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backing up 3 computers on 1 external drive

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I have 3 computers (one has 5 partitions).  Each computer has an external drive that the computer backs up to, and each also backs up online.  However, I'm rather paranoid about ransomware and other disk disasters.  So...

Once a month I want to do a total backup of each of the 3 computers onto a single external drive.  (I'll carry the drive to each computer, back it up, and go to the next computer...)

So that I can easily do a whole-disk restore if needed, what kind of backup should I do?  Can I clone 3 computers to one backup disk?  Or should I do a single-version scheme?  Or what?  And will it be easy to recreate a drive from this backup, including the boot track?

      Thank you for your advice.

              Art Lieberman

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Art, if each of your computers only has a single drive, then the options that I would recommend would be either of the following or a combination of these:

  1. Create a new Disks & Partitions backup task using either 'Single version' (if space will be an issue) or else using 'Full versions only'.  Do not set a schedule for this unless you use the option to run the backup when the designated backup drive is connected.
     
  2. Create the Acronis Rescue Media and boot each computer from this along with the backup drive connected, and create a Disk backup offline from Windows.

Option 1. would be the simplest / easiest to use as can run within Windows but does carry the risk that if there is any latent malware present, that malware would have access to your additional backup drive when it is connected.

Option 2. needs a little more planning and requires the computer be dedicated to the backup task while it is running, but would protect against any latent malware acting against your backup drive, thus satisfy some of your paranoia!

Note: running any offline backup should be performed when the rescue media is booted to match the BIOS mode used by the Windows OS, the same as for doing a recovery operation.

See KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media for details.

I am a proponent of Steve's option 2.

Because this is a once a month task, it is easy to manage. I tend to do it after every Windows update, but that comes to about once a month anyway.

On my destination drive, I keep  a separate folder for each machine. Under that, I create a folder with the name of the Windows system (e.g. Windows 1903-657).  I then create a separate Full disk backup for each drive on the machine. To keep it quick, I don't run a validation from the backup task. Instead, I can run validations later after rebooting Windows. As the drive fills up, it's easy to delete the older backup folders based on the Windows version.

I would add that using bootable Recovery Media will allow you the luxury of having each machine backing up to independent folders and the ability to name the backups as you choose rather than accept the TI default backup names.  I do this to a drive that I backup 6 different computers on.  Each of them have their own folder which is named the same as the Source computer.  I also include the name of the computer in the backup file name along with the date it was created.

The above is advantageous when/if recovery is necessary.  Using the Recovery Media selecting Recovery  will populate the Source file location with all backup files on the storage drive.  You can easily select the backup file of your choice by name and date to recover.

I use a differential backup scheme to achieve this objective which will create a Full image as a base to use for each following differential file created.

Bruno...  I don't  know why the "didn't help" button appears, and I don't know how to get rid of it.  You were very helpful.

Steve, Bruno, Enchantech...

Thank you for your recommendations.  I had not known the value of using the Recovery Media for creating the backups.

I don't know about that button either, but not to worry. Glad to hear you're working things out well.

 

Edit: I just thought about it. If you marked it as a solution, it may be a button for someone else to say that it didn't work for them.

BrunoC wrote:

Edit: I just thought about it. If you marked it as a solution, it may be a button for someone else to say that it didn't work for them.

Correct (as I understand it too!).