Getting scheduled backup into 1 file

I'm new to True Image server. I've got a server setup to do a nightly incrimental backup. I notice that it doesn't just update the file from the first backup. Instead, it creates a new small file each night. Am I doing something wrong or, is my storage space going to eventually fill up because of all these small files?

If this is the way it's supposed to work, what does everyone do out there? Create seperate folders for each server? Clean up old files?

Also, how does this work for a restore? Can I just grab the file from the night before and True Image is smart enough to figure out what it needs from the other files?

 

Since you selected "incremental" backup, that's exactly what it is doing, backing up only the files that have changed. I don't do incrementals so can't answer the other Qs.

 

To restore, just select any one of the files. You will then be given a list of dates to choose from (the dates the FULL and INCs were created).

 

Well, I hope that you are using more than one set of backup files, each on different media.

If you run a full, then incremental backups, unless you want to save ALL incrementals so you can restore to each of those points in time, you would, at a time of your choosing, delete the files on one of the backup media and create a new FULL backup.

Using differential backups would take even more disk space.

 

So, should I be scheduling a full backup each Friday then incrimentals on every other night?

When the full runs, do I need to manually delete the previous incrimentals or it True Image smart enough to figure it out?

 

"When the full runs, do I need to manually delete the previous incrimentals or it True Image smart enough to figure it out?"
Once the FULL overwrites itself, the INCs will do the same.

 

Ok, that makes sense. So I should schedule one job to do a full each Friday then, a second job doing an incremental nightly.

 

Only you can answer that. It all depends on what your needs are – archiving, disaster recovery, or both.

With the scheme you mentioned, be aware that after the FULL runs on Friday, all the INCs become orphaned and can no longer be used to restore. You can ONLY restore from the Friday backup. If you are looking to archive, this will not work well.

 

My goal is to be able to be able use this image file to create a virtual server for disaster recovery. Recovering a single file would be secondary. I guess maybe I should just do a full each night.

 

I have 3 USB drives, each of which has both Ghost 10 and TI backups.
The Ghost 10 are always full bckups.

Two of the USB drives are 80GB and the other is 200GB.
So when I do a full backup on the 80 GB drives, I manually delete the older files to make sure that th enew files will fit.

I also delete the older files on the 200GB drive bacause I do not know whether TI will do so.

 

So True Image won't automatically over-lay the previous incremental backup file? These incremental files will keep building up until I delete them?

 

THere are twocases:

1. A.tib is full backup
a1.tib is incremental
a2.tib is incremental

As long as you do incremental backups based on the FULL backup A.tib, TI will not, and should not, be deleting any of the incremental files.

You have to periodically refresh. Easiest is to manually delete them.

2. You have the same files as in 1 supra, but instead of running an incremental backup, you run a full backup using the file name A.tib.

I've never done this so I don't know what hapens. There are two possiblities:

i. TI warns you and refuses to delete the file. This is safer for the user, and I hope that's what TI does.
ii. TI replaces the file A.tib. In this case, TI should have been designed to also delete the extant incrementals, as they now have no meaning without the original A.tib, but I do not know if TI does.

 

So really, doing incrimentals is just a bad idea. It will just keep doing them until you run out of disk space. Unless you set up a manual process to delete them.

I remember once asking Acronis about the ability to run scripts to do backups and restores like Ghost allows you to do. They told me it would be in the next version. To my knowledge, it's not.

So ideally, here's what I'd have to do:

1. Run a full backup on Friday night (a.tib).

2. Run incrementals every other night (a1, a2, a3, a4, a5, a6, a7)

3. When Friday rolls around again, run another full (a.tib)

4. Run a manual process to delete the previous week's incrementals (a1, a2, a3, a4, a5, a6, a7). If I don't do this, Saturday's incremental will start at a8 I think.

The problem with this is that I'd have to run some manual process to delete those incrementals. I'd only want to do that if I knew the full backup was ok. With Ghost, you can script an integrity check on the full backup. It will return an errorlevel. Based on this errorlevel, you can decide to delete the incrementals or not.

If they had scripting, here's how I'd do it:

1. Run a full backup on Friday night (temp.tib).

2. Run an integrity check on temp.tib.

3. If it passes, rename it to a.tib and delete the previous incrementals.

2. Run incrementals every other night (a1, a2, a3, a4, a5, a6, a7)

3. When Friday rolls around again, run another full (temp.tib) and start over.

 

“4. Run a manual process to delete the previous week's incrementals (a1, a2, a3, a4, a5, a6, a7). If I don't do this, Saturday's incremental will start at a8 I think.”

No. The INCs will begin to write over themselves.