Pre-purchase Q's about using Acronis on home network

ATI 2019 does attempt to compress files. There are serveral settings, one of which attempts minimal (low) compression. It is possible to back up to an internal drive, an attacked USB HDD, or NAS (network attached storage). You can also back up to another PC on the network (not that I have every tried to do so). You would need to ensure that the BIOS on the recipient PC is set to allow wake on LAN to prevent the process aborting. I would suggesting using a pre-command to first contact the recipient PC and then a delay before the backup commences.

Caveat: I am not an expert on backing up to another PC, so it would be advisable to await comments from users more knowledgeable on the process before committing.

You can get an trial version of ATI 2019 to test before committing to purchase.

Ian

Thank you for taking time to reply.  I guess I'll just have to give it a try!

Bob_987 wrote:

1. Easily 90%, in terms of data volume, of what needs backing up is photos, video and music.  I recall reading somewhere that these kinds of files are already in compressed format, so saving them to a compressed archive is somewhat pointless.  Might as well just make copies.  So - if this is true - can Acronis, instead of backing up to a compressed archive, just copy files from network drive to another on a schedule that I set?   For example, every night, or once a week, copy any new files in my images/video/music folder(s) from network drive 1 to network drive 2.

Yes, Acronis uses compression by default - all backups are in a proprietary Acronis True Image Backup (.tib and soon to be .tibx in 2020) format that uses compression. Compression does not really help for pre-compressed files such as .zip, or any audio/video formats (.mp3, .mp4, etc.).  However, a backup can add some protection to these files and give you history to recover from (say you edit an original home movie in your original full, make some edits and then backup that change in the next incremental... you can now recover either version).  And that can also be useful as Acronis has ransomware protection for .tib files for added protection in case your system is compromised.   Doesn't hurt to have backups like this for the different recovery options if you used automated backup scheduling with incrementals or differentials.

But, if you don't need that, there is an Acronis synchronization option.  I have not personally used it, but it is there.  In my own setup, I have just created a simple Windows robocopy script that runs on an automated schedule with Windows task scheduler.  This will replicate the source drive to the destination drive (local or across a network share or NAS), and is really easy to do.  The problem with this is if my script is bad (say I get the source and destination wrong - there goes everything... or, if the original data gets corrupted or compromised and I then sync that to the other drive and don't have any historical versions of it that were not compromised to replace it with.

Here's a very easy sample robocopy script you can modify and put into a .txt file and then change .txt to .bat if you want to run it as a script. Make sure you change the source and destination!  There are also different switches instead of /MIR if you only want to replicate new changes (but leave old files on the destination drive that no longer exist on the source) and things like that:

robocopy.exe "D:\HomeMovies" "\\E:HomeMovies2" /MIR /R:0 /W:1 /XF ROBOCOPY_LOG.txt /COPY:DT /FFT /LOG:"D:\HomeMovies\ROBOCOPY_LOG.txt" /TEE /MT:3

2. Can Acronis wake up the computer it's installed on if it's sleeping?  Or, can it run while sleeping?  That is, I'd like to just leave the PC it's on turned on but sleeping all night, and have it run the job in the middle of the night.  (I'm confident my network drives will wake up when anything seeks to access them.)

Yes, it can.  It all depends on your computer power management settings, but it is very possible to do this and configurable in your backup script. You may need to adjust your power settings in Windows as there are a few instances where applications cannot wake from specific sleep states.

3. Can Acronis back up other computers on the network?  For example, if Acronis is installed on PC1, can it back up specified folders from PC2 to the backup network drive? 

It depends.  It is primarily designed to backup the system it is installed on and can save backups to remote shares, but typically doesn't backup remote shares.  However, if you select a file/folder backup, you can enter a remote share (has to be available to the local system where Acronis True Image is installed on to work and you must be able to enter the credentials to authenticate and access the remote content).  This does seem to work, but keep in mind that it is only good for a data backup of specific files/folders.  It would not be good for backing up a remote computer hard drive, partition, or files/folders that are probably in use or locked by a remote system (like another user profile, Windows folder, system folder, or an application folder that is in use by the remote system).  So, yeah, it is possible, but typically, you want Acronis running on each system though for the best backup and restore capabilities.  It is possible to purchase 1, 3, or 5 licenses.

No harm in grabbing the trial and testing all of this out to see if it handles things as expected though!!!

Bobbo_3C0X1 wrote:

...all backups are in a proprietary Acronis True Image Backup (.tib and soon to be .tibx in 2020) format that uses compression. Compression does not really help for pre-compressed files such as .zip, or any audio/video formats (.mp3, .mp4, etc.).  However, a backup can add some protection to these files and give you history to recover from (say you edit an original home movie in your original full, make some edits and then backup that change in the next incremental... you can now recover either version). 

...  In my own setup, I have just created a simple Windows robocopy script that runs on an automated schedule with Windows task scheduler.  This will replicate the source drive to the destination drive (local or across a network share or NAS), and is really easy to do.

Thank you for such a complete and helpful reply.   

So, if images/video/music are not really compressed, then an incremental backup of, for example, a folder containing only images, must just put a new copy of the latest image file into a .tib container - yes?  So, really, I'm just adding copies upon copies of the files as they are modified and adding new files as they are added.  If so, then couldn't you  accomplish the same result with a robocopy that creates a new version of any file from the source drive that already exists on the target drive but has a later 'last modified' date than the latest existing copy?  I wonder, can you program robocopy to do:

Create New 'Copy Folder' with Incremented Folder Name on Target Drive

IF (filename on source drive doesn't exist in last copy folder on target drive)
THEN (copy file to new Copy Folder)

IF (filename exists on source drive AND in last Copy Folder on Target Drive)
AND (source drive 'last modified date' > target drive 'last modified date')
THEN (copy source drive file to target drive in Copy Folder)

Yes, all backups with Acronis are made in .tib format. Each backup product uses their own format... Most are proprietary.

An  incremental backup will only backup changes that have occurred since the last backup. So, if no file changes, the incremental will be very small. If you edit some existing pictures, or add some new files, those would be captured in the incremental. That's where incremental can be very helpful... Small backups that are quick to complete. Their downside is that each incremental requires ALL backups in the chain that came before it. If something gets corrupted, then later incrementals could you corrupted too. General rule.... Don't let your incremental chains get too big, or go too long. There's no best scenario, but a couple examples...

If doing daily backups, I would recommend no more than 13 incrementals (2 weeks). If doing weekly backups I would recommend no more than 7 incrementals (2 months). Can you do more and wait longer? Absolutely? Is the risk of a corrupted backup (over time) worth the risk as the backup chain gets longer and older.... That is up to each person.

---------

Robocopy has a couple of options. There are no if statements for it, but you could create your own in a .bat script and then run Robocopy if a match is made.

Enter

Robocopy /? 

To get all of the switches..

/MIR      mirrors the source to destination exactly

Alternatively...

/E           copies all files, folders and sub directories. This just copies the source and any existing changes. For instance, you update a file, it will get copied.  But, if you delete a file on the source, it will not delete it on the destination.  The changes only occur for existing files that are changed or new files that need to be copied. Deletions on the source don't make deletions on the destination. If you need that, then use the /MIR switch instead.

There are no incremented file or folder names. You can run a log and keep adding to it each run to see the changes with the switch:

/log+:file /tee 

Practice a bit with test folders. The main thing is the source is always first and the destination is always second. If you mix them up, you're going to be very unhappy with the results. Ris fast and no mess. It goes to town on copying and will do exactly what you tell it when you hit enter to fire it off 

I think you could use something like SyncToy to copy changed files in folders to your external drives.