Can True Image Home 2012 backup to multiple hard drives
Hi there,
We're running TIH 2012, and want to backup to two external hard drives instead of just the one. I can't find a solid answer if TIH 2012 can do this or not.
From having a scout through the knowledge base, it seems Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 certainly does have the ability to do this, but I couldn't find an answer for TIH. If someone's able to shed some light on this, that would be appreciated.
I did try setting the same drive letter on the new drive and replicating the folder structure, however we are still receiving errors each time the backup runs. I'm fairly sure there would be a way to get it to work, but am not sure on the necessary settings to use.
I can attach any logs etc if required. It seems that when a different drive is used, TIH can't find the most recent backup, and that causes it to error. Basically I'm after a way to get it to ignore that error, and backup anyway.
Thanks in advance for any help. :)
Thanks Tuttle - The multiple tasks is a great idea and would overcome this issue.
In the situation here, the two drives are brought in by separate people and then taken back offsite, but the days they come in are never the same twice, so setting it up on a schedule is a little tricky, as there might be the same drive there 3 days running, then 2 days for the other drive, then daily alternating for the next week etc etc, it's totally random.
We would really like to have it running on a schedule if possible, but doing this in our situation would probably be a bit tricky...?
Obviously if your drives cannot be present on schedule, then a standard scheduled backup won't work. If you wanted some automated reminder, you could use Task Scheduler to create a pop-up alert requesting a particular drive, prior to then running an ATI backup to that drive.
You should assign different drive letters and names to those two drives.
OK - thanks very much for the help. Looks like this is the way to go, will just require a little training for the staff. :)
Cheers.
Based on your circumstances, here is one possible group of settings.
It looks like to me that one option would be to create two tasks--either 2012 or 2013. One task named Green for disk 1; and another task named Blue for disk 2.
The tasks would be set with no schedule and run manually via a desktop shortcut as needed based on the availability of either Blue or Green presence. If you wanted, you could even assign volume names (11 char or less) the same as the task names .
Assign drive letter x to Green and drive letter Y to Blue. Within the Green task, point to destination X; and within the blue Task, point to destination y. Integrate the the free or paid version of Drive Notify into your backup task via the Pre/post Pre command.
The TrueImge backup settings options offers the capability of adding a desktop shortcut which could be used to initiate the backup task. Two desktop shortcuts (2 tasks) would exist and named either Blue or Green.
What Drive Notify offers is that when you click on the Green desktop shortcut (or if scheduled), a window would prompt you to attach the green disk.
Or, if you clicked the Blue desktop shortcut, Drive Notify would prompt you to attach the blue disk. The notify to attach window would remain open until the specific disk is physically attached. The wrong disk attached, the window would remain open until the correct disk attached and recognized. No error message would be generated unless it would time out due to non-attachment of the correct disk.
Drive Notify (written by MVP MudCrab) is listed in my signature below. The paid version automatically closes the notify window when correct disk is recognized whereas the free version would require the operator to close the notify window when correct disk attached. The paid version has other features but not essential to the above.
Each task can be configured to run full only or run first full plus x number of inc or dif backups.
I would set the task to retain x number of recent backup chains so the retention of backups would be done by the program without user intervention. Task should be set correctly the first time and NOT edited as editing can often confuse the program and produce unexpected results.
The figure 11-full (link below) shows one example of how the backup scheme might be set. Figure 8 also shows where in the task to assign names and folders to the actual backup files.
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/28705
Thanks Grover.