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Have a few backup questions...

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I hope someone can help me out, and thanks.

I use ATI 2010.

The reason for these questions is I have limited space on my backup external HD and need the best backup procedure I can use and saves as much space as possible.

I would normally just use full backups once a week, and have never used incremental or differential backups before. But the problem I have is if there is already a full backup on my backup HD, I don't have the room for the new full backup, and would have to delete the old, and create the new and that isn't something I want to do in the even I have a serious issue during the backup. Ok, that is the background.

So, i will have to start using either incremental or differential, but really don't know which is best for me to use, or if I should chance using the most compression available. What I back up in question is a internal HD that has 8 partitions and is stickily user data like program dl's, thousands of image and Photoshop files, movies and the like.

But I know I will want to do full backup from time to time to do away with the clutter and such.

So what is my safest backup option, that will use the least amount of space and at the same time keep organized so I don't have a thousand backup files that I need in the even something happens.

Thanks for any advice.

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Hello Joseph Fuller,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please keep in mind the difference between full, incremental and differential backups:

A full backup contains all data at the moment of backup creation. It forms a base for further incremental or differential backup or is used as a standalone archive.  A full backup has the shortest restore time as compared to incremental or differential ones.

An incremental backup file only contains data changed since the last full or incremental backup creation. Therefore, it is smaller and takes less time to create, but as it doesn’t contain all data; all the previous incremental backups and the initial full backup are required for restoration. To restore an incremental image, the incremental image and full image must be in the same folder.

Unlike incremental backup, when every backup procedure creates the next file in a “chain,” a differential backup creates an independent file, containing all changes since the last full backup. Generally, a differential backup will be restored faster than an incremental one, as it does not have to process through a long chain of previous backups.

So the best solution in your case is to perform Incremental backups chain. Note that you can also set some rules to make full archive after N differentials. Please keep in mind that full information about backup scheduling is available in 3 chapter of User's Guide, which can be downloaded here.

Thank you.

The best option, imo, is to get another or a bigger hardrive- whether internal or external. They are terribly cheap right now -- I've seen terabyte drives for as cheap as $100 - $200.
You don't really want to rely on just one backup (or one backup set including incs/diffs) -- If only one byte somehow gets corrupted, the entire full backup (or backup set incuding incs/diffs) becomes a wonk. Plus, if your software goes wonky onyour harddrive, and you don't notice the cause before you backup, then a restore will still have the wonk -- in that case it would be nice to be able to go back a little farther and get an older backup to restore.