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Please suggest a procedure for alternating external drives

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I would like to have a procedure for alternating external drives, so that before a full backup is to run (rather than one of the incremental backups), I can swap the external target drive connected to my laptop.  With this procedure, I could maintain 2- or 3-generations of external drives, each with a full backup (with its associated incrementals).

Based on the message I just got, Acronis is expecting the same external drive as the last full backup and it's incrementals.

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Jim, welcome to these public User Forums.

I would like to have a procedure for alternating external drives, so that before a full backup is to run (rather than one of the incremental backups), I can swap the external target drive connected to my laptop.  With this procedure, I could maintain 2- or 3-generations of external drives, each with a full backup (with its associated incrementals).

Based on the message I just got, Acronis is expecting the same external drive as the last full backup and it's incrementals.

The message is correct, Acronis backup tasks are only designed to be used with a single backup destination, so you should create a separate backup task for each external target drive that you want to use, then run these tasks to their respective drives.

There have been several forum topics raised for this same requirement which may offer you a solution to what you want to do here:

See forum topic: Acronis Backup (BU) Using Rotating USB Drives

and forum topic: Best way to do Full Backups and Rotate Hard Drives

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Hello Jim,

we've a feature request to support backing up to removable drives with regular drive swaps (internal ID TI-32805), I've added this topic as a vote to the request. 

Ekaterina wrote:

Hello Jim,

we've a feature request to support backing up to removable drives with regular drive swaps (internal ID TI-32805), I've added this topic as a vote to the request. 

Ekaterina,

Please add my vote for this feature.

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Mark Anderson wrote:

 Ekaterina,

Please add my vote for this feature. 

Noted, thank you, Mark!  

How can I vote for this feature also?  I prefer to keep last month's backup device in a fireproof safe at a different location (disconnected from the computer), so that in the event of a catastrophe I don't lose more than a month.

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Shawn Shealy wrote:

How can I vote for this feature also?  I prefer to keep last month's backup device in a fireproof safe at a different location (disconnected from the computer), so that in the event of a catastrophe I don't lose more than a month.

Shawn, thank you for sharing your use-case! Added your comment as a vote for the feature request.