Incremental backup just gets bigger and bigger?

I have TI 8.0 and have set my laptop up to create an incremental image every night at 3am. This works fine, but the backup just keeps on getting bigger and bigger infinitely. Since I don't have infinite amounts of hard disk space available for the images, I have to go in every couple of weeks or so and move all the images into another folder, then once TI creates a new full image, I delete the old images.

Is there any way to say something like "Create incremental backups daily, but reset to a full image weekly"?

 

If you use incremental backups and you delete old images. WOuldnt that make the new incremental backups useless? The only reason incremental backups get bigger is when I defragement my disk or do a lot of changes. maybe you defragment with diskeeper in real time?

Thanks,
Dina

 

I think maybe you misunderstood. I run daily with incremental for about a week, at which point I have one full image, and 6 incremental images. At that point, I create a BAK folder, and move the seven images into that folder. The next day, Acronis sees that there is no full image, so it makes one, and then (after I have a new, full image) I manually delete the contents of the BAK folder. I then let it run for another week, etc, etc. This all works fine, but it would be much better if Acronis would do this for me, so I didn't have to mess around with it.

 

Hello hyslopc,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Please note that in the newer version of Acronis True Image 8.0 which is Acronis True Image 9.0 Home one can use pre/post command. You can specify commands or batch files to be automatically executed before and after the backup/restore procedure. For example, you may want to remove some tmp files from the disk before starting backup.

We recommend you to download and install the free trial version of Acronis True Image 9.0 Home to see how the software works on your computer. You can find more information on how to use Acronis True Image 9.0 Home in the respective User's Guide.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov

 

Yeah, but if I want to spend hours writing batch files to handle this stuff, I could set it up myself using Windows scheduler.

Let me know when you have a version of TrueImage that can automatically delete old backups based on simple criteria, and then I will eagerly upgrade.

 

Hello hyslopc,

Yes, Acronis True Image 8.0 allows you to perform exactly what you want to perform. In order to achieve your goal you should do the following:

- Schedule a task for the weekly full backup creation on Sunday, for example;

- Schedule a task for the daily incremental backup creation on all other week days using the "Weekly" option;

As a result you will always have a set of 7 '.tib' files containing one full and six incremental backups. The point is that when Acronis True Image overwrites the full backup and then creates the new incremental backup it overwrites the already existing incremental backups starting from the first one and so on. There is no need to move or delete "old" incremental backups as they will be overwritten automatically.

If you do not want to overwrite the "old" full backup before the new one is created because of the probability of losing the data while the backup creation is in progress then you can schedule two pairs of tasks so that two sets of backups covering last two weeks are created (see these previous threads for details: Can TI9 control the number of backup sets?, differential back up Q's).

Please also note that we do have plans to improve Acronis True Image embedded scheduling service functionality so that it will be able to handle more complicated scheduling schemes, but I'm afraid the exact time frame for this is not decided yet.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

 

Thanks for info!

 

I've tried that, but it doesn't seem to work. Yes, the full backup overwrites the old full backup. But the incremental backup does not recognize or "see" the full backup, so the first time the incremental runs, it creates a full backup. Then, the following week, the incrementals DO NOT overwrite the old ones -- they just keep adding "1" to the filenames forever. After 1 week, I have files named inc, inc1, inc2 ...inc6. The next week, it starts with inc7, inc8, etc...

A thought occurred... Does the full backup and the incremental backup have to have the same filename for the incremental one to "see" the full backup? I have been using different filenames.

 

Hyslopc: I wonder if you are making backups of your backups. If you are backing up your entire drive to the same drive, the next backup will include the first backup, thereby making it larger. Then the 3rd backup will include the first 2, etc.

 

Hello tomsspa,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

Yes, since the incremental backups is based on the full backup you should select the latest full or incremental backup you have when you create the incremental backup. If you schedule the incremental backup and the full backup is not exists yet you should type the full backup name in the "File name".

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov