Scheduled Full/Diff backup strategy suggestions?

I am looking for suggestions on a scheduled backup strategy for hy home PC using Acronis True Image v9. What I have in mind is this:

1) Do a FULL backup on a monthly basis.
2) Then do a DIFFERENTIAL backup every week except the week when I do the full backup.

The problem I've run into is figuring out the best way to schedule and accomplish this using True Image's scheduler. There does not really seem to be an efficient way to set the scheduler up to do this using the options it provides, or at least I can't come up with anything.

Any suggestions or ideas are welcome!

Thanks.

 

If all you are looking for is a weekly backup, I'd suggest a full disk image run every two weeks on alternating weeks (two tasks each run every two weeks on alternate weeks). This gives the added advantage of two full backup images at any one time in case of corruption. If you need a longer time frame than that, set up a third task for the first of the month repeating monthly.

Another way for more frequent images is a full image and incrementals nightly (week 1) and then repeat it set up the same way the following week (week 2). Use 4 tasks to accomplish this - two full and two incremental.

 

I do a full backup every week since it's only about 9GB. I keep two images on my external drive, an even and an odd backup. I backup on Sunday and depending on the date (even or odd) that's the image I overwrite. So I always have an extra image (at the most 1 week old) in case I hose the most recent one. Some months I have to change to Saturday to keep the even-odd stuff right.

 

To do what you’ve outlined, you might try this:
Schedule a FULL to run on the 1st day of the month.
Schedule 4 DIFFs to run, one each, on the 8th, 15th, 22nd & 29th.
There are all sorts of schemes, but this addresses the scenario you posed.

 

Here's what I do on my home PC -

I have 9 scheduled tasks, all Full images.
One each for the 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th.
A Weekly each Sunday.
Then three more, one each on Mon & Thu, Tue & Fri and Wed & Sat.
Once these 9 images are created, they just cycle through and get written over.

 

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions. I should be able to come up with something, and what I am leaning towards is similar to what Mem suggested...running two separate full disk image jobs on alternating weeks. This way I can schedule them both for the same day of the week and that day will become the day which I need to remember to leave my PC on all day while I am at work. Normally, I shut my PC down before going to work and then turn it on again when I get home, then turn it off again before going to sleep. I don't really want to run my backups during those times that I may be using the computer...I presume the backup would slow things down considerably and it just seems like a good idea for the computer to be idle with all applications closed, etc. to insure image integrity.

 

You could use sysinternals junction to point a map (defined in your TI backup jobs) to another map.

A batch file can change the junction so that (for example) C:\backup points to C:\backJan or C:\backFeb or C:\back03, ...

This way you keep a few full backups instead of overwriting them.

Never forget, if your machine decides to crash at the time you're doing a backup, and you're overwriting the only backup, you're scr*w*d

 

Before using TI, I used Drive Image which had the ability to keep x copies of previous images before overwriting. I found this extremely helpful. Are there any plans to add this feature to TI?

 

Hello am_dew,

Please be aware that we have already received similar requests from other Acronis customers and they have already been forwarded to our Development Team. We do have plans to improve Acronis True Image embedded scheduling service functionality. However, the exact time frame for this is not decided yet.

If you have any particular suggestions concerning Acronis True Image functionality please feel free to post them in Acronis True Image WISH-LIST thread.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov