fixed day full backup & other days differential backup ?

You cannot set backup times by day in regards to diffs if you have selected "daily" backups.  In your case you would need to to the following:

Create a New backup.

On the Schedule Tab:  Select "weekly"  Highlight Mon, Tue, Wed, Thur, Fri (since you say you only want weekdays and not weekends)

Backup Scheme Tab (custom scheme).  Backup Mehod:  Differential.  Create a full version after every 4 differential versions.  

In order for this to work so that your full backup starts on Friday, you would wait until Friday to run the first full.  Then it would do nothing on Saturday or Sunday, run diffs on Monday, Tues, Wed, Thur and the next full backup should run on Friday again.  If you do any manual backups inbetween, it will throw the days off as to shich one will be a dif and which one will be a full.  If your computer is off or misses a day, it will throw off the day when the full backup is taken as it is all based upon the original day the backup is started and the days that the preceding diffs run since it is limited by the number of differentials needed before the next full backup will automatically be created. 

If you want automatic backup cleanup, under "Backup Scheme Tab", turn on the "old version cleanup rules.  Use the "Store no more than X recent version chains" and enter a number there that meets your needs.  One full version chain is 1 full + 4 diffs.  If you want to keep one months worth of chains, select 4 version chains.  Upon the start of the 5th version chain (the full in that version) once the full has been taken, the entire first version chain will then be deleted. 

Thank you for the reply.

With other weekdays, I did mean including weekends.
So, the daily or weekly approach boils down to the same result.

As to when a full backup is created, you hit on the same problem that the exact day for it cannot be specified, only manually forced on the chosen day itself.
Furthermore subsequent actions can/will perturb that schedule.

Getting the full backup back on the desired day by modify the number of diff versions, is confusing.
It seems that, by reducing the diff count to less than the number of already existing diff versions, ATI keeps creating diff versions without end.
As of now(tuesday), I have 3 diffs to go till friday, but there are already 12 diffs present.   (on a 6 diff setting)

I'll try setting 15 diff (= 12existing + 3 diff ) to get hopefully a Friday Full

The ability to specify the day for the full backup seems a self-evident feature for ATI.

As the full backup is eventually taken offsite, a more robust schedule would be nice

best regards
glenn

Your best bet at success is to scrap your existing task and create a new one that fits what you are wanting to do.  With the new task aim it at a new folder and give the task a new name.  This should establish a clean task for the app to run.

The modification of existing tasks causes unexpected behaviour so it is doubtful that your existing task will ever work as you intend.

Ditto to Enchantec's last post - please create a new task and go from there.

Unfortunately, yes, the limitation with scheduling days and the number of diffs is dependent upon whether or not they can run at there scheduled time or if you manually run one before the scheduled time, which will throw off when the full is created.  If you want to include Weekends, you'd do as mentioned above, but select all days M-S, and have 6 diffs (Full would start Friday, Dif 1 = Sat, Dif 2 = Sun, etc).  Again though, if you miss a Saturday or runa an extra manual backup on Saturday, your scheme will no longer match up to the original days as it is really the # of backups that will determine what days the diffs and fulls will run.

If you always want a full on Fridays though, you could schedule a second backup taks for just "fulls" every Friday at a different time than your other backup task.  At least that would always be consistent and would be independent of the other backup task if it gets off track because of a missed day or an extra backup being run manually at some point. 

Thank you both for your advice.

I'll recreate the job everytime something upsets the desired result. Luckily that should be rare.

best regards
glenn

Rare?!?
After recreating the job, now it is the number of versions that is ignored.
This really starts to annoy me. how do the settings in the attached image give that result!
 

Glenn, you need to understand what a version chain is: this is a Full backup image plus the defined number of Incremental or Differential backup images, thus in your image, you have 1 full version chain plus 1 incomplete version chain though the number of differential images doesn't seem to match your settings for creating 6 differentials before a new full image.

I suspect that the settings for this task have changed in the course of testing different options as per this post thread which may be why you have a new Full backup image after only 4 differential images rather than 6 as the settings show.

The cleanup rule of only keeping 2 version chains will only be applied when the next (3rd) Full backup image is created and a new version chain is created when the first version chain (full plus 4 differential images) will be removed.

I'm in a similar situation here - before I bought Acronics I was assured by pre-sales that I could vary back-up by the day of the week.

I have a laptop which is sometimes connected to my NAS drive, and sometime not (because I am away and have my laptop with me).

I am always at home on a Sunday night, so would like to schedule a FULL backup every Sunday night to the NAS drive, with differential backups every other night of the week.

Despite assuring me that this can be done, Tech Support are refusing to help me unless I pay them for product support.

Having speant far too long on what should be an elementary task, I'm on the verge of giving up with this software and going elsewhere.

Can someone tell me if this can be done?

I understand that I can create 2 seperate schedules - #1 to do a FULL backup every Sunday night, and another - #2 to create differential backups for every other night of the week - but if I understand correctly the DIFFs won't relate to the #1 FULL but to the #2 FULL.

Another way around this would be for the software to count incomplete or failed DIFF backups - so that it always did a FULL back-up on the 7th cycle (regardless of the success or otherwise of the previous 6 attempts) but I can't find a method to do that either.

I can't believe that such a basic task cannot be accomplished with this software - all help gratefully received.

OK, lets take your requirements one by one:

Making a full backup every Sunday night to your NAS - no problem!

Making a differential backup on all other days?  Where will these backups be written?

If to your NAS, then no problem providing that you have connectivity to the NAS for each backup.

If to a different target drive, then this will require a second backup task to be created and there will be no relationship between this backup and the one done on Sunday to the NAS, other than that they both use the same source data.

If you are going to schedule backups when the target drive will not be available, then you will need to set options in the backup to handle the situation when the backup is due to run but the target drive is not available.

Failed backups are not counted as far as version chains are concerned, only successful backups, so if you say to create a new backup after 6 differential backups, then if you miss the backup on one day, the full backup will be delayed by one day...

This will only work as Steve mentioned. There's no work-a-round here other than having 2 tasks if you want to ensure that a full always runs on a certain day.  And you are correct, the backup tasks are separte from each other.  Diff's on one backup task will never relate to diffs on another backup task.  

Create a "WEEKLY" backup.  

Pick the backup days as Sunday, Tues, Thur, Sat.  

Backup Scheme = Diff 

Create a full version after every 3 differential versions.

Turn on automatic clean up if you want to (I suggest it - keep the number of version chains you have space for or want).

Run your first backup on Sunday so it is the one where the fulls take place.  Diffs will occur on Tues, Thur and Sat.  The key here is making sure your disks are on as you have scheduled the backups to run.  If they aren't then you have modified the backup task outside of the scope they were created with. 

As long as your computer is online and runs successful backups on those days, this will stay the same no matter what.  However, since the diffs are based off of successful runs on the scheduled days AND the number of diffs selected, there's no way around this in Acronis.  

I think you will find varying requests on how people want their backup software to run.  Personally, I would not want backup software to count a failed backup as part of the number of backups to keep before creating a new full.  To me, a failure would mean the desired backup did not occur so should not be counted.  I'm guessing that this is the more preferred method, but, not preferred by everyone.  Somethign like the 80-20 rule though, you're not going to please everyone.  The capability is definitely there though to do what you want, if you leave your disks on to match the backup scheme and/or if you supplement with a second backup task. 

OK - thanks for the responses.

Steve Smith - you say "If you are going to schedule backups when the target drive will not be available, then you will need to set options in the backup to handle the situation when the backup is due to run but the target drive is not available" - I think I need to explore this next.

I do not have regular days away from the office (and therefore the NAS drive back-up target). Some weeks I may be away a couple of days, other weeks all 5 working days, other weeks I may be in the office all week. The common denominator is that Sundays I'm always home - so Sunday nights I want a full back-up completed. If I am home on any other nights then I want a DIFF backup completed, if I am not home then a back-up of any kind is not possible.

I've previously tried manually editing the existing schedule - but this has produced some very strange responses - it would appear the software is unreliable when it comes to editing existing schedules.

I've gone through the options - but I can't find anything that would help - any advice gratefully receieved.

Look for the Advanced Schedule options and check to see if you get the option as shown in the attached screen shot, to Run when the current device is attached - this is normally given for removable devices such as USB disks.

If that option isn't available, then you would need to use the Pre / Post Commands option to set a test for your destination disk drive / NAS drive and only run if the command to test is successful.  See the PDF command attached on how I have been able to test for one of my network drives.

This forum is very slow....

Hi guys - thanks for your suggestions - I just wanted to let you know I wasn't ignoring you! I haven't had a chance to try your suggestions - but I will do - and when I do I'll reply back here to let you know how I get on.

Thanks

Hi - just a quick note back to say I set up the pre-post commands as suggested by Steve Smith. Many thanks Steve - they have stopped the software trying to back up when I'm not connected to the NAS.

There is still no clear solution to the issue I have - I am now manually doing additional DIFFs to make up the numbers so that I get a FULL on Sunday's. If at some point in the future anyone comes up with a better workaround please respond!

In the meantime thanks to those who tried to help - especially Steve for the pre-post commands guide.