Incremental backup cleanup?
I created one full backup in true image and, since, have been creating incrementals only (because I don't have enough space to make another full backup.) How can I clean up the incrementals? Is there a way to somehow merge old incrementals into one file to remove duplicates but not loose old incrementals?
That's what I figured... But I've been using crashplan as my other backup solution for years. Their program doesn't require full,diff,inc backup type backups. It just does a full backup and then does incrementals then on. I've never had a problem worrying about my backups filling up the hard drive and having to do this. But the incrementals here daily are all over the board. I'm really not making a lot of daily changes. I have anywhere from 3 GB to some as high as 20 GB and one that's 209 GB. I'm going to run out of space soon. I don't have enough space to make multiple full/incremental backups. I would have to buy at least at 10 TB HD to have a decent backup solution with that method. The more I see the weaknesses of this product, the more I keep wondering if I need to find a different solution.
David, how many drives / partitions are you including in your backup?
I personally try to keep my backups to a single drive at a time (including the partitions on the drive), which restricts the size of backup and also makes any recovery simpler too.
If you are making disk & partitions backups, then this works on the basis of changes at a sector level, so best to avoid doing any defragmentation for the drive which will touch a lot of sectors and increase incremental backup sizes.
I just changed it based on the last post. But the way I had it setup was my C partition was backing up the partition. My D partition was backing up folder level. But my D partition is mamoth with a ton of data I can't loose. (Home videos and pictures etc.) That partition is the one that's varying greatly daily from 3 GB to 200 GB incremental backups. I just changed it so True Image is only doing my C drive and it's doing full/incremental with it creating a new full every 5 backups. But, short of going out and buying another external drive (around 10 TB for around $400), I can't see how I can use True Image to backup my D partition.
David, are both your C: and D: partitions all on the same physical disk drive?
If so, then you will need to look at a backup solution to be able to protect your home videos, pictures etc, though I am not sure why this data should be varying so much on a daily basis, unless you are recording streaming video or similar?
Sounds like you should consider having all that important data on a separate drive, or ideally, on a RAID set to offer more protection against a single drive failure, in addition to either synchronising the data to another location, Cloud storage or NAS etc.
C and D are two separate physical drives. D isn't raid. D also contains a ton of PDFs. I have all of our documents scanned and shredded. But PDFs are only a few megs a piece. Can't justify that had causing 5-200 GB changes in the Inc backups.
I would suggest trying a utility program such as TreeSize Free to try to get an idea of where the increase in size is coming from for the source data of your backup task.
I already switched solutions. I work in IT. I get what you're saying. I was thinking this solution was a "set it and forget it" type solution. Not a solution that required constant monitoring like it's a second part time job to keep the backups working.
The changes in the filing system has been about the same for the last 5 years for me. I've been running Crashplan for 5 years and never had the problems I've had with this solution for the last few months.
David, understand the frustration where the backup sizes are unpredictable but would doubt that Acronis is actually responsible for those differences in size unless there is some way of proving this? When you compare ATIH against Crashplan, are you backing up the same source data in each application?
ATIH is primarily a Home user product and aimed at that home market. I do not know or have any experience of Crashplan but suspect that it may be more intended as a business product?
One point to bear in mind is that all ATIH 2016 / 2017 users now get upto 2 years free support (from date of purchase) so you could raise this issue with incremental backup size variation via a Support Case with Acronis and let them try to work with you to identify why there are such size differences?
Crashplan is completely geared towards home. I think they have a business plan also, but their main business is home users. It's file only backup. No images.
David, do you see the same issue when just doing a files & folders backup in Acronis if this doesn't happen when you do the same with Crashplan (for the same source selection)? If yes, then please do open a Support Case for this to get it investigated.
I backed up my d drive using files and folders. And I select the same data with a both acronis and crashplan. Support wont beable to fix it. It's a weakness of requiring a full, Inc backups. And I had a really bad experience with acronis support. So I'm very hesitant to allow them to remote into my PC again.