Be gentle with a female!

ok so Im slowly getting the hang of this but please bear with me - as the number of backuos increases over time how do I decide which ones I can safely delete? I have done a full back up of my c drive and have scheduled tasks for an incremental back up and also incremental back up of my documents and email. I notice when you back up it creates a new updated file but I presume its not as easy as just deleting the earliest version?

sorry if this seems simple

 

If you have a full backup and then a chain of incremental backups, you do not want to delete any of the early ones unless you want to get rid of all of them. If you deleted the earliest incremental all of the incrementals following it would be useless since you have to have the complete chain. The reason for this is each succeeding incremental is based on the full and ALL of the incrementals to that date.

If you have a lot of incrementals then the best thing to do is to make a new full and essentially start the process over. However, even in that case I wouldn't delete the old backup if it is the only other one you have. It is never a good idea to have only one backup archive in case something goes wrong with it.

 

im just testing it at the moment so am curious for future use - would it be best to use differential then and just do a full back up each time? if so do you have to keep all of those files as well?

 

I do a full back up every weekend of my system drive with TI10 from within Windows. I am happy to wind back a week in the worst case i.e a failure just before the next backup with due. You may not be happy to wind back a week. I have an 80gig system SATA drive

I backup up my photos and music and docs with Karen's Replicator- small fast and free- every weekend as well. I have about 200gig of them. Her programme automatically backups up the newer files so you don't have to back up all of them each time.

I store all backups, which are on USB external IDE drives, remote from home i.e at work.

I tested a restore of my TI10 full backup system drive to a spare SATA drive using BartPE with the TI plugin as the Trueimage Linux based boot CD has trouble with my SATA drives and is also very slow. The restore worked OK giving me enough confidence in my backup processes and hardware. I like TI for full system backups

For me increments and differentials are not worth the hassle.

If it is files you need to back up I would use Karen's Replicator rather than TI10. This is because AFAIK if you get a problem with the TI10 tib file there is a chance will loose all your files.

Best wishes

 

Now there's someone who's been reading and learning from the forum.

 

Since a differential is all of the changes since the full was made you only need to have the full and the last one to have a current backup. Unfortunately, there is a long-standing bug in TI that requires all of the intermediate differential backups to be present in order to do a validate - even if they aren't required for the restore.

I might as well put my personal backup philosophy here too. Like DwnNdrty and Tatou I only use TI to make full images of my OS and apps partition. For backing up all of my data files which I dont' store on the C partition, I use SyncBack which copies the data files in their native format to a different drive. I then backup this drive at various times to an external USB drive. I then make occasional copies of these backups on DVD which I store at a friend's house in case of total disaster. Remember, it is your personally created data files that are the ones that cannot be replaced at any cost.

 

brill thanks guys -I think it may be best then for me to just do a full backup on a regular basis and then do additional backups of my files with another programme. I was doing the file backup previously anyway so there will be no change there. Is it possible to leave more than one full back up on the external drive or will it replace it each time it does a new one?

 

I do a manual system backup each week so I am only limited by the size of the destination drive as to the number of tib files. I assume you intend to schedule full backups. One of the others may know the answer.

Don't forget to do a test restore if possible to another spare drive - don't test restore to the original drive and don't boot with original system drive and restored drive in the computer at the same time.

It also helps to have a look at GroverH instructions on backup and restoring.
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=168165

Happy backups

 

If the size of what you are backing up is relatively small, say less than 50GB, then it might be more convenient to just do full backups and avoid diffs and incs; the full backups are made rather quickly about 1GB-2GB per minute on most modern computers.

Using the Managed Backup Locations in Version 10 greatly simplifies things once you get it set up. The backups will run automatically, with unique file names automatically applied, and old ones are deleted according to the limits you preset, you don't have to fuss with it all once it's set up.

As for using more than one method of backup -- one for partitions and one for data files-- hey, whatever floats your decimal point. It's never taken me more than a few seconds to grab a file or handful of files from a backup image when I wanted to restore less than a full image. The only thing that takes time is the actual file copying, which is pretty much the same whichever program you use.

But tastes differ and so do preferences; you have options.
sh