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Simple backup with out duplicate

Used the acronis true image for crucial to clone ssd. I want to simply maintain the old hard drive as a 100% clone of the newly cloned ssd. Acronis says it needs twice the volume on the backup clone. Is there a way around this.  Old drive is 600gb. Saved data now is 385 gb.  Just want to maintain a mirror of the newly installed ssd drive with 385gb. 

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Jeffrey, welcome to these public User Forums.

Acronis True Image for Crucial is an OEM version with some limitations for features compared to the full ATI application.

See KB 2201: Support for OEM Versions of Acronis Products

You have not said what the actual size of your new SSD drive is here? 

I would recommend making a backup image of the SSD and storing this on your original HDD rather than using cloning.  See the link in my signature below for an explanation of the differences between using Backup versus using Clone.

The new Crucial Ssd is 500gb. It now has 385gb.  When I researched the directions for maintaining a backup using Acronis True image, it said the backup drive needed twice the volume of stored data as is on the original drive so it could periodically make a full backup. It would save incremental changes in between.  It doesn't make sense that I now have a perfect copy with the old replaced hard drive and I can't somehow use this as a 100% backup.  The advantage is this old drive is plug n play just like the new cloned ssd drive. What better backup could one have.  

Old standard drive 600gb.  385 used.

New Crucial SSD 500gb.  385 used. 

Jeffrey, the key reason why Backup requires more backup drive space is simply because Acronis do not delete older backup files until a new backup has been created successfully, this is so as to not leave you with no backup at all.

Cloning puts you in that same situation if you rely only on this as a backup method.  The very first action of a clone operation has to be to wipe the target drive in preparation for duplicating the content of the source drive to it.

If you later boot your system with both source & target drives connected, then this can give rise to a disk signature clash / conflict which in turn can cause Windows to become corrupted or cause other difficult to diagnose problems.

If you always remember to disconnect the HDD after each clone operation, then all should be fine using this method, but I would always recommend having a separate backup in addition to using clone.

Steve, 

Thank you so much. Great info about not booting up with the clone drive attached to the usb.  I could see the operating systems conflicting. Instead of re cloning i wonder if this will work. I have a third 2tb which is currently holding all the files less operating system created as a file backup prior to cloning. Set the 2tb up as a full system acronis backup as you advised. Plenty of space. At this point the 600gb is useless other than a one time back dated clone. Unless the following would work. Im not tech savy. I know healthcare. Not computers. 

1. Only attach 600gb old drive if system is up.

2. Preserve the 600gb operating system unchanged. I guess this would lack updates.

3. The files that I would like updated as changes occur are in "Users" which are currently duplicate in both drives. 

4. Click on "Users" file and copy on live ssd drive.  

5. Paste to "Users" file on clone. 

Will this?

1. Fail

2. Preserve duplicate stored data. Make changes only to old files. Create new files.  Be fast. Preferred. 

3. Wipe out the old ~285gb files/pics and copy entire file from ssd.  Original clone took ~1.5 hours. 

I can see how my desired method of preserving the clone gets obsolete in time with new software and software updates even if #2 works. In time I would need to reclone. Sorry for the ignorance but it seems odd that acronis cloud backup link that you provided said the original would take a very long time.  But the updates "would be much faster since only changed data would go to the cloud". I wonder why the cloud would only make changes but a local backup requires double the space. It seems to me the ideal backup would maintain a clone.  And if desired a complete copy or copies of the drive at previous dates at the users discretion.  

It's the little things in life. 

Thank you 

Jeffrey, the issue of copying the Users folder structure is that this will include hidden system files, including those used by your user profile, which will cause problems when copying the files.

If you want to use the old 600GB drive as a backup reserve by making a new clone of it say once a month or so, that should work for a time for you.

In terms of the difference between local backups and those made to the Acronis Cloud, this is more a matter of managing the amount of data that would need to be uploaded on a regular basis.

Local backups can move data a magnitude more quickly than uploading to the Cloud, hence with the Cloud, only the first backup is of all the data, after which only changed data is uploaded to keep the transfer as low as possible.