250GB external HD - Acronis and growing file collection

A

alo

Hello...
I am running Acronis TI V11 here on my home setup. Did a full HD
backup of my C drive, creating a disk image on a 2nd HD. A one off
copy of my system (which in the past has gotten me out of trouble
easily and quickly).

Now as an experiment I have attached a 250GB external HD (Hawkings
unit) which is networked to my system.

I have created another image on this of my C drive. Now I have two
disk images of a sweetly running WinXP pro system.

I then wanted Acronis to backup nightly my C drive, so I could always
restore my system with a very recent backup (instead of one a few
weeks old)

At this point I am not too sure if I went for an incremental backup
or a differential one!

Well besides the original backup I now have 8 (and growing nightly)
backups, and quite large files (from 200 MB files to 6 GB ones), at
this rate my 250 MB external HD will be full fairly quickly.

I was hoping that Acronis, besides creating the original backup, would
then produce another backup file that would be altered on a nightly
basis, instead of creating a fresh file each night.

I take it either my expectations were wrong, or I have not chosen the
correct backup procedure... or does it not work like this?

Thanks
 
R

Rod Speed

alo said:
Hello...
I am running Acronis TI V11 here on my home setup. Did a full HD
backup of my C drive, creating a disk image on a 2nd HD. A one off
copy of my system (which in the past has gotten me out of trouble
easily and quickly).

Now as an experiment I have attached a 250GB external HD (Hawkings
unit) which is networked to my system.

I have created another image on this of my C drive. Now I have two
disk images of a sweetly running WinXP pro system.

I then wanted Acronis to backup nightly my C drive, so I could always
restore my system with a very recent backup (instead of one a few
weeks old)

At this point I am not too sure if I went for an incremental backup
or a differential one!

Well besides the original backup I now have 8 (and growing nightly)
backups, and quite large files (from 200 MB files to 6 GB ones), at
this rate my 250 MB external HD will be full fairly quickly.

I was hoping that Acronis, besides creating the original backup, would
then produce another backup file that would be altered on a nightly
basis, instead of creating a fresh file each night.

Nope, that type of backup does create separate files, essentially so
you can restore from any level of the backup. That can be handy at
times when you cant be sure when a problem developed in the system
being backed up and you want to try the various backups to see when
the problem was introduced to the system being backed up.
I take it either my expectations were wrong, or
I have not chosen the correct backup procedure...

Yes, you should have told it to do a full backup every day to get the result you want.
or does it not work like this?

That is correct, it doesnt do what you want, by design.
 
A

alo

Nope, that type of backup does create separate files, essentially so
you can restore from any level of the backup. That can be handy at
times when you cant be sure when a problem developed in the system
being backed up and you want to try the various backups to see when
the problem was introduced to the system being backed up.


Yes, you should have told it to do a full backup every day to get the result you want.


That is correct, it doesnt do what you want, by design.


Well a full backup is what I want then...... Thanks
 
G

Gotde T Shirt

Hello...
I am running Acronis TI V11 here on my home setup. Did a full HD
backup of my C drive, creating a disk image on a 2nd HD. A one off
copy of my system (which in the past has gotten me out of trouble
easily and quickly).

Now as an experiment I have attached a 250GB external HD (Hawkings
unit) which is networked to my system.

I have created another image on this of my C drive. Now I have two
disk images of a sweetly running WinXP pro system.

I then wanted Acronis to backup nightly my C drive, so I could always
restore my system with a very recent backup (instead of one a few
weeks old)

At this point I am not too sure if I went for an incremental backup
or a differential one!

Well besides the original backup I now have 8 (and growing nightly)
backups, and quite large files (from 200 MB files to 6 GB ones), at
this rate my 250 MB external HD will be full fairly quickly.

I was hoping that Acronis, besides creating the original backup, would
then produce another backup file that would be altered on a nightly
basis, instead of creating a fresh file each night.

I take it either my expectations were wrong, or I have not chosen the
correct backup procedure... or does it not work like this?

To overcome the problem of backups quickly filling the backup drive you
can define what Acronis TI refers to as a 'backup location' and specify
quota rules in terms of backup size and/or number of backups. You then
create your scheduled backup task and specify the backup location as the
destination. Acronis TI will manage the date/time-based naming of backup
files and enforce the quota rules each time it runs the backup task,
thereby managing the storage area for you automatically.

For example, define a backup location with a quota of three backups.
Schedule a daily full backup to that location. From day 4 onwards you will
have 3 generations of backups maintained automatically on a rolling basis.
 

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