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Using an external HDD as the main source and backing up to another external HDD

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Hello all

I am running out of 1TB HDD space I have on HP Pavillion.

I am thinking about using a 2TB externall HDD to be the main location for all my Personal Files and leave the rest of the information on HP OS:/C drive.

In addition I am planning on adding another 2TB external HDD to be used as a backup to the first one.

So I have 2 questions

1.) Can I use ACronis True Image to perform this task?

2.) If yes, how do I go about it?

Many thanks in advance

Nejo

 

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Yes you can.

Once you move your data to the second (extra data drive), just create a second backup task for that drive.  Use one backup job task for the main OS drive and the second backup to backup the data on the data drive.  If you backup disk changes, make sure you update the original backup task to point to the new backup drive as well.  

Some other notes:

1) Always use unique names for each backup task

2) Set the drive letter of your second drive to something further down the alphabet.  Windows has a habit of changing drive letters for secondary disks if they are not plugged in and another is used instead (for instance, say your USB is offline, you have a flash drive plugged in and it becomes D and then you attache your backup drive, it may now become E and stay E).  By using a letter down the line a little way, the chance of this happening is not as likely.

3) You can take your data drive backup a step further if you want.  2TB is a lot of data.  You might want to consider categorizing some data into main folders and usng a backup job for each folder.  that way, if you do have to recover, you might only have to recover a specific folder, instead of the entire drive.  You can then fluctuate the time frames for each folder backup (for instance, I have a movie folder, a tv show folder, a picture folder, a software repository folder, etc).  I only backup the software repository folder once per month since it rarely changes and is not really critical data.  I backup the other folders weekly, but on different days - just to spread the workload out.  

Whatever plan you pick - just use what works best/easiest for you.