Continuous Back Up - Not Showing Any Files in Explorer
Hi, I just set up my backup this morning from a Seagate 5TB External to a WD Passport 2TB External. I set it for non-stop back up and set it to run. In Acronis it says the backup is running, but when I go to the drive, there are no files. The space is taken up on the drive, but the drive shows EMPTY. I want to be able to go in and see my files on this drive when I want to in order to monitor the backups. How do I do this through Windows Explorer? I also want to set it up so that if my external goes bad I can just select and copy files back over without having to go through the Backup Software, which is why I want to be able to view the files in Explorer. Thanks!
-Chris
Chris, welcome to these user forums.
Acronis Non Stop Backup does not work in the way that you are looking for, it stores copies of the files in a special container file (akin to a zip type file) and updates this as changes are detected.
If you want to have your files showing as individual files on the separate drive, then you will need a different solution, as even the Acronis Synchronisation function in ATIH will not do this for you, as it synchronises between different computers or to the Acronis Cloud, not just to a separate drive.
There are lots of file & folder synchronisation programs available that can do what you want but you would need to investigate these and find which one would be best for your particular needs.
The key function of ATIH is to provide a secure method of backing up your data, including your installed Windows OS and all programs / data such that if you suffer a hard disk failure, you would be able to recover everything to a new drive without having to start again from scratch and reinstall the OS and everything else. In a world of malware threats, ransomware etc, this is why having such backups is vital to avoid data loss, whatever the cause may be.
Steve, Thank you for the information! The primary reason I am concerned is I recently lost a drive in which the Backup Software stopped backing things up some months ago. With that software I was not able to easily see what files were being backed up. I also do not see an easy way to find that out in Acronis, perhaps you can point me to a resource or video? I need to be assured that my backups are up to date, and not being able to explore the files in the way I want gives me a lot of pause. Thanks again though!
-Chris
Chris, I do not have a need to use the Non Stop Backup scheme with ATIH, so my backups are done using one of the other backup schemes and by schedule, where I recieve notifications from the software whenever a backup is performed giving me information on whether it was successful or not.
With NSB you do not get any option for Notifications etc, just the NSB schedule and the Exclusions can be set.
If you choose a Daily schedule instead, then this can run every 1 hour and all the other options are then available to you, i.e. you can choose to use to create an Incremental backup scheme with a new Full backup after 23 incrementals are created, then depending on how much space you have available on your backup drive, to 'Store no more than X recent version chains' where a version chain = 1 Full + 23 Incremental backups (or 1 days worth with hourly backups).
You should understand that automatic cleanup works on version chains, so if X = 7, the oldest version chain will be deleted when the X+1 new Full backup has been created, so you would need sufficient free space to store 7 version chains (7 x Full plus 7 x 23 Incrementals) plus a further Full backup.
If you set the email Notifications, you would get an hourly email for every successful backup which may get a little tedious, but if you click on the Advanced notification settings, you can deselect the option for a successful backup, and only get notifications for any errors or failures.
With this type of backup, you can simply double-click on the backup image .tib file in File Explorer and go navigate through the contents to see what is there.
Steve, thank you very much for the information again! I will consider it and I may implement your scheme! I think the plan will be use Acronis to back up to one drive, and then a Folder Sync Program to back up to the other drive. That way I have 2 different types of back up of the same data. Thanks!
-Chris