Backup Process Gone Wild! Please Help.

[Ed S]

I am using the trial version of Acronis True Image Home to back up a 120 GB NTFS hard drive onto a FAT32 USB2 500GB external hard drive. I am running Win XP-Pro SP2.

I created a folder on the 500GB drive to hold the backup images. I successfully created a full image that comprised 21 .tib files totaling 85,054,420KB. I set up each of the files for automatic incremental backups and it ran a couple of times. I then scheduled a full image backup and it ran once. The previously scheduled incremental backups are now running and I am unable to stop the process that started nearly 11 hours ago. So far it has only completed 3 of 24 scheduled incremental updates.

My external hard drive is now 99% full. The Acronis backup folder contains 181 files that total 409GB.

When I was setting up the scheduling for the automated backups I did not get the screen that is described in the User Guide that I downloaded from the site. The screen that is shown in the User Guide provides for the selection of the number of incremental backups that the user desires between full image backups. I ran the full image backup and then scheduled incremental backups for each of the files that resulted from the full image backup.

Please advise how I can:
1) Stop the current process that is eating up my resources and is progressing at a snail's pace.
2) Limit the space used by Acronis to back up my internal hard drive. (It seems rediculous to me that i am using nearly 500GB of drive space to backup 101GB of data.

Any advise would be much appreciated.

[DwnNdrty]

With a 500Gb external drive to hold Backup Images I would do ONLY FULL backups. Forget incrementals - not worth the hassle. And you may run into problems with incrementals when it comes time to do a Recovery.

It may also be worth it to convert that 500Gb drive to the NTFS file system instead of Fat 32 - more efficient use of hard drive space.

[Xpilot]

You are not finding the backup setup as described because when designating the external drive for your images you did not use the "Backup Locations" wizard. This is to found top left of the main TI screen.
The Backup Locations facility allows lots of options and should be capable of doing what you require. It does have some quirks but then so do most of us .

As for stopping a backup in progress one can right click the progress icon in the information area near the clock or just reboot the computer. Both will result in the backup in progress being aborted.


Xpilot

[thomasjk]

Look at this guide BACKUP LOCATIONS don't work.

[Xpilot]

Originally Posted by thomasjk

Look at this guide BACKUP LOCATIONS don't work.

And it has a happy ending

[Ed S]

Many thanks to all who responded. I have fixed my probelm.