Convert existing full backup to differential

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truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
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I'm using ATIH v11 and it still works fine for my simple needs. I back up to a small external drive and regularly copy the backups to a larger external drive.

For ease of use, and potentially ease of recovery, I typically do a full backup every time. It's easy and I have the space, and even just recovering a single file through Windows Explorer is easy.

However the files are largish (~75GB on one machine, ~30GB on the other), and for older archiving I'm thinking I could keep a monthly full backup, with a collection of differential backups. I'm wondering if there's a utility that will take two full backups and create a differential backup. I haven't managed to find such a thing, but it would seem fairly straightforward. I could theoretically do it manually by restoring [say] the Jul 2 backup and run a differential against the Jul 1 backup, but that's a lot of work I don't want to do.

Is there a way to do this either in ATIH itself or with a 3rd-party utility?

Thanks!

=aw

Thu, 12/09/2010 - 03:37
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truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
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Are you using TI 11 or TI 2011?

As far as I know, there is no easy way to do what you want. I don't think there are any third-party utilities for manipulating TIB files.

You could switch to creating Fulls with Differentials instead of just Fulls. Eventually, you will get the old Fulls (or most of them) out of rotation.

Thu, 12/09/2010 - 04:45
truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
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Thanks, it's Acronis® True Image Home® version 11.0 (build 8,053), copyright 2007. Seems to work okay even with Windows 7 (and by "okay" I mean I've been able to dig around the backup file and pull out individual files with Windows Explorer).

I may start doing the Full + Differentials backups, I like doing Fulls just so I know exactly where to go to get a file from a specific date (vs. checking Differential after Differential as I work back to the Full). Good point that these will become less relevant as time goes by.

Is there any compelling reason to update to a newer version, for the limited backup requirements I described?

Thanks again!
=aw

Tue, 12/21/2010 - 00:01
truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
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You should be able to access the desired Differential by date, just like you would for a Full. Find files shouldn't be any more difficult.

As for upgrading, it's your call. TI 11 is not compatible with Windows 7. Even though it's working okay for you now, that may change in the future. However, if you have backups, you can always restore back to when it worked if you have a problem. You are also not using the latest build of TI 11 and I don't recommend changing to it. It's probably blocked from installing or may mess things up if it does install.

Tue, 12/21/2010 - 01:47