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How to properly set up Automatic Cleanup?

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Hello,

I have been using Acronis for years, and it has saved me many times, really appreciate this great product. I have a question on how to properly set up the Automatic Cleanup in order to avoid manual deletion of old backups, and please let me explain my situation.

My initial backup size of my entire PC is around 2.3 TB. When I use Acronis Cloud backup, FIFO approach is perfect as I desired. 20 incrementals made consecutively, and each new addition added following the oldest one being removed. And I only need to pay for 3TB subscription in the cloud, which is enough for me.

However, when it comes to external hard drive back up, things gets really… frustrating. I found out that a 4TB external hard drive is not enough to achieve the task, because on external hard drive for some reason, Acronis takes a different approach? It will start a new Chain after certain amount of incrementals (1 full + 5 incremental in my case), and will only auto clean up after a new full initial chain has been started. This was very annoying, so I started off manually delete the old chain in my external hard drive, before a new chain will kick off.

Then I found this manual approach not only troublesome, but also left me expose to a potential data loss. So I just bought a new 8TB external hard drive hoping I can achieve a better result this time. Now here comes the question, with 8TB of external hard drive, is it possible to ALWAYS keep at least one chain (1 + 5) with a proper Automatic Cleanup configuration?

Let me demonstrate what I am hoping to achieve as below,

Chain A
Full A1
Increment A2
Increment A3
Increment A4
Increment A5
Increment A6

Chain B
Full B1
Increment B2
Increment B3
Increment B4
Increment B5
Increment B6

Chain C
Full C1?

Because I am about to start Chain C, and I don’t need Chain A anymore, keeping Chain B is good for me. In order to complete a third full backup C1, is it possible to set up a clean up to wipe out Chain A beforehand? I really hope there is a way, otherwise, it seems even 8TB is not enough to achieve the expected result for a 2.3TB size backup… and I really don’t want to do manual clean ups anymore…

Hope I explained my doubts clear enough, Thank you in advance!

Yiyang

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Yiyang, there are several elements to your topic which operate differently from each other.

With backups to the Acronis Cloud, the initial backup will always be a Full image, but after that, the cloud uses a hybrid incremental scheme intended to minimise the amount of data that needs to be uploaded.  This backup scheme is unique to cloud backups and not used for local backups.

With all local backups, automatic cleanup only operates for completed backup version chains, and nothing is deleted until after a new version chain has been started by the successful creation of a new Full backup image file.

What this means in practise is that your backup drive needs to be large enough to store X completed backup version chains + 1 further Full backup.

If we make some assumptions on your backup size of 2.5TB for a completed version chain (1xFull + 5xInc files), then for using the cleanup rule: 'Store no more than 2 recent version chains' your drive must be able to hold 2 x 2.5TB plus 2.3TB, so approx 7.3TB before the oldest 2.5TB chain is deleted.

One question that is not answered by your initial post is how many disk drives are included in your 2.3TB backup source?

If you have more than one drive involved, then consider splitting the backup into having separate tasks per disk drive, which should provide for smaller backup sizes,

You may also want to consider if your data can be split again according to the type or category of data, i.e. a separate backup of photos or of videos etc.

Hi Steve, 

Thank you for your response! I will probably try to return the 8TB and get a slightly bigger one.

Thanks,

Yiyang

 

I was pondering on this issue and think I come up with an idea may suits my own need.

Since I have two external hard drive, one 8TB and one 4TB, maybe I can use them conjunctionally with some manual steps involved.

After Chain A and Chain B has filled up the primary 8TB external hard drive, move the entire Chain A to the secondary 4TB external hard drive to make room for Chain C.

Similarly after Chain B and Chain C has filled up the primary 8TB external hard drive again, first delete the Chain A in the secondary 4TB external hard drive, and then move the entire Chain B to the secondary 4TB external hard drive to make room for Chain D.

so on and so forth, the advantage of this approach is I get to keep two entire chains of backups at all time.

If you take this approach then you will encounter problems that will cause your backup to fail because you are effectively using 2 different backup drives with a single backup task, and ATI does not play well with that scenario.

Make one backup task for each backup drive then run the appropriate task when the correct drive is connected.  Do not try to mix 2 drives with one task.

Steve Smith wrote:

If you take this approach then you will encounter problems that will cause your backup to fail because you are effectively using 2 different backup drives with a single backup task, and ATI does not play well with that scenario.

Make one backup task for each backup drive then run the appropriate task when the correct drive is connected.  Do not try to mix 2 drives with one task.

I see, I will avoid this. Thank you for the heads up!