password). While entering hostnames and IP addresses you can use *
and ? wildcards.

Click Show network places to view the list of network places that you visited using the credentials
you want to delete.

226 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Preview
When the scanning is finished, its results will be available in the upper part of the wizard window. By
default, all system components are scanned for clean-up. If you want to customize which of the
system components should be scanned and which should not, change the default clean-up settings.

You can view the search results and manually select/unselect the items you wish to clean up/keep.
In order to help you with making the right choice, all the components are provided with brief
descriptions. Just click on the component's name and its description will be displayed in the right
side of the window.

To select/unselect a component

l Expand the System Components item in the System Clean-up tree and make sure that the
component you wish to clean up is selected. If you do not want to clean up a component, simply
clear its check box.
l If required, you can dig deeper by expanding a component and selecting/unselecting its contents.

Having specified the components for clean-up, click the Clean-up button to continue.

Note
Windows 7 and later operating systems do not store information on file and computer searches.
Furthermore, information on opened/saved files is stored in the registry differently, so the wizard
shows this information in a different way.

Clean-up progress
The operation status window reports about the state of the current operation.

The progress bar indicates the level of completion of the selected operation.

In some cases, the operation may take a long time to be completed. If this is the case, select the
Shutdown the computer after completion check box. When the operation finishes, Acronis Cyber
Protect Home Office will turn the computer off.

Mounting a backup image

Mounting images as virtual drives lets you access them as though they were physical drives. You can
mount local backups that contain partitions or entire disk drives, and then select which partitions to
mount. After mounting:

l A new disk appears in your system for every mounted partition.

l You can view the image contents in File Explorer and other file managers in read-only mode.

Note
The operations described in this section are supported only for the FAT and NTFS file systems.

227 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Note
You cannot mount a disk backup, if it is stored on an FTP server.

How to mount an image

1. In File Explorer, right-click the image file that you want to mount, and then click Mount.
The Mount wizard opens.
2. Select the backup for mounting by its creation date/time. Thus, you can explore the data state at
a certain moment.

3. [optional step] On the Drive letter step, select a letter to be assigned to the virtual disk from the
Mount letter drop-down list. If you do not want to mount a partition, select Do not mount in
the list or clear the partition's check box.
4. Click Proceed.
5. After the image is connected, the program will run File Explorer, showing its contents.

Unmounting an image
We recommend that you unmount the virtual disk after all necessary operations are finished, as
maintaining virtual disks takes considerable system resources.

To unmount an image

228 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

1. In File Explorer, right-click the disk icon and click Unmount.
2. Restart or shut down your computer.

Working with .vhd(x) files

Acronis backups (.tibx files) of disks or partitions can be converted to virtual hard disks (.vhd(x) files).

How to use .vhd(x) files

l You can boot your computer from the converted .vhd(x) file to test whether the backup is valid
and can be recovered to a bootable operating system.
l You can keep a converted .vhd(x) file for emergency situations. For example, if your computer
cannot start and you need to run it right away, you can boot from the .vhd(x) file.
l In Windows 7, you can mount a .vhd(x) file as an additional drive. The .vhd(x) file may contain any
partitions – system or non-system.
l You can run a converted .vhd(x) file as a virtual machine.

Limitations and additional information

l A file backup cannot be converted to a .vhd(x) file.
l To boot from a converted .vhd(x) file, it must contain:
o System partition of the same computer. You cannot boot other computers using the same .vhd
(x) file.
o Windows 7 or later operating system.
l Any changes you make to a booted or mounted .vhd(x) file are saved to it. If you boot from a .vhd
(x) file and make changes to the data that was not backed up, these changes will affect your live
system.
l The standalone versions of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office that start when booting from the
bootable media do not support conversion operations.
l Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office cannot convert .tibx files that contain dynamic volumes which
were originally located on more than one disk drive (for example, spanned or striped dynamic
volumes).

Converting Acronis backup

Users of the Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows 7 and later Windows versions can convert
a .tibx image of the system partition into the .vhd(x) format if they want to use the converted .vhd(x)
file for booting the operating system. Or, they may want to get the ability to mount images without
using Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

To convert an Acronis disk image (.tibx file) to a Windows backup (.vhd(x) file)

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

2. Go to the Backup section.

229 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

3. In the backup list, click the down arrow icon next to the backup that you want to convert, and
then click Convert to VHD.
If the backup is password-protected, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office will ask for it. Note that
the resulting .vhd(x) file will lose password protection.
4. Select the backup version that you want to convert.
Converting an incremental backup requires all the previous incremental backups and the original
full backup. Converting a differential backup requires the original full backup. The result of
conversion is always a full backup.
5. Specify the path to the file to be created.
The file can be directed to any local storage supported by Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office
(except the Acronis Secure Zone and CD/DVD). In addition, it can be directed to an SMB share.
6. [Optional step] While the backup is being converted, you can select the Start virtual machine
after completion check box. If it is selected, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office will restart your
computer and run Hyper-V virtual machine by using the created .vhd(x) file.

When a .tibx image selected for conversion contains partitions, for example, from two physical hard
disk drives, the program will create two .vhd(x) files corresponding to those physical drives.

Importing and exporting backup settings

Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office allows you to import and export the settings of your backups.
This may be desirable if you need to transfer the settings to a new PC after installing Acronis Cyber
Protect Home Office on that computer. Saving the settings may also be useful if you later decide to
upgrade to the next Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office version.

Such transfer will make configuring backups on the new PC much easier. You only need to export
the settings and then import them to the other PC. The settings are exported in the form of script
files.

The settings content can be different depending on a backup type. In case of "classic" disk and file
type backups the settings consist of the following items:

l list of items for backup

l backup options
l backup location
l schedule
l backup scheme
l automatic clean-up rules
l backup version naming rules

The settings of nonstop backup are as follows:

l list of items for nonstop protection

l Nonstop Backup data storage location (a list of locations, if there are several)

230 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Note
You cannot import online backup settings from one computer to another.

To export the backup settings

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

2. On the sidebar, click Settings > Backup settings transfer, click Save settings to file, and then
browse for the destination to save the script files with the settings.

To import the backup settings

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office on another computer.

2. On the sidebar, click Settings > Backup settings transfer, click Import settings from file, and
then show the path to the script files with the settings.

After importing the settings you may need to change some of them to suit the new environment.
For example, it may be necessary to change the list of items for backup, backup destination, etc.

If you want to copy some of your backups to another computer, it is recommended to export the
settings of those backups too. Thus you will not lose some of the copied backup's functionality.

Acronis Universal Restore

Acronis Universal Restore allows you to create a bootable system clone on different hardware. Use
this utility when recovering your system disk to a computer with a dissimilar processor, different
motherboard or a different mass storage device than in the system you originally backed up. This
may be useful, for example, after replacing a failed motherboard or when deciding to migrate the
system from one computer to another.

What problem does it solve?

A system disk image can be restored easily on the hardware where it was created or to identical
hardware. However, if you try to do it on a dissimilar hardware, the recovered system will fail to
boot. This is because the new hardware is incompatible with critical drivers included in the image.
The utility finds and installs drivers for devices that are critical for the operating system start-up,
such as storage controllers, motherboard, or chipset.

How do I use it?

Before you start recovery to dissimilar hardware, ensure that you have:

l Backup of your system disk or Entire PC backup

l Acronis bootable media
l Acronis Universal Boot media

231 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Note
If you have Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office and Acronis Universal Boot Media Builder installed
on your computer, you can place both Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office and Acronis Universal
Boot on the same media. Refer to Creating Acronis Universal Boot media for details.

To recover your system to dissimilar hardware:

1. Start your target computer by using Acronis bootable media, and then recover your system from
your system backup or Entire PC backup. Refer to Recovering your system to a new disk under
bootable media for details.
2. Start your target computer by using Acronis Universal Boot media, and then follow the on-screen
instructions to make your system bootable. Refer to Using Acronis Universal Restore for details.

Creating Acronis Universal Boot media

Acronis Universal Boot media is used to make your computer bootable after recovery to dissimilar
hardware. Refer to Acronis Universal Restore for details.

To create Acronis Universal Boot media

1. Start Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

2. In the Tools section, click Acronis Universal Restore.
3. Click Download to obtain Acronis Universal Boot Media Builder.
4. Run the downloaded file and install the media builder.
5. Plug in the USB flash drive or insert blank DVD that you want to make bootable.
6. To start Acronis Universal Boot Media Builder, perform one of the following:
l In the Tools section, click Acronis Universal Restore.
l Click the Start button, open the list of installed programs, and then click Run Universal Boot
Media Builder.
7. Ensure that:
l Linux-based media is selected as a bootable media type.
l Windows-like representation is selected as a way the disks and volumes are represented.

232 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

8. [Optional] Specify Linux kernel parameters. Refer to Bootable media startup parameters for
details.
9. Select the Acronis components to place on the media.

233 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 You can select 32-bit and/or 64-bit components. The 32-bit components can work on 64-bit
hardware. However, you need 64-bit components to boot a 64-bit computer that uses Unified
Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI).
To use the media on different types of hardware, select both types of components. When
booting a machine from the resulting media, you will be able to select 32-bit or 64-bit
components on the boot menu.
If Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office is installed on your computer, you can place it on the media
as well. In this case, you will have a single bootable media containing both components required
for recovery to dissimilar hardware.
10. Select a destination for the media:
l CD
l DVD
l USB flash drive
l ISO image file
You will need to specify the .iso file name and the destination folder.
When the .iso file is created, you can burn it onto a CD or DVD. For example, in Windows 7 and
later, you can do this using a built-in burning tool. In File Explorer, double-click the created ISO
image file, and then click Burn.
11. Specify the mass storage drivers to be used by Acronis Universal Boot.
You do not have to add the drivers now. You can do this later when you apply Acronis Universal
Boot to a computer.
12. Click Proceed.
When the media is created, unplug it from your computer. This is your Acronis Universal Boot
media.

Using Acronis Universal Restore

Preparation

Prepare drivers
Before applying Universal Restore to a Windows operating system, make sure that you have the
drivers for the new HDD controller and the chipset. These drivers are critical to start the operating
system. Use the CD or DVD supplied by the hardware vendor or download the drivers from the
vendor’s website. The driver files should have the *.inf, *.sys or *.oem extensions. If you download
the drivers in the *.exe, *.cab or *.zip format, extract them using a third-party application.

Check access to the drivers in bootable environment

Make sure you have access to the device with drivers when working under bootable media. Use
WinPE-based media if the device is available in Windows but Linux-based media does not detect it.

234 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Universal Restore settings

Automatic driver search

Specify where the program will search for the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL), HDD controller
driver and network adapter driver(s):

l If the drivers are on a vendor's disc or other removable media, turn on the Search removable
media.
l If the drivers are located in a networked folder or on the bootable media, specify the path to the
folder by clicking Add folder.

In addition, Universal Restore will search the Windows default driver storage folder (usually
WINDOWS/inf).

Mass storage drivers to install anyway

You need this setting if:

l The hardware has a specific mass storage controller such as RAID (especially NVIDIA RAID) or a
fibre channel adapter.
l If the automatic drivers search does not help to boot the system.

Specify the appropriate drivers by clicking Add driver. The drivers defined here will be installed,
with appropriate warnings, even if the program finds a better driver.

Universal Restore process

After you have specified the required settings, click OK.

When the process is complete, you will be able to configure the network connection and specify
drivers for the video adapter, USB and other devices.

235 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Troubleshooting

Resolving the most frequent issues

Here is the list of the most frequent issues that users encounter in Acronis Cyber Protect Home
Office. You can read the corresponding solutions in the Acronis Knowledge Base.

Signing in at program start fails

Error "You've exceeded the maximum number of activations for this serial number"

Error "This serial number is already registered to another account"

Files and folders are not shown when browsing backups in File Explorer

Error "Plug in external drive"

A backup to Acronis Cloud fails with error "Write error" or "Error occurred while writing the
file" or "FES request failed"

Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) after recovery to new hardware and error "Stop 0x0000007B"
due to missing drivers

See the full list of popular solutions at https://kb.acronis.com/true-image-known-solutions.

See also troubleshooting information about recovery fails at https://kb.acronis.com/content/46340.

Acronis System Report

When you contact the Acronis Support team, they will usually need information about your system
in order to resolve your problem. Sometimes getting the information is an inconvenient process and
may take a long time.

The Generate system report tool creates a system report that contains all the necessary technical
information and allows you to save the information to a file. When it’s necessary, you can attach the
created file to your problem description and send it to the Support team. This will simplify and
speed up the search for a solution.

To generate a system report, perform one of the following

l On the sidebar, click Help, and then click Generate system report.
l Press CTRL+F7. Note that you can use this key combination even when Acronis Cyber Protect
Home Office is performing any other operation.
l If you use Windows 11, click All apps > Acronis > Acronis System Report.
l If you use Windows 10, in the Start menu, click Acronis > Acronis System Report.
l If you use Windows 7 or 8, click Start > All Programs > Acronis > Acronis System Report.

After the report is generated

236 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

l To save the generated system report, click Save and in the opened window specify a location for
the created file.
l To exit to the main program window without saving the report, click Cancel.

You can place the tool on your bootable media as a separate component to generate a system
report when your computer cannot boot. After you boot from the media, you can generate the
report without running Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office. Simply plug in a USB flash drive and click
the Acronis System Report icon. The generated report will be saved on the USB flash drive.

To place the Acronis System Report tool on a bootable media

1. Select the Acronis System Report check box on the Rescue Media Content Selection page of
the Acronis Media Builder wizard.
2. Click Next to continue.

Creating a system report from the command line prompt

1. Run Windows Command Processor (cmd.exe) as an administrator.

2. Change the current directory to the Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office installation folder. To do
so, enter:

cd C:\Program Files (x86)\Acronis\CyberProtectHomeOffice

3. To create the system report file, enter:

SystemReport

The file SystemReport.zip will be created in the current folder.

If you want to assign a custom name to the report file, type the new name instead of <file
name>:

SystemReport.exe /filename:<file name>

To generate a system report under bootable media

1. Create Acronis bootable media, if you do not have it. Refer to Acronis Media Builder for details.
2. Arrange the boot order in BIOS so that your bootable media device (CD, DVDs or USB drive) is
the first boot device. Refer to Arranging boot order in BIOS for details.
3. Boot from the Acronis bootable media and select Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office.

Note
Instead of clicking Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office, you can plug in a USB flash drive and
click Acronis System Report. In this case, the program generates a report and automatically
saves it to the flash drive.

4. Click the arrow next to the Help icon ( ), and then select Generate system report.
5. After the report is generated, click Save and in the opened window specify a location for the

237 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

created file.
The program will archive the report into a zip file.

Acronis Smart Error Reporting

When an issue is caused by an error in the program's operation, Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office
displays an appropriate error message. The error message contains an event code and a short
description of the error.

When you have an Internet connection

To view the Acronis Knowledge Base article suggesting a solution(s) for correcting the error, click the
Knowledge Base button.

This will open a confirmation window that lists the information to be sent via Internet to the Acronis
Knowledge Base. Click OK to permit sending the information.

If in future you would like to send such information without confirmation, select the Always send
without confirmation check box.

When you do not have an Internet connection

1. In the error message window, click More details and write down the event code. The code may
look like this:
0x000101F6 - example of an ordinary event code.
0x00970007+0x00970016+0x00970002 - example of a composite event code. A code of this kind
may appear when an error occurred in a low-level program module and then propagated to
higher-level modules, resulting in errors in those modules as well.
2. When you establish Internet connection or if you can use another computer where Internet
connection is available, enter the vent code at: https://kb.acronis.com/errorcode/.

If the event code is not recognized in the Knowledge Base, the base does not yet contain an article
to resolve the issue. In such cases, open a trouble ticket with Acronis Customer Central.

Sending feedback to Acronis

We frequently improve our products and services by making them more functional, reliable, and
fast. Via the feedback form, you can point out inconveniences and defects that we should resolve to
make Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office even better. Please spend a couple of minutes to tell us
what you think about our product, suggest a new feature, or report a problem. We do read and
analyze all feedback.

Note
We do not reply to all feedback messages. If you need assistance with Acronis Cyber Protect Home
Office, contact the Support team.

238 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

To send feedback to Acronis

1. On the sidebar, click Help, and then click Send feedback. The feedback form opens.

2. Choose a feedback reason from the list.

3. Type your message.
4. Provide your name and email.
5. [Optional step] You can also attach a file and Acronis system report. Refer to Acronis System
Report for details.
We recommend that you attach the system report when you faced a serious error, for example,
when Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office stopped responding.
6. Click Send.

239 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

How to collect crash dumps
Because a crash of Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office or Windows can be caused by different
reasons, each crash case must be investigated separately. Acronis Customer Central would
appreciate if you could provide the following information:

If Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office crashes, please provide the following information

1. A description of the exact sequence of steps performed before you encountered the issue.
2. A crash dump. For information on how to collect such a dump, see the Acronis Support
Knowledge Base (KB) article at https://kb.acronis.com/content/27931.

If Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office causes a Windows crash

1. A description of the exact sequence of steps performed before you encountered the issue.
2. A Windows dump file. For information on how to collect such a dump see the Acronis Support KB
article at https://kb.acronis.com/content/17639.

If Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office hangs

1. A description of the exact sequence of steps performed before you encountered the issue.
2. A userdump of the process. See the Acronis Support KB article at
https://kb.acronis.com/content/6265.
3. The Procmon log. See the Acronis Support KB article at https://kb.acronis.com/content/2295.

If you cannot access the information, contact Acronis Customer Central for an FTP link for uploading
files.

This information will speed up the process of finding a solution.

Acronis Customer Experience Program

Acronis Customer Experience Program (CEP) is a new way to allow Acronis customers to contribute
to the features, design and development of Acronis products. This program enables our customers
to provide us with various information, including information about the hardware configuration of
your host computer and/or virtual machines, the features you use most (and least), and the nature
of the problems you face. Based on this information, we will be able to improve the Acronis
products and the features you use most often.

To join or leave Acronis Customer Experience Program

1. On the sidebar, click Settings.

2. To leave the program, clear the Participate in the Acronis Customer Experience Program
check box.

If you choose to participate, the technical information will be automatically collected every 90 days.
We will not collect any personal data, like your name, address, phone number, or keyboard input.

240 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Participation in the CEP is voluntary, but the end results are intended to provide software
improvements and enhanced functionality to better meet the needs of our customers.

241 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Glossary
A method for protecting data from software
malfunction, virus attack, operator error
Acronis Active Protection eliminates the need for a separate media or
network connection to back up or recover the
A technology that protects data from
data Limitations: 1) The Acronis Secure Zone
ransomware, malicious software that blocks
cannot be created on a dynamic disk. 2) The
access to some files or an entire system and
Acronis Secure Zone is not available as a
demands a ransom for unblocking. Based on a
location for backups in the recovery
heuristic approach, this technology monitors
environment when you start from bootable
processes on a computer in real- time mode
media, through Startup Recovery Manager or
and informs the user about attempts to encrypt
BartPE.
data on the computer. In case files are
encrypted, they can be recovered from the
temporary copies or backups. Acronis Startup Recovery Manager

A protection tool that allows to start standalone

Acronis Drive version of at boot time when F11 is pressed.
Startup Recovery Manager eliminates the need
A virtual drive that contains both local and
for bootable media. Startup Recovery Manager
cloud archives. The drive is accessible in File
is especially useful for mobile users. If a failure
Explorer under Favorites and provides access
occurs, the user reboots the machine, hits F11
to the archived files, in read-only mode.
on prompt "Press F11 for Startup Recovery
Manager…" and performs data recovery in the
Acronis Notary
same way as with ordinary bootable media.
A technology that allows user to check if a Limitations: cannot be organized on a dynamic
notarized file was modified since the time it disk; requires manual configuration of boot
was backed up. Notary calculates a hash code loaders, such as LILO and GRUB; requires re-
based on hash codes of the files selected for activation of third-party loaders.
notarization, and then sends the hash code to a
Blockchain- based database. The Blockchain Archive
technology guarantees that the hash code will
A file created as a result of an archiving
not be changed. Therefore, the file authenticity
operation. The file includes a set of
can easily be verified by comparing the hash in
compressed files that a user selects for
the database and the hash of the file that you
archiving. Archives can be stored in Cloud or
want to check.
local storage, such as an external hard drive or
NAS, and they are accessible in read-only mode
Acronis Secure Zone
on a virtual Acronis Drive.
A secure partition for storing backups on a
hard disk. Advantages: enables recovery of a Archiving operation
disk to the same disk where the disk's backup
An operation that compresses files that you
resides offers a cost- effective and handy
select and moves them to Cloud or local

242 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

storage, such as an external hard drive or NAS.
Backup version chain
The main purpose of the operation is to free up
space on a hard drive by moving old or large Sequence of minimum two backup versions
files to different storage. After completion, the that consist of the first full backup version and
files are deleted from their original locations the subsequent one or more incremental or
and accessible in read-only mode on a virtual differential backup versions. Backup version
Acronis Drive. chain continues till the next full backup version
(if any).

B
Bootable media
Backup
A physical media (CD, DVD, USB drive, or other
The same as Backup operation. A set of backup media supported by a machine BIOS as a boot
versions created and managed by using device) that contains standalone version of
backup settings. A backup can contain multiple Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office. Bootable
backup versions created using full and media is most often used to recover an
incremental backup methods. Backup versions operating system that cannot start, to access
belonging to the same backup are usually and back up the data that has survived in a
stored in the same location. corrupted system, to deploy an operating
system on bare metal, to create basic or
Backup operation dynamic volumes on bare metal, or to back up
sector- by- sector a disk that has an
An operation that creates a copy of the data
unsupported file system.
that exists on a machine's hard disk for the
purpose of recovering or reverting the data to
a specified date and time. D
Data synchronization
Backup settings
Data synchronization is a process of keeping
A set of rules configured by a user when data identical in two or more synchronized
creating a new backup. The rules control the folders. These folders may be located on the
backup process. Later you can edit the backup same computer or on different computers
settings to change or optimize the backup connected via a local network or via the
process. Internet. When you create, copy, modify or
delete a file or a subfolder in your sync folder,
Backup version the same action is automatically done in the
other sync folders. And vice versa - when
The result of a single backup operation.
something changes in the other sync folders,
Physically, it is a file or a set of files that
the same change is done in your folder.
contains a copy of the backed up data as of a
specific date and time. Backup version of files
created by Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office Differential backup
have a .tibx extension. The TIBX files resulting A backup method used for saving data changes
from consolidation of backup versions are also that occurred since the last full backup version
called backup versions.

243 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

within a backup. A backup process that creates
Incremental backup version
a differential backup version.
A backup version that stores changes to the

Differential backup version data against the latest backup version. You
need access to other backup versions from the
A differential backup version stores changes to same backup to restore data from an
the data against the latest full backup version. incremental backup version.
You need access to the corresponding full
backup version to recover the data from a
differential backup version.
M
Mobile backup
Disk backup (Image)
A backup that contains files from a mobile
A backup that contains a sector-based copy of device, such as a smartphone or tablet.
a disk or a partition in packaged form.
Normally, only sectors that contain data are N
copied. provides an option to take a raw image,
that is, copy all the disk sectors, which enables Nonstop backup
imaging of unsupported file systems.
Nonstop backup actually is a disk/partition or
file backup that is created using the Acronis
F Nonstop Backup feature. This is a set of one
full backup version and a sequence of
Full backup
incremental backup versions that are created
A backup method that is used to save all the at short intervals. It gives almost continuous
data selected to back up. A backup process that protection of data, that is, it allows recovery of
creates a full backup version. previous data state at any recovery point you
need.
Full backup version
Nonstop protection
A self- sufficient backup version containing all
data chosen for backup. You do not need Nonstop protection - the process that the
access to any other backup version to recover Nonstop Backup feature performs when it is
the data from a full backup version. turned on.

I Notarization

Incremental backup A process of "remembering" a file state and

defining this state as authentic. During
A backup method used for saving data changes notarization, Acronis Notary calculates a hash
that occurred since the last backup version (of code based on hash codes of the files selected
any type) within a backup. A backup process for notarization, and then sends the hash code
that creates an incremental backup version. to a Blockchain-based database.

244 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Notarized backup Sync

A backup that contains files notarized with The same as Data synchronization. Sync
Acronis Notary. settings which were configured on the sync
owner's computer. A created sync is managed
Notarized file using the corresponding sync box. Sync
creation does not mean start of sync process.
A file that was notarized with Acronis Notary. A
Other users may join a created sync.
file becomes notarized after adding it to a
notarized backup and sending its hash code to
a Blockchain-based database.
V
Validation
O An operation that checks whether you will be
Online backup able to recover data from a particular backup
version. For a full backup version, the program
Online backup - a backup that is created using
validates the full backup version only. For a
Acronis Online Backup. Online backups are
differential backup version, the program
stored in a special storage named Cloud,
validates the initial full backup version and the
accessible over the Internet. The main
selected differential backup version. For an
advantage of an online backup is that all
incremental backup version, the program
backups are stored on the remote location. It
validates the initial full backup version, the
gives a guarantee that all backed up data will
selected incremental backup version, and the
be safe independently of a user local storages.
whole chain (if any) of backup versions to the
selected incremental backup version. If the
R chain contains one or more differential backup
versions, the program validates (in addition to
Recovery
the initial full backup version and the selected
Recovery is a process of returning of a incremental backup version) only the most
corrupted data to a previous normal state from recent differential backup version in the chain
a backup. and all subsequent incremental backup
versions (if any) between the differential

S backup version and the selected incremental

backup version.
Suspicious process

Acronis Active Protection uses behavioral Version of synced file

heuristics and analyzes chains of actions done
A state of a file which is located in a sync folder
by a program (a process), which is then
after each modification of this file. File versions
compared with the chain of events in a
may be stored on Acronis Cloud.
database of malicious behavior patterns. If the
program acts similar to ransomware behavior
and tries to modify a user's files, it is
considered as suspicious.

245 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Index
Acronis Secure Zone 204
1
Acronis Secure Zone cleanup 205
1. Entire PC backup “Two full versions” 65
Acronis Secure Zone location 206

2 Acronis Secure Zone protection 208

Acronis Smart Error Reporting 238

2. File backup “Daily incremental version +
weekly full version” 65 Acronis Startup Recovery Manager 197

Acronis System Report 236

3
Acronis Universal Restore 110, 231
3. Disk backup “Full version every 2 months +
Activating Acronis Cyber Protect Home
differential version twice a month” 66
Office 16
32-bit or 64-bit components 75
Active protection 154

A Adding a new device to Online Dashboard 149

About recovery of dynamic/GPT disks and Adding a new hard disk 209

volumes 124 Adding an existing backup to the list 88

About the Sync feature 164 Adding drivers to an existing .wim image 189

Accessing your archived files 147 Additional information 198

Acronis account 31 Advanced settings 59

Acronis ASign 93 Algorithm definition 217

Acronis bootable media startup Algorithm selection 215

parameters 188
Anti-ransomware protection 154
Acronis Cloud 18
Antivirus scans 158
Acronis Cloud Backup Download 184
Archiving data 143
Acronis Customer Experience Program 240
Archiving your data 145
Acronis DriveCleanser 214
Arranging boot order in BIOS or UEFI BIOS 127
Acronis Media Builder 185
Authentication settings 42
Acronis Mobile 55
Automatic driver search 235
Acronis Nonstop Backup 43

Acronis Nonstop Backup data storage 44 B

Acronis patented technologies 9 Backing up all data on your PC 23

Backing up data 51

246 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Backing up data remotely 150

Backing up disks and partitions 51 C

Backing up files and folders 52 Changed Block Tracker (CBT) 39

Backing up mobile devices 54 Check access to the drivers in bootable

environment 234
Backing up Office 365 data 56
Clean-up options 222
Backing up your computer 20
Clean-up progress 227
Backing up your files 26
Clean-up settings 221
Backup activity and statistics 84
Cleaning up backup versions automatically 94
Backup file naming 46
Cleaning up backup versions manually 94
Backup operations menu 82
Cleaning up backups, backup versions, and
Backup options 57
replicas 93
Backup protection 70
Cleaning up local backups manually has the
Backup reserve copy 74 following scheme 11

Backup schemes 11, 60 Cleaning up replica versions automatically 94

Backup splitting 73 Cleaning up space on Acronis Cloud 95

Backup to various places 88 Cleaning up TIBX format backups 11

Backup validation option 73 Clone Disk wizard 169

Backups created in Acronis True Image (2020 Cloning a disk 28

or 2021) and Acronis Cyber Protect
Cloning your hard drive 27
Home Office 10
Cloud archiving vs. Online backup 144
Basic concepts 34
Compression level 78
Before you start 28
Computer restart 139
BIOS-booted system, GPT, no Windows 121,
176 Computer shutdown 78

BIOS-booted system, GPT, UEFI supported 120, Computers 225

176
Configuring Active Protection 156
BIOS-booted system, MBR, no Windows 119,
Configuring Antivirus scans 159
175
Configuring Protection exclusions 162
BIOS-booted system, MBR, UEFI not
supported 118, 174 Converting Acronis backup 229

BIOS-booted system, MBR, UEFI Copyright statement 9

supported 119, 174 Creating a sync 166
Built-in store 19 Creating Acronis bootable media 22, 186

247 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Creating Acronis Universal Boot media 232

Creating an .iso file from a .wim file 191 E

Creating an Acronis Survival Kit 24 Edit user command for backup 72

Creating and managing Acronis Secure Edit user command for recovery 138
Zone 205
Email notification 67, 141
Creating custom algorithms 217
Email notifications 151
Creating new partitions 211
Encryption 146
Custom schemes 63
Error handling 76

Error handling for Cloud backups and

D
replicas 77
Daily backup parameters 59
Example of recovery to a UEFI system 125
Data archiving options 146
Examples of custom schemes 65
Data center 146
Excluding items from backup 68
Data destruction method 223
Excluding items from cloning 172
Data types 164

Deciding where to store your backups 40 F

Default clean-up options 222 FAQ about backup, recovery and cloning 49

Deleting a sync 168 File-level security settings for backup 77

Deleting an entire backup 96 File Explorer 165

Deleting an entire backup and its replica 93 File recovery 204

Deleting an entire backup replica 94 File recovery options 139

Deleting the versions of a backup replica to File System 212

cloud 97
Files 223
Deleting the versions of a backup to cloud 96
Free disk space threshold 67, 141
Differential method 38
FTP connection 41
Disk cloning and migration 169
Full method 37
Disk cloning utility 169
Full, incremental and differential backups 37
Disk recovery from Cloud 128

Disk recovery mode 138 G

Downloading Protection updates 162 General 222

Drive free space 224 General limitations 17

Getting started 20

248 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Getting started with Acronis Cloud 32
L
H
Laptop power settings 81
Hard Disk Wiping methods 216
Limitations and additional information 229
How Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office uses
Limitations in using Try&Decide 200
the Blockchain technology 91
Limitations on operations with dynamic
How do I use it? 231
disks 14
How it works 43, 128
Local destination of mobile backups 55
How to collect crash dumps 240

How to enable UEFI in BIOS? 113 M

How to get access to a password-protected Making sure that your bootable media can be
backup 71 used when needed 192

How to migrate an original system to a larger Managing custom backup schemes 64

hard drive? 114
Managing detected issues 161
How to mount an image 228
Managing files in Quarantine 161
How to recover a deleted file 167
Managing your subscription licenses
How to use .vhd(x) files 229 manually 17

How to use Acronis DriveCleanser 214 Manual partitioning 171

How to use the default exclusion settings 68 Manual verification of a file's authenticity 92

How Try&Decide works after a computer Mass storage drivers to install anyway 235
restart 199
Migrating to SSD using the backup and
How we ensure security of your data 33 recovery method 182

Migrating your system from an HDD to an

I SSD 180

Image creation mode 70 Migration method 118, 174

Importing and exporting backup settings 230 Minimum system requirements 11

Incremental method 37 Monthly backup parameters 59

Installing and uninstalling Acronis Cyber Mounting a backup image 227

Protect Home Office 14

Integration with Windows 47 N

Introduction 10 Naming convention for backup files created

before Acronis True Image 2020 46

Naming convention for backup files created in

249 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

 Acronis True Image (2020 or 2021) and Pre/Post commands for backup 72
Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office 46
Pre/Post commands for recovery 138
Network connection transfer rate 79
Preparation 234
Network places filter 226
Prepare drivers 234
Nonstop Backup - Frequently asked
Preparing a new disk for backup 41
questions 45
Preparing for recovery 99
Nonstop Backup limitations 43
Preview 227
Notarized backup 89
Protected partitions 202
Notifications 203
Protecting family data 149
Notifications for backup operation 66
Protecting your system 20
Notifications for recovery operation 141
Protection 153

O Protection of replicated data 87

One-time cleanup 97 Purchasing the full version 18

Online backup protection 71

R
Operation priority 79, 140
Real-time Protection 155
Operations with backups 82
Recovering data 99
Other requirements 12
Recovering data with Online Dashboard 151
Overwrite file options 139
Recovering disks and partitions 99

P Recovering files and folders 133

Partition label 213 Recovering Office 365 data 136-137

Partition layouts 114 Recovering partitions and disks 111

Partition letter 213 Recovering your computer 29

Partition properties 112 Recovering your system after a crash 99

Partition settings 212 Recovering your system from Acronis

Cloud 129
Partition style after recovery 125
Recovering your system to a new disk under
Partition type (these settings are available only
bootable media 104
for MBR disks) 213
Recovering your system to the same disk 100
Performance of backup operation 78
Recovery of basic volumes and disks 124
Performance of recovery operation 140
Recovery of dynamic volumes 124
Post-wiping actions 219
Recovery options 137

250 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Remote storage 32 Specific clean-up options 222

Removable media settings 75 Splitting backups on the fly 88

Removing Acronis Secure Zone 209 SSD size 180

Removing data from Acronis Cloud 96 Storage for virtual changes 203

Replicating backups to Acronis Cloud 86 Storage types 164

Replication activation 87 Subscription information 33

Resolving the most frequent issues 236 Supported file systems 13

Retention rules 43 Supported Internet connection types 13

Reverting to a previous file version 167 Supported operating systems 12

Supported storage media 14

S
Sync icons 165
Saving algorithm to a file 219
Synchronization 17
Scheduling 58
Synchronizing data 164
Searching backup content 135
System Clean-up 219
Security and Privacy Tools 214
System requirements and supported media 11
Selecting a data center for backup 80

Selecting a hard disk 209 T

Selecting initialization method 210 Table 1. Destination disk is larger than 2

TB 115
Selecting video mode when booting from the
bootable media 195 Table 2. Destination disk is less than 2 TB 117

Sending feedback to Acronis 238 Technical Support 19

Setting commands 226 The Activity tab 84

Sharing data 148 The Backup tab 85

Signing a file 93 The difference between file backups and

disk/partition images 35
Single version scheme 61
The notification area 165
Size 212
The Protection dashboard 153
Size of Acronis Secure Zone 207
Too many activations issue 16
Snapshot for backup 79
Tools 184
Software evaluation 203
Trial version information 17
Sorting backups in the list 86
Troubleshooting 42, 236
Source selection 214

251 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Try&Decide 199 Version chain scheme 62

typical use cases 203 Versions of synchronized files 167

Try&Decide options and notifications 202 Videoconference app protection 162

Trying to determine the crash cause 99 Vulnerability assessment 160

U W

UEFI-booted system, GPT, no Windows 123, Web application 33

179
Web filtering 156
UEFI-booted system, GPT, UEFI supported 123,
Web privacy 204
179
Weekly backup parameters 59
UEFI-booted system, MBR, no Windows 122,
178 What if recovery has been interrupted 129

UEFI-booted system, MBR, UEFI not What is Acronis ASign? 93

supported 121, 177 What is Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office? 10
UEFI-booted system, MBR, UEFI What is Blockchain? 90
supported 122, 177
What is data archiving? 143
Unified Extensible Firmware Interface
(UEFI) 113 What is excluded from archives? 144

Universal Restore process 235 What is family data protection? 149

Universal Restore settings 235 What is UEFI? 113

Unmounting an image 228 What items can be recovered? 136

Upgrading Acronis Cyber Protect Home What problem does it solve? 231

Office 18 What to do if Acronis Cyber Protect Home

Upon event execution parameters 60 Office does not recognize your SSD 180

User interface language 20 What to do if the above suggestions do not

help 182
Using Acronis Universal Restore 234
What you can and cannot synchronize 164
Using Blockchain technology 90
What you can exclude and how 69
Using Try&Decide 201
When the recovery is complete 110

V When Try&Decide can help 199

Validating backups 87 When you do not have an Internet

connection 238
Validation option 139
When you have an Internet connection 238
Verifying file authenticity 91
Where can I find these apps? 55

252 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023

Which backups retain TIB format 11

Which migration method to choose 180

Why back up Office 365 data? 56

Why do I need it? 27, 214

Why replicate? 86

Why UEFI? 113

Wi-Fi networks for backup to Acronis Cloud 81

Wizards 48

Working with .vhd(x) files 229

253 © Acronis International GmbH, 2003-2023