Backup Schedule Help.

Hi I'd like to know if it'd be possible with Acronis True Image to do:

Daily incrementals of the last 15 days AND
Monthly incrementals of the last 6 month with ONLY
1 full backup as the base.

I know I can do Monthly incrementals of the last 6 month by setting the maximum number of backups to 6, that should give me 1 full backup and 5 small ones. And daily incrementals of the last 15 days by setting the maximum on another location to 15, this way I'd have 2 full backups, one on each location. As i said before I'd like to keep 1 full, 5 monthly incrementals and 15 daily incrementals.

PS: Excuse me if my post didn't make any sense, English is not my main language and explaining what I'd like to accomplish is kinda hard

 

This does not sound like something your really want to try.

It is all your eggs in one basket. If there is ever a problem with your one and only full backup then you will loose everything.

Just doing incremental backups instead of full backups increases the risk of failure.

You have low risk if there is only one file, a full backup to restore.
Having a full plus one or more incremental files increases the risk.

External hard disks are now cheap, so I would strongly recommend that you store several full backups.

Full backups are also quicker to restore from than a series of full and incremental backups.

Doing incremental backups wont necessarily save you space if you ever run the defragmentation programs.

You can never have too many backups. So have a review of your backup strategy. All the best.

 

Hello TheBG,

Thank you for using Acronis True Image Home 2009

For your purposes you will have to create two schedule tasks. First of all create one full backup manually, then create first task -> from target Archive selection window choose Add to existing archive -> Scheduling -> Daily, schedule task for 15 days. In automatic consolidation check Number of backups exceeds 16. It will allow you to keep 1 full backup + 15 incrementals.

For second task choose Add to existing archive from target Archive selection window -> Scheduling -> Monthly -> On every 1 day of the month -> from Automatic consolidation choose Number of backups exceeds 7.

Best regards,
--
Dmitry Nikolaev

 

@jehosophat: Thanks for your advice, I'll take that in consideration. But the main reason I wanted only 1 full and lot of incremental backups was because I wanted to save space and allow me to roll back my files in case I deleted (or modified) one and a month later or so I realized I still needed it.

@Acronis Support: Thanks for you guide, I've set it up with 2 days instead of 15 days and 2 weeks instead of 6 month for testing purposes. But I got a doubt now.

I know if I had set up only 1 task for 15 days, with a maximum of 16 backups, the day I'd make my 16th backup, the first incremental would be merged with my full backup.
If I had set up both monthly and daily incremental backups, what would happen the 16th day would the daily backup merge with the original full backup? wouldn't that break the monthly incremental backups?

 

Hello TheBG,

Thank you for using Acronis True Image

You are correct, it is not recommended to place the archives created by separate tasks into a single folder. I think that it is impossible to set the mentioned policy and to tie it to a single full backup file.

Thank you.

--
Oleg Lee

 

Keep an eye on the size of the incremental files.

I only do Full backups and one of the reasons for this is space!

It is not uncommon for an Acronis incremental file to be LARGER than a full backup.

If you run a defragmention after a full backup the next incremental backup will be much larger than you expect.