Backup Archival Plan
Here's my backup strategy:
* Full backup every year
* Incremental monthly backups
* Delete backups > 2 years old
Trying to set Acronis True Image 2010 for this: I've set it to do a full backup after 11 incremental backups, scheduled monthly. However I am unable to set the option to delete the old backups - tried setting the "Consolidate after xxx days" to something like 750 but the box won't take numbers this large
Any suggestions?
Thanks!
It is not ideal to have one and only one backup chain.
If for any number of Hardware reasons your chain is corrupt you have lost everything (well upto 1 year's worth till you reach enough back in time to get to that prior chain)
However with a slight re-design you would be in MUCH better shape.
Your post as all ready indicated you have enough storage for two complete chains (which must be true if your going to retain chains less than 2 years old).
Please consider from day one using two backup chains A and B each doing your monthly INCR.
this reduces your chance of total failure from one in a thousand to one in a million.
The basic theory in round numbers is this: about 1/2 of all drives will fail in 3 years.
which is about the same as saying 50% of drives fail in 1000 days which is about the same as taking a 1 in 1000 risk every day for 1000 days.
Rewording all of that the theory says when your turn your pc on each morning you have a 1 in 1000 chance that today is the day the HD will die and you need to restore.
From your backup's perspective the same 1/1000 risk is also true.
Each and every time you try and do a restore there is a 1 in 1000 chance that it will let you down.
However things drastically change if your backups are multiplexed.
if the 1st backup has a 1 in 1000 chance of letting your down then the same is true for the 2nd.
taken together there is just a one in a million chance both will let you down at the exact same instant (1/1000 * 1/1000 = 1/1,000,000). This math explains why raid+1 is so popular.
So for your first year at least, with no additional cost to you your chance of failure with the above multiplexed chains goes from 1/1000 down to 1/1000000. the 2nd year is another story.
as we have not allowed for that.
For what it is worth Here is what I tend to do.
I have two lines "a" and "b" each doing their "full" a 1/2 month apart (such as 1st and 16th).
I then allow at least one line to have a generation.
Basically the above means I need enough storage for 3 chains (A + A' +B)
However that storage gets me a lot of restore capability.
By doing this, I know that I can always restore my HD to current with 1/1000000 risk of failure. And retain the ability to go back 30 or more days with just a 1/1000 risk of failure.
If I allow enough storage for 4 chains (a+a'+b+b')
then I get 1/1000000 certainity to restore my system to any prior day in the last 2 weeks with 1/1000 certainty to go back 45 days.
The acronis forum always has posts where someone says, I do backups and then one day my system crashed and and I tried to restore but acronis let me down. This 1/1000 risk explains away most of the reason. Its not so much acronis as it is a fact of life and something you must allow for.
Thanks for the detailed and helpful post. Sounds like an excellent strategy. But how do I set Acronis to automatically delete the old backups?