Two Part Question on Incremental Image

Hope U guys don't mind , if I ask a 2 part question .
First, if I Append an Image file let say, Backup Inage File #A and TI produced a Backup Image #A1, when I need to append the next time should I choose File #A again, or #A1 ?

Second, if I need to Restore an Image should I point it to #A or #A1 ?

I have never use the incremental create or restore in TI. Your advice is really appreciated. Thanks.

 

Hello niteghost,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

First of all, please note that you should store the initial full image along with all it's corresponding incrementals in one folder, since all of them are parts of the entire multivolume image archive.

1. You can select any of the existing volumes of the image archive, since Acronis True Image 8.0 will any way create a corresponding incremental image #n.

This means that in your example you can choose either image A or A1. However, the resulting incremental image will be A2.

2. You can point to any volume while restoring your image archive as well.

In this case Acronis True Image 8.0 will recognize all images as the entire image archive and will suggest you to restore to any of the available points in time (when incremental images were created).

Please read more on how to use Acronis True Image 8.0 in Acronis True Image 8.0 User's Guide.

I would also recommend you to create a few incrementals for "testing purposes", since it will be the best way to understand how the whole thing works

If you have any further questions please feel free to ask.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

 

On the same topic...what is the recommendation for a daily backup of a complete hard drive? Should I manually do a full backup then schedule a daily incremental backup each night?

At what point should I do another full backup? I assume that eventually there will be a ton of incremental backups and it would make sense to do another full one. What's the recommendation...once a month and possibly after a decent size system change (new programs installed/uninstalled)?

 

Hello Uhl,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please note that there are no any special recommendations for creating an incremental images.

The periodicity of creating an incremental images is always depends on your needs.

For example, you can create a full image once a week and an incremental images daily or create a full image monthly and an incremental images weekly. The final choice depends on how often the data on your hard drive changes.

I think that the only recommendation for creating an incremental images might be based on the fact that an incremental image created after a disk is defragmented might be considerably larger than usual (actually, the size of the incremental image will most likely be the same as the size of the full image). This is because the defragmentation program changes file locations on disk and incremental images reflect these changes.

This means that I can recommend you to create the full image rather then incremental after you have defragmented your hard drive

If you have any further questions please feel free to ask.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov