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Backup of Acronis backups

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What is the best way of doing a backup of the Acronis Backup files. I am doing a backup of Acronis on my secondary hard drive. Now not asking for a system crash, but how would I copy these backup up files to an external device (usb drive) and then able to access this backups so I can restore to the PC. What I have found out that when you copy only 2 files selected from a backup to an external drive and then copying them back to the PC or add an existing backup to Acronis, will give an error "this is not the last archive of the backup"...So it seems that you cannot just be selective, but you must copy certain files to avoid this error, and what files, is what I am trying to find out. Thank you for whatever assistance you can give.

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George, I would make a couple of suggestions in answer to your questions above.

  1. When you create a backup task, try to keep all the files created by that task in a single folder that is dedicated for that purpose, without mixing files from any other backup tasks you may have.
    The reason for this approach is to enable you to quickly and easily identify what files belong to what task, so that when or if you want to copy those files, you can simply copy the whole folder and its contents!
     
  2. Rather than copy the files for your backup(s) from your secondary hard drive to your external USB drive, you could consider setting up another duplicate backup task to backup the same source data to your external USB drive.
    This would put all the onus of copying files within the remit of the backup task, allowing it to also manage the backups stored on your USB drive, plus have the added benefit of being a separate backup of your data (not a copy of the one made earlier that might possibly be corrupted for any reason).

One point to bear in mind if copying Acronis backup .tib or .tibx files is that the Acronis Active Protection (AAP) feature, if turned on, will prevent you from doing this, so would need to be turned off from within the ATI 2020 main GUI panel before attempting to copy files.  This applies equally to copy files in either direction (to or from the USB drive).

Thanks Steve for the suggestion on doing backups.  I think will follow your suggestion of replicating the backup. In replicating a backup, I have to create a secondary backup with the same parameters and then ran them manually.  Is there a way that after the original backup, that the replicating backup would run automatically.  I only have done a fullback up of my System Disk only, so I wonder how to run 2 backups automatically without manual intervention. 

I just checked ATI 2016 on my desktop and went to Options and one of that was Backup Reserve Copy and it allows you to name another destination of the same backup which is not present in ATI2020.  So it does this automatically.  

 

In 2020 Replication replaced Backup Reserve Copy.  Many have requested the replication be enhanced to allow for it to be targeted to local destination rather than a Cloud only option.  You can do the same using the Feedback option in the 2020 application.

Thank you Enchantech.  They just want to make money if we replicate to the cloud since we have to buy the subscription.  I'd rather run a separate backup to an external usb drive.  I hope they give us that option next time in a ATI2020 upgrade.  

George, if you set up a duplicate backup task to your external drive, then schedule that to run say 5 minutes after your main task, it will wait on the main task to finish then launch automatically to do the second backup for you.

Great Steve..thank you and will try that

George, I copy Full Backups from my internal backup drive to an external usb drive weekly.

These FULL are added to Acronis "Add backup" via browse each time.  And I have been able to verify these with Acronis and can also use File Explorer to locate files in these backups!

Attached is a pic of a Weekly FULL on my usb...the info has been added to Acronis.  I can select one of these backups and also Recovery a file, etc. as needed w/o error.

 

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Thanks Bobby.