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Recovering Differential Backups with TI 2016

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Hi,

I am a little confused here.

If i create a differential chain, say a full backup and 9 subsequent diff backups to the Acronis SecureZone  and need to recover the backup.

is it correct that if I recover the last diff backup only, the full backup plus the last diff backup will be recovered.

I cannot find any way of identifiying what backup is what, if I have to recover from individual full and Diff backups other than file explorer, which is not ideal.

Is this procedure the same with disk and file, diff backups.

Thanks for any assistance.

Regards cba

 

 

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Hello CBa, 

Each differential backup will contain all changes to the source files (disks, partition, files or folders) that have occurred since the last full backup was created.

So if you do a restore / recovery from the last differential backup, then only that backup plus the full backup is required to recover the system to the point where that last differential backup was taken.

If you can identify a point in time where a problem started, then you could choose to restore to the last differential backup that was taken prior to that point in time to recovery to before the problem started. 

This process is the same whether dealing with disks, partitions, files or folders.

I would recommend taking a look at Grover's True Image Guides which has examples of the different types of backup schemes and how they work.

cba,

The information provided by Steve is correct.  Here's an example of how you would select the date and time of the backup you want to restore:

 

Regards,
FtrPilot

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Hi,

Thanks for your prompt response.

The method of recovering is how I expected, the only problem I forsee is that the list of backups, full and diff are not labelled,

my question is how am I able to ascertain which is the full backup and which are diff.

I also use Easeua although this suite is not as good as Acronis the backups are labelled in the recovery routine which makes recovery a breeze.

Is there a way of making TI show the type of backup when recovering

Thanks Chris B

Chris, when it comes to recovery, it doesn't matter whether you can tell which is a full, incremental or differential backup provided that the complete version chain is present and correct.

When you perform a restore / recovery, you should pick the date for where you want to recover back to, after which ATIH will read the version chain for the selected backup images to execute that recovery action.

You can not restore data from an individual incremental or differential backup image file - recovery operates on the complete version chain, i.e. a Full backup plus all incremental images to the recovery date, or a Full backup plus a single differential image.

If you really want to know which backup images are full, incremental or differential images, then you can use Windows Explorer and look at the actual file names which will have _full_ or _inc_ or _diff_ embedded in the name.

Please have a read at post https://forum.acronis.com/forum/38799#comment-122496 from Grover's True Image Guides (link in side column of the forum) where Grover gives an explanation of the differences between these backup types and effect on restoring / recovery.

Hi Folks,

Thanks Steve for your comments, I have finally cleared up a missconception, I thought that when recovering a diff backup it was up to the user to decide a full and then a subsequent diff backup to recover from. thus my concern that i was unable to easily find out which was which.

  Idid not realize that TI would do this for you and the only user input was to decide what date to restore to. This makes it child's play.

Once again thanks for your assistance.

Regards Chris