Backup advice

Richard, welcome to these public User Forums.

I would not recommend having only the Acronis Cloud as your exclusive backup destination and this is not best practise as described by Acronis themselves!  See Acronis Article: Ultimate Guide to Computer Backup which describes using a 3-2-1 method for backup practise.

250GB Cloud storage may be enough but that really depends on how much used space is taken on each of your computers on their internal 256GB drives, and how often that data is changing, what type of data is involved etc.

One simple method of testing this would be to create a backup task for each computer using the Incremental backup option to make only the first full backup then create incremental files forever afterwards (to mimic how the cloud backup works).  If you store these backups on an external USB drive, how long does it take before that drive is getting low on disk space?

Cloud backups operate differently to local ones in that they are able to remove older incremental versions while retaining the integrity of the complete backup stored, so the space requirements are not identical to the test proposed above but should give you a clearer indication of the size of cloud storage needed.

Thanks very much for your prompt response. 

In my case, my personal computers are used mainly to surf the internet, occasional creation of documents, uploading of photos (most of which are then stored on the cloud in Google Photos). I have one windows application that I would like to be able to restore, if needed, but most other applications are web based and thus shouldn't present a problem with recovery.

I know it is not best practice to backup solely to the cloud, but given my circumstances, the reason is not clear.  While I recognize that the internal and external drives are vulnerable to catastrophic events, shouldn't the Acronis cloud backup still be safe (I'm sure Acronis has its own redundant practices in place)?  Having said that, I do have a 1 TB flash drive which I tried, but I gave up since it took so long to backup.

I'm still not clear on how the cloud backups "are able to remove older incremental versions while retaining the integrity of the complete backup stored" and how this is controlled by the selected schedule, maximum number of versions kept, and minimum storage time (items found in the "Advanced" tab).  As I understand the incremental backup scheme, all incremental backups, plus the initial backup, are necessary for a full restore. 

One remaining question. If I continue to backup to the cloud, what happens when space runs out? Will Acronis automatically begin removing "older incremental versions?"

Again, thanks so much for your help,

Richard Milstein

I have one windows application that I would like to be able to restore, if needed,

Sorry but you cannot restore individual applications from any Acronis backup whether in the cloud or local.

You would be able to restore the Windows OS along with all installed applications and data.

Cloud backups do not follow the same rules as local incremental backups in the way they work or are managed but there is no real documentation on the actual details of the process.

The ATI 2020 User Guide just has the following information about cloud backups:

When you back up your data to Acronis Cloud, the first backup may take a considerable amount of time to complete. Further backup processes will likely be much faster, because only changes to files will be transferred over the Internet.

As per the above, incremental backups are not the same as when created locally.

How your cloud storage becoming full is handled will depend on your cleanup settings but you are likely to see warnings about the status of available space if the cleanup option do not allow for sufficient data to be cleaned up to make space for new.

Richard Milstein wrote:

In my case, my personal computers are used mainly to surf the internet, occasional creation of documents, uploading of photos (most of which are then stored on the cloud in Google Photos). I have one windows application that I would like to be able to restore, if needed, but most other applications are web based and thus shouldn't present a problem with recovery.

Richard, given what you say here it may not be necessary to do full disk backups. You mention just one Windows application you would want to recover... is that something you can reinstall and simply restore the data? If so, you could be potentially reinstall in case of catastrophic failure and just restore your data.

Depending on configuration, a simple system could back up C:\users and C:\ProgramData and and be in good shape.

I'm surprised you gave up on the 1TB flash drive over speed, but do not mention speed to backup to cloud. Do you have a very high speed upload capability? It is still advisable to have local backups. It can be much faster and more reliable for recovery. What if you need to recover and do not have access to internet?

Cloud backup uses different consolidation. Steve can speak better to this. [And I see he did, while I was typing this.]

Steve, Bruno,

Thanks for your advice. I tried using my 1TB flash drive and I was sucessful (it was at least 3 times as fast as backing up to the cloud). I have ordered another flash drive (500GB) so I will use one for each of my computers. In addition, for redundancy, I will be backing up to the cloud as well. 

I also tried the replicate function, since it seems a logical way to combine the flash drive - cloud backups, but I got errors when the system tried to transfer the solution to the cloud.

Right now, while waiting for the second flash drive to arrive, I have set up daily backups (one each to the flash drive and to the cloud) for my laptop.  Not sure whether this is best practice, but I plan to do the same for my desktop.