When is it neccesarry to start a new back up rather than incremental back up?

I don't do incrementals but I'm not aware of a limit. I am also not aware of being unable to do an incremental if there are lots of changes. However, the incremental could be approaching the size of a full backup and this is sometimes seen if an a disk defrag operation has been done since the last backup.

In terms of reliabiltiy, you must remember that if you have a bad incremental in the chain then all subsequent incrementals are useless. It also is more secure if you have a few different backup sets available to you than just one with a huge string of incrementals. If anything goes wrong with it then you don't have another backup to use. Although I don't know if there is anything to support this statement in practice, it does seem possible that the longer the backup chain there could be a greater chance of a problem creating the next incremental. Real long incremental chains just don't seem like a good idea to me and a month's worth of incrementals, if done everyday, would be an absolute upper limit for consideration. I know a lot of people like a weekly full/incremental archive method.

I would concur with what Seekforever has written. Even if you validate every backup, having too many incrementals is lke running a red light in heavy traffic. In my opionion, it is simply being unsafe with your data when you have excess incrementals. Who is to say how many is too many but having a lot of incrementals just seems to be an unsafe practice--unless you have other backups where your data is covered by duplication.

Perhaps some of you could advise me on how to create different sets of back ups. It takes up lots of time and space.

Anyway i encountered something today. I created a new incremental back up series and validate each and everyone after the 1st series had errors. Anyway something occured so i had to restore system image. I have created 11 incrementals on this new series. So when i restore i choose the latest one. Halfway the system says it cannot find a certain volume, volume 6. So i had to go thru every incremental from 10 until i finally reached number 7 before i sucessfully restored system.

Firstly everytime the system cannot find the volume i have to open up all the files and folders again before i can reach the folder where my back ups are saved. What a hassle. is the 2011 version the same? I have 2009 btw.

Also does the 2011 version number or label each incremental differently so that one doesn't have to go thru each incremental to find a volume. I was lucky that i only had 11 back ups. Imagine if i had 30 and i restored from the latest obviously and then it cannot find the volume. I would have to go thru 29 downwards wouldn't i?

I don't even know why incremental 10 wasn't the one the system was looking for but rather incremental 7 had the missing volume. I didn't really change the pc much from part 10 to part 11.

Just curious as to the type of backup. Was this a "disk and partitions" backup; or was this a "files and folders" backup?

Your experience is one reason why a differential backup is preferred by many. All it needs is the one diff plus the base and it can be restored.

Yup it's a disk and paritions backup. A back up of the entire system on my ssd.

The reason why i chose the incremental was cos it's recommended by the program itself. So it turns out that dffferential is preferred instead?

Could you post a link in this forum where the discussion of differential back ups is discussed. I hope it's not too much trouble for you.

Acronis does not really make any recommendtions and it is up to the user to choose. Suggest you start in he user manual at section 3.1. Search on the term "differential".

There is a differnece between the restorability of the differential and incremental type backups.

Assuming that you do two different backups sets which include 25 backups.
One group has one full plus 24 incrementals and the other group has one full plus 24 differential backups.

In the differential group, all you need to restore is to select any one of the differentials and it plus the base full will be restored.

In the incremental group, if you want to restore the most recent incremental, then all prior incremental must be present and in a non-corrupt state. Each is a link in the backup chain and all prior incrementals must be present. So in order to restore incremental number 24, then all 24 are needed. Whereas, if they were differential and you wanted to restore the most recent, all you would need is diiff #24 plus the single base or a total of two files needed.

If you run into troubles restoreing an incremental, you may have some restore success by trying to restore each successive prior file until you find the one which may be causing the difficulty.

From here:

http://img35.imageshack.us/i/acronisn.jpg/

Circled in red it's reccommended by acronis to use incremental.

The 2 descriptions that i circled in blue are the same. Essentially a first time user or one that didn't read in the forums like this one for eg or read the manual isn't going to get much info just by looking at those 2 options given there since the descriptions are the same not even similar and there's reccommended next to the incremental option he's most likely going to select the incremental option.

Since i now know better i would know which option to select and what each option does.