Best Method?

Using TI 9, I've scheduled a monthly imaging of my C:/ drive, a task which I used to do manually...my desire is to have a backup of my OS with the most recent installations that work well...I am backing up ever changing files and folders separately and more often. Having had trouble in the past with automatic deletions, I'm thinking to do a monthly full backup. Is there any real benefit to doing incremental or differential backups, other than speed...at this point I've lost my last full image anyway...and without the ability to delete unwanted or unneeded incremental or differential backups, monthly full imaging seems like the best idea. Any comments?

Would a monthly or even weekly differential image be the idea?

Can I set it up to have one full image, and have one differential image (overwriting itself on the scheduled basis)?

Thanks, trying.......Gunga

 

I find that making an image when all the programs you use are installed and everything is working well and then not frequently updating that image and not overwriting it with later ones the best policy for me. In fact I make several images of my computer at different points in installing all the programs I use. I don't update these images because when I use Acronis to go back to an earlier state I want it to be one where I know everything works well and Windows is not cluttered from all the things I have done over time which may have corrupted files or programs.

An example is recently when a program stopped working properly. I tried reinstalling over it to get it to work properly then uninstalling and reinstalling it and it still refused to work properly. I then restored one of my Acronis images and the program now works properly. Had I frequently updated images overwriting old ones I would most likely have found the error in the program still there when I restored the image. Because I don't make frequent images I knew the one I restored was a sound one with everything working properly.

I back up folders like My Documents and any other important data (eg my emails in Outlook Express) separately using a backup program (Handy Backup) and I restore these backups to any restored Acronis image. Continually updating Acronis images to me only means I'm more likely to wind up with images of Windows installations that are no longer working as well as when I first installed all my programs. Others may disagree-to each his own.

It’s up to each Acronis user to determine what works best for him/her within the limitation of how much space he/she has for storing Acronis images. In my case because I have almost a terabyte of disk space I am able to store 5 images, some made a lot earlier than others, which gives me a good choice as to how far I think I need to go back. Complimenting Acronis True Image my backup program, Handy Backup, ensures that I can copy and paste very recent copies of My Documents Outlook Express etc even if I restore an Acronis image made a long time ago.

 

gunga,

As far as I know, when you create incremental images you do not loose access to previous incrementals or even the starting full when you want to do a restore.

Having said that I fully agree with mareke's strategy. Full backups, created manually on carefully chosen moments, with a note about the state the computer was in at that time. I also keep a log of the date of all my new installations, so I have no trouble in choosing the right image for restore.

In the tests I made, the incremental strategy was not faster, considering the longer time for image checking, since every check reads the whole chain of incrementals and the full image too. I think I'll be probably swithcing to incrementals only when my second disk is not capable to store several full images anymore.

 

Me too, and when I start to run out of room on my image storage area, I copy (usually) the latest image I'm going to delete to DVD write-once disks which I store in an old spindle case. Little space, little cost, lots of peace of mind. As been said earlier, it is easy to overwrite with a bad file somewhere along the line and you won't know until you try to use it.