Incremental backup hogging my external hard drive

[Rob W]

Hi,
I'm new to using Acronis, but I'm having a problem: I expected the incremental backup to automatically adjust disc space for new images. What I just found is that my external hard drive has become completely filled with incremental images, and there's no space to do a new backup.

I read through a few posts, and it sounds like (if I'm not mistaken) you need to keep every single old incremental backup for the latest one to restore.

Now this is either my misunderstanding, or the program is a bit screwy. Or maybe I'm not setting up the defaults correctly, but in fact I used the "recommended" defaults set up by Acronis.

My question is: how exactly do I back up my hard drive to the external hard drive so that the external drive does not quickly become filled?

This is what my ext. hard drive looks like after I deleted "Fullbackup 13" through "Fullbackup38". Now Acronis restarted the last backup that I cancelled because of lack of space, and is actively writing "FullBackup13 and FullBackup14".

FullBackup1.tib
FullBackup2.tib
FullBackup3.tib
FullBackup4.tib
FullBackup5.tib
FullBackup6.tib
FullBackup7.tib
FullBackup8.tib
FullBackup9.tib
FullBackup10.tib
FullBackup11.tib
FullBackup12.tib
FullBackup13.tib
FullBackup14.tib

Does Acronis just keep adding to the end of the list forever? What are you supposed to save, and what can you safely delete? If the external hard drive fills, do you need to delete EVERYTHING and start with a new Full Backup? It seems this should have been made more clear in the instructions.

I'd appreciate any help the forum can give.

Rob W

[foghorne]

Hi Rob,

there are a number of solutions to this, many of them discussed in earlier threads. Assuming you don't want to use differentials, here are two possible solutions

1. Use the secure zone, this will manage your backups based upon its fixed size. I understand the way it does this is that when it reaches the point where there is no more room it automatically creates a new full backup. This overwrites the one which was there and orphans the incremental ones. In time these get overwritten. I personally don't like the secure zone option as I think it *can* encourage users to save their backups on the same disk as their data. Each to their own.

2. Another way of doing it is to have two schedules. I will assume that you wish to backup each day. Create an incremental one which backs up every day and a full one which backs up every week. That means that you never have more than 7 files and this manages your disk space.

Of course at the point that your full one is created you would lose the ability to backup data from (say) 3 days ago. A solution to this is to have four subdirectories representing the four weeks in the month. Create an incremental schedule which creates daily image in each one. Then create four full ones (one in each subdir) scheduled to run on the 1st, 8th, 15th,22nd if each month. This means that once you have run for a month your disk usage will flatten out and you would have rolling daily backups going back for the previous month.

That might sound long winded, but it isn't hard to setup and it works really well. However, I think that some inbuilt functionality (other than the secure zone) which manages backups like this is long overdue in the product.

F.


-{ Quote: "Hi,
I'm new to using Acronis, but I'm having a problem: I expected the incremental backup to automatically adjust disc space for new images. What I just found is that my external hard drive has become completely filled with incremental images, and there's no space to do a new backup.

I read through a few posts, and it sounds like (if I'm not mistaken) you need to keep every single old incremental backup for the latest one to restore.

Now this is either my misunderstanding, or the program is a bit screwy. Or maybe I'm not setting up the defaults correctly, but in fact I used the "recommended" defaults set up by Acronis.

My question is: how exactly do I back up my hard drive to the external hard drive so that the external drive does not quickly become filled?

This is what my ext. hard drive looks like after I deleted "Fullbackup 13" through "Fullbackup38". Now Acronis restarted the last backup that I cancelled because of lack of space, and is actively writing "FullBackup13 and FullBackup14".

FullBackup1.tib
FullBackup2.tib
FullBackup3.tib
FullBackup4.tib
FullBackup5.tib
FullBackup6.tib
FullBackup7.tib
FullBackup8.tib
FullBackup9.tib
FullBackup10.tib
FullBackup11.tib
FullBackup12.tib
FullBackup13.tib
FullBackup14.tib

Does Acronis just keep adding to the end of the list forever? What are you supposed to save, and what can you safely delete? If the external hard drive fills, do you need to delete EVERYTHING and start with a new Full Backup? It seems this should have been made more clear in the instructions.

I'd appreciate any help the forum can give.

Rob W" }-

[Rob W]

Thanks, I think I'm getting the idea now. Frankly, I'm a bit stunned that this was not built into the software to begin with. Or that I had an impossible time trying to get the "Help" file to explain this.

I think I'll take your second suggestion and make the four directories. This makes the most sense. I agree with you about the secure zone: what if the hard drive crashes and can't be resuscitated?

So, now has the Old World set forth to rescue the New?

Rob W
Chicago

One question: external hard drive space. I purchased an external hard drive with only 120 Gigs of memory, and my laptop has 40 Gig of stuff on it. A normal compression backup takes 25 Gig, and an incremental about 13 Gig, so it looks like I'm woefully short of space here. The method you described above would seem to need at least 25x4 plus 13x6x4, or at least 500 Gig of backup, am I correct?

[foghorne]

-{ Quote: "
I think I'll take your second suggestion and make the four directories. This makes the most sense. I agree with you about the secure zone: what if the hard drive crashes and can't be resuscitated?" }-

Although, if you have two drives you could put the secure zone on the second one. Personally I prefer to have a bit more visability on what is being deleted and when - so I prefer not to use the SZ. I think there are probably lots of users with standard home PC configurations, with a single disk/single partition and the SZ brings these users onto the radar for the ATI business model. I think encouraging users to protect their data this way is a shame.


-{ Quote: "
One question: external hard drive space. I purchased an external hard drive with only 120 Gigs of memory, and my laptop has 40 Gig of stuff on it. A normal compression backup takes 25 Gig, and an incremental about 13 Gig, so it looks like I'm woefully short of space here. The method you described above would seem to need at least 25x4 plus 13x6x4, or at least 500 Gig of backup, am I correct?" }-

The more your disk contents have changed since the last incremental, the bigger the next one will be. So guessing how much space you need it tricky. All I can tell you is that I have a partition I use for 'work' data which I back up using the four-subdir regime which is 2GB and close to being full. This takes around 5-7 GB per subdir, each one holding a months backups.