Skip to main content

Cloud backup storage calculation

Thread needs solution

I apologize if this has been asked elsewhere, I wasn't able to find a good duplicate.  I'm curious about the amount of storage I need to get if I want to purchase cloud backup storage.

Most of my backup data is fairly small, but one backup in particular can reach up to 800 GB or so of data.  What I'm unsure of is the overlap while a new version is being written.  For example, if I save a backup at 800 GB, and then I want to replace it with a new 800 GB backup the following evening, will that require 1TB of storage, or will it require 2 because it temporarily goes up to 1.6 TB while the first one exists and before the second one completes and overwrites/deletes the first one?

Or, to phrase the question in a different way if you prefer: is the maximum storage capacity defined as a hard cap even for temporary backup data, or is there some wiggle room with regards to data in the process of being deleted or that only goes over for a relatively short period of time?

0 Users found this helpful

Arlie, welcome to these public User Forums.

Any backups to the Acronis Cloud work differently than the schemes used for local backups, so if you setup a Cloud backup task for your 800GB of data, the first backup will be a full backup with compression applied, and all subsequent backups will be just the changes.

Cloud backups never create further full backups unless you completely replace all the source data to cause the changes to be equivalent to doing a new full backup.

What you do need to account for is how many versions of the data you want to keep and for how long.  The default retention settings are to store no more than 20 versions and delete versions older than 6 months.  This can cause a lot more data to be stored in the Cloud if your source is constantly changing, so you could need more than 1TB in that case.

The retention settings can be adjusted to suit your own requirements.

Aha, thanks for the clarification and the welcome!  That makes sense.