Best use of hardware for backup strategy?

It is always wise to have more than one copy of a backup if budget and other factors allow.  In your case use example I would say your best solution is the use of a third party sync tool which you could use to sync the two 2TB drives, or folders on those drives so that the files within will duplicate without user intervention.

Most of the MVPs here keep a copy of backup files on a disk that is not attached full time to the computer.  We do this as a bit of insurance against ransonware and other potential malware attacks.  Something to think about.

Don't clone to the other drive unless you plan on detaching it - you don't want to keep two cloned drives connected - even if one is USB.  Also, the only way to test that clone is to pull the original drive and swap in the clone - it's a lot of work to do on a regular basis.

Personally, since you have the drives, I would do what you propse.  As enchantec mentiond you can use a sync application to synch your primary backup to the other drive.  Alternatively, you can use Acronis >>> advanced tab of your backup job >>> backup reserve copy

This should copy your new backup to the other drive location as well.  I've never used it, but that's what it's intended for.

And with that third drive, I would take an occassional offline full disk backups with your bootable recovery media (at least before major changes, or at set intervals - at least monthly or as often as you feel comfortable spacing them apart) so that you have an offline backup and only attach that drive to the system when the OS is not booted, for protection against malware/ransomeware, redundancy, and peace-of-mind.  

See this link for details on Reserve Copy requirements and details on how the feature works.  It may not fit our needs.

http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/ATI2017/index.html#3…

Good call, I didn't realize it only created full backups each time.  Sounds like synching with another apps would work better - even a robocopy script would work fine. 

Hi, 

Thanks both for chipping in with ideas. I especially like the idea of keeping a detached copy of important files like photos etc. Wasn't really familiar with Ransom-ware, scary stuff..!

Bobbo: It's obvious I wasn't clear when mentioning cloning, sorry. Here's a better explantion of my proposed idea:

1: Clone the current onboard 232GB Drive to one of the 2TB Drives.
2: Remove the 232GB Drive from the PC and insert the 2TB Drive to become the main HDD for the PC.
3: Back up this newly installed 2TB Drive to my external USB 2TB Drive on a nightly basis.

In this scenario, I would have a 2TB drive in the PC, backing up to a 2TB drive in the caddy. This then leaves the 232GB Drive free for which I can use for 'off-line/disconected' storage like photos.

What do you think? Again, thanks both for your opinions.

Staffs Lebowski..

That sounds fine.  You might outgrow the 232GB drive in short order but the scanario would work fine.  Do hava a look at the documentation so that you can gain an understanding of the difference between a backup and a clone.  These are not the same thing and you need to know the difference.

Only thing I see as a potential problem is how much space will live on your new 2tb drive.  If your backup drive is the same size as the original, that may not leave much room for backups.  Let's say you fill 1TB of your new, primary 2TB drive.  You take 1 full backup (roughly 800Gb); you might be able to get 1 full backup + some incrementals or diffs on your 2TB drive, but if that 1st version chain is more than 1TB, you'll be hard pressed to get another full created on your backup drive (which is necessary for any automated cleanup schemes - it won't clean up old backups, until a new full has been completed first).  If your actual backed up data is going to be much less than that though (which it sounds like it will be for now since you're coming from a small drive), you're probably fine.  It's something you should be aware of though. 

Personally, I would not go with a large drive for the OS.  If/when you need to restore the OS, if you are needing to restore 100's of GBs (or TBs) on a spinning drive, it will be slow and tedious - backup take much longer as well.  In my setup, I use a fast 250GB SSD (PCIE NVME drive now, but let's assume most use an SSD).  On this 250Gb drive, I usually have about 70Gb in use and a full backup of the entire drive content is roughly 50Gb.  Not only does having a fast SSD, make the OS and apps run quickly for daily operation, but also makes the backup of the OS lightning fast - (about 6 minutes to complete a full).  

I then use a 2TB drive for my data (photos, music, videos) and back those up seperately and less frequently than the OS (about 900Gb in use) to another 3TB drive.  By seperating the OS onto a SSD, I have a fast OS and really fast backup and recovery of the OS.  If my OS drive nees to be recovered or repaced, it has no impact to the second drive with my data and vice-versa if the data drive dies and needs to be replaced/recovered.  Also, this allows me to backup the ever-changing OS drive frequently, with relatively little change to the overall size on my backup drive (1 full a week + 6 daily increments and keep 4 version chains).  I then backup my data (which changes far less frequently), less often... 1 monthly full, with 4 diffs (one every other week).   

Do what works best for you based on your needs, $ for new hardware, backup frequency and backup retention.  

I also have a small (250 gig or 120 gig SSD) for system, and large HDD for data. On one ystem I have a second 250 gig SSD for editing video files. I do not beleive in keeping data on the same SSD/HDD as the OS. When doing a system disk restore I do not want to 'trash' my data at the same time.

While you can get away with 120 gig for system drive, givne the price of SSDs 240/250 is not much extra. I only use 120 gig drive on a systems that I use for software testing - mainly ATI.

Ian

Hi Everyone,

Thank you all for your replies and my sincere apologies for the delay in replying to them (work really gets in the way sometimes!)

'Backup' is such an easy word to say but, the actual plan is more complicated than I first imagined so I appreciate the wisdom you've shared on this. I remember many, many years ago when one of my PC's failed and restoring the data from my (CD) backups was a bit of a nightmare.

I read an interesting article once about information on paper, how even after 2000+ years we can still access (see) the information. Compare that to a document (a 'document' being any file type) created on a PC, 30 years ago. Would the software you created that document with even exist today? I can remember creating documents on an Amiga, I doubt I'd be able to access that information today without a big effort.

Thanks again guys, your help has been much appreciated.

Staffs Lebowski..