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Backup advice

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I am an inexperienced user of Acronis and would like some advice on developing a backup plan. Currently, I have an HP laptop (250GB SSD) and Lenovo desktop (also 250GB SSD) that I would like to back up. The size of the laptop backup is ~ 65GB and the size of the desktop is ~ 90GB. I have an SSD external drive (500GB for the laptop and 250GB for the desktop) attached to each machine. I have been backing up each machine to their respective SSDs every other day with a full backup followed by 5 incremental backups.  All backups - both full and incremental take less than 25 minutes. I keep two weeks worth of backups and everything seems to be going well with respect to the external drive backups.

Although, I welcome any comments regarding my external drive backup strategy, my main question concerns backups  to the Acronis cloud, of which I currently have 250GB of storage. My last laptop backup took 44 hours. At one point I had set up the replication option which seemed to be somewhat faster. So, what would you recommend regarding my cloud backup strategy? Should I use the replication option or have a separate cloud backup task?There is only 250GB of cloud storage for backups from both machines, which should be enough for at least one backup from each. Given my external drive strategy, how often should I perform the cloud backups, and how should I manage the cleaning of data from the cloud?  

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Richard, in addition to your current backup strategy with the two external drives, I would recommend investing in another external drive of a larger size, i.e. 1 or 2 TB (which are relatively inexpensive) and making occasional backups from both computers to that 3rd drive, then keep that drive disconnected and stored away safely.

In terms of using the Acronis Cloud, what upload speed to you have for your internet connection?

Personally, I tried replication and found it unworkable with my own upload speed of around only 10Mbps (for a 100Mbps download service).  This is because like your local backups, replication follows the same files, so you will be uploading each new full backup file and all inbetween incremental updates, which is many times greater amounts of data than just using a separate task going direct to the Acronis Cloud.

All Cloud backups do an initial Full upload of data by necessity, but after that first upload, only changed blocks of data are ever uploaded based on a delta comparision of sector data.  My typical cloud backups take under an hour and often just a few minutes versus taking around 6 hours to do an initial Full backup upload for my own HP laptop.

First of all, as Steve already indicated, I would look into the option of getting an upgrade to my upload speed from my locaL ISP. I went from 10Mbps to 40-50 (40 guaranteed)Mbps for a few € more and that makes a hell of a difference and Acronis Cloud backup a viable option. 

Stay away from replication and create a new backup plan for the cloud. All set !