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True Image usage procedure

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I've been using Windows Home Server for years with great success. I wanted to compare WHS against TrueImage.  Windows Home Server does all of the following.

  • Will TrueImage run as a service or applet that will perform an initial full backup, then scheduled (eg daily) incremental backups of drives and/or partitions?  In other words, can the backups be performed while Windows is running and not require manually booting to a USB/CD boot key?
  • Let's say I get a virus and I want to restore my OS to a backup 7 days ago.  In order to restore a partition or drive, would I use a USB/CD boot key?  Assuming I'm using an external hard drive, would I be able to see all of my backups?  I'm not just talking about seeing a directory of backup files.  Would I see a GUI that shows my backup history, so I can scroll down and pick the backup from 7 days ago?
  • If I wanted to restore a partition and/or drive to a specific incremental backup, do I just have to select the incremental backup?  In other words, is Acronis smart enough to look at my backup history and determine which full/incremental backups are needed to perform the restore?  Using my 7 day example, let's say the last full backup was 30 days ago.  Would Acronis start at the full and work its way forward to the T-7 backup?
  • Can multiple incremental backups be compressed in a single backup? Let's say I want to have a daily backup for the last 60 days, but beyond that I only want to keep monthly backups.

What WHS does very well is it makes it very simple to view and restore from backup history without scrolling through backup directories.  You just see a list of backups, pick one and then select the target destination. Are there any videos of what the USB boot/restore process looks like?

 

 

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Michael,

Welcome to the forum.

True Image can do everything you want except your last bullet...It cannot compress incrementals into a single backup.

Here's a link for some videos:

https://forum.acronis.com/forum/117004

Regards,

FtrPilot

To add to FtrPilot's info, you can't compress, but you can remove older "version chains" with automatic cleanup.  This only works for a full version chain though so you want to determine how many incrementals you keep before completing a new full (each completion of a new full, is what triggers the end of the last version chain).  

My personal recommendation for a backup scheme...

Daily backups.  1 full + 6 incrementals = 1 week.  Keep 4 version chains = 1 month.  After the 5th full completes, version chain 1 will be deleted automatically, leaving 3 previous weeks and the last completed full.  The process will repeat and clean on it's own.  You can modify this as you see fit for the length of retension and number of incrementals you feel comfortable wiht.  60 incrementals seems a bit excessive and risky though.  If you are limited on space, I would reduce the amount of backups to retain, and maybe shoot for 2 weeks per version chain instead (i.e. 1 full + 13 incrementals on a daily basis and keep only 2 or 2 version chains)

Please also consider the backup rule of 3-2-1 (just in case)