Backup Question

I have TI10 and have been making incremental backups. I now want to be able to make only Full Backups each time. Do I need to remove my current image each time before I can create a new full back up? Is there an better way to do this w/o removing my existing back up in case something goes wrong during the new backup?

 

Make a new task with a new File Name and delete the existing one.

OR

Edit the existing one and change the file name, backup type to full and save the changes.

 

Hello tbone52,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please notice that you can create an Acronis Backup Location and store backup there. It will automatically keep the number of backups you choose. Please see chapter 7 "Backup location management" of the respective User's Guide for detailed instructions.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

You have four choices for managing backups:

1) If you use Backup Locations and Task as Marat suggests, Acronis can manage backups, automatically creating backups on schedule and deleting oldest backups according to the number, age or filesize limits that you specify when creating the Backup Location.

2) If you store backups in an Acronis Secure Zone, ATI will delete the old ones as the Zone fills up. The Zone acts similarly to a Backup Location with a limit set to the size of the Zone, without options for age or filenumber limits. And, unlike Backup Locations, the backups are hidden so can't be manually coped, moved, deleted, etc. Note that the ATI Task Scheduler will not wake a PC from standby to run a task. Also note that on some machines ATI11 will not run properly execute file-by-file backups and on some hardware, will not properly manage inc/diff backups. But Full backups shouldn't be a problem.

3) You can use post-commands when setting up ATI Tasks and use those to run batch files that rename backups with unique names (like inlcuding part of the current date) and delete ones with certain names (which would be thenames that mark the oldest files). This is rather cumbersome but the only "automated" method in most backup programs until ATI10 came along with the Backup Locations feature. There are some good examples of this post-command method on the forums from back in the days before the Backup Locations feature was released. However, some folks find the batch file command method useful for some situations.

4) Otherwise, you can manually delete or move old backups.

 

I'm using ATI, version 11.

I've created an initial full backup which has taken up approx. 275 GB of the 500 GB external hard drive. I've also created four incremental backups which have taken up approx. 60 GB.

I would now like to create another full backup and don't understand how this can be done without first deleting all of the existing backups. It seems to me that there is not enough free space on the external hard drive to create another new one unless I delete the existing backups first.

I ask this because recently an attempt to create another incremental backup failed because of "insufficient disk space," or words to that effect.

This seems to be a recurring question on this forum.

Thanks for any help.

 

rlrood, I don't follow what you don't understand. If your first backup takes up more than half of the destination drive, it is obvious that you will not be able to make another full backup to the drive without first deleting the first one.

You need at least a 1Tb drive if you want to keep more than one full backup and a few incrementals.

 

275gb sounds like a lot for a full backup. Are you using compression? If so, you would be backing up at least 550gb of data.


Ken

 

Thanks, you've just confirmed what I suspected -- the only way to replace the existing full backup is to delete it and then do another full backup, something I did not want to do.

The reason for my question is that, like you, I can do the math and assumed that I would need a 1TB drive to accomplish what I would like to do. More specifically, I thought that maybe ATI would have some way of overwriting the existing backup in a manner that would let it be done with a 500 GB drive.

 

Thanks Ken. I have a lot of high resolution photos which take up most of the 275GB. I'm in the process of off loading and reorganizing, but my computer will always have a lot.

I do use compression, but I seem to recall reading somewhere in the 120 plus page ATI manual that since photos are already compressed there will be very little effect of using the ATI compression feature.

Should add, that I'm new to ATI, and although an experienced computer user, I find what I thought would be a simple task (backing up data) to be very complex.

Again, thanks. Larry

P.S. By the way, it sound from some of the below posts that there might be a way to do a full backup without deleting the existing one first, but then I could be completely wrong