Incremental/Differential Backups with/without Secure Zone

Hello,

I have 2 backup scenarios:

scenario 1:

schedule1: Every Sunday at 22:00 a complete backup to the Path \\srv001\backup\backup.tib
schedule2: Every Mon,Tue,Wed,Thu,Fri and Sat at 22:00 a differential backup to \\srv001\backup\backup.tib

I thought this would leave me with the backup.tib getting overriden each week plus a backup_diff.tib which will also get overriden (each day).

But Acronis goes on and creates backup1.tib, backup2.tib, backup3.tib, and so on. I guess this will consume all the available hard disk space at a certain point in the future. Can this be controlled somehow?

scenario 2:
There are 3 external USB hard drives that should be backup to in a round robin strategy:

usb disk1: Mon, Wed
usb disk2: Tue, Thu
usb disk3: Fri, (Sat)

I am currently using the Acronis Secure Zone on all 3 hdd's to minimize problems with occuppied/wrong drive letters.

Is it possible to have a differential backup solution in this scenario? For example full backup once a month, rest as differential backup?

I hope this makes sense, otherwise I will try to eloberate further on the matter. Thanks for any help!

- kongo

 

I have used up to three USB drives in my old backup scenario. I gave each one a descriptive name, which I have also done with my internal drives.

I ignore drive letters entirely and just let Windows assign what letters it likes and Acronis also does its own different thing especially in the recovery environment.

There is not really much point in having secure zones on your external drives and indeed the will restrict your freedom of choice in some circumstances.

It depends a bit on which version of TI you are using. Version 10 has a greater range of ways to locate and manage backups than before.

All you have to do is work out what you really need as opposed to what is possible and schedule accordingly.

I use the KISS principle and schedule full backups to a second internal drive. This has a secure zone. The backups run automatically each day when I am not even present.

Xpilot
PS. A popup has just appeared saying that the backup has started....So it is time for lunch !

 

All the incrementals created from Mon-Sat are orphaned when Sunday's full backup is created. ATI knows this and on Monday will start from backup1.tib again, overwriting the existing one in the process.

F.

 

This is good news, however I am using differential backups instead of incremental. Is it the same there? It will only create backup1-6 and then start over from 1 after sunday?

 

Yes - once the base image has been overwritten you begin again.

F.

 

foghorne:

Have you successfully verified w/diff backup? Which means can you verify the full.tib+lastdiff.tib w/o other diffs in the middle? If so, which ver. of ti do you use?

I ask this because today I tried to build a full.tib +diff1.tib +diff2.tib.
TI do not verify full.tib +diff2.tib w/o diff1.tib present...same as inc. backups.
I am using TI10.0.0.4871. (Ti can verify full only , full+diff1 or full+diff1+diff2
but NOT full+diff2) although the size of diff1 and diff2 looks like they are diffs NOT incs.

 

This is a known limitation/bug. You need all the child diffs present to do a verify - diffs behave a bit like incrementals in this respect.

F.