Multiple External Hard Drives
I am using Windows 7 professional and Acronis TI home 2011. I have been using a WD external HD on a USB3 port. I would like to add a second external HD for backup reasons, in the event my only one fails. Can I alternately backup between the two HD's? Will Acronis get confused by alternating the drives on backup? I do a full backup every month. I would like to swap between the two drives every other backup. Will this work?
I do exactly that. I have two WD external HDs to which I backup, and I rotate them every few days.
I recommend that you create a separate backup task for each disk.
Thanks for your input. Please explain "I recommend that you create a separate backup task for each disk."
I only do full backups once a month, and delete the oldest archive on the external HD. In my Acronis TIH 2011, I start Acronis, select "Go to main screen" which shows me a list of the present archives on my HD. I then select "Disk and Partition Backup" at the top of the screen. The next screen is "Configure disk backup process".
On this screen the Destination is G:\MY Backups. (My external HD is "My Book G:)" I do the backup in Partition Mode, not Disk Mode. If I use Disk mode, the HD serial number becomes part of the backup file name of the archive (Backup File). When using Partition mode, the file backup name is "My partitions" instead of the HD serial number. I was hoping I could just change the Destination to the name of the newly installed second external HD. What bothers me is that the Acronis lists the present archives as historical information, not what he is reading from the HD when Acronis starts up. I say this because this same list of active archives will show even though the external HD is not powered on. If I had two Hard drives, how would Acronis be able to keep a record of all the archives in both hard drives when it becomes necessary to do a restore? Is it reallly necessary for Acronis to have this history? Can I just do a browse and manually select the archive to restore?
Charles,
Sometimes it gets confusing as to which version has which features as I am using 2013 and not 2011 but the basics are the same.
1. The user does not have to accept the name assigned to the backup file or the backup task. Both names can be overruled at time of task creation but the name of the backup file can only set set on one particular screen and that is when the name is set and displayed in the fodler tree.
2. Anytime you want to restore, you boot from the CD and choose the "browse for backup" option and the user locates tthe tif file to be restored. When you boot the CD, any backup listed will have the wrong path most of the time as the Windows drive letter and the Linux (Acronis path) are usually different. The user can find what is to be restored via manual lookup so whatever is displayed by TrueImage has no effect on your ability to choose your restore.
3. Why not set up the task for old backup deletion to be done by the program based on program settings rather than any manual delete by the user.
4. Using the "disk image" option rather than partition mode ensures that you have all partitions included in the backup so a new replacement disk can be created if desired.
Look at link item #2 below regarding task creation. This is not specific to 2011.
Illustration 8 shows where the backup file name can be controlled by the user.
Illustration 18 shows where the task can can be modified if a change of task name different than the tib file name is desired.
Based on the last two replies to me, one stated:"I do exactly that. I have two WD external HDs to which I backup, and I rotate them every few days. I recommend that you create a separate backup task for each disk".
Is this telling me that I can have two external HDs connected and just select the path to the one I want to save the data on during the task setup? Is that correct?
2) It appears I do not have to worry what backups are listed on the Acronis screen in order to do a restore, because I can boot the Acronis disk, browse, and select the file to restore from. Can I do a validate on the file I select from the browse before the restore to make sure it is ok? I would normally select Validate from the Acronis backup list.
3) I did not want to let the program do the old backup deletions, because I wanted to save the last two or three backups in case the newest one is corrupted
4) I stopped using the disk mode because I was having a problem when I deleted and old archive from the acrosis list, it sometimes failed to completely delete, and after trying the delete again, it deleted the wrong file on the HD. I then had to manually delete the file I no longer needed manually via windows. When I select Partition Mode, I just check off all the partitions to backup. I don't know why I have experienced this problem, but the delete has also failed after going back to Partition Mode. This must be a seperate issue with Acronis. I thought it was always better to delete an old archive via the Acronis screen instead of manually deleting it directly from the HD so that Acronis would always reflect what was on the HD.
In summary, do you think I could just install a second WD HD, then, during the task setup, point to the HD I want for the ? If so, will Acronis keep on showing the stored backups on its list?
As tasks are not used when backing up via CD, I am assuming that your discussion relates to backups performed using TrueImage from within Windows.
Based on the last two replies to me, one stated:"I do exactly that. I have two WD external HDs to which I backup, and I rotate them every few days. I recommend that you create a separate backup task for each disk".1. Is this telling me that I can have two external HDs connected and just select the path to the one I want to save the data on during the task setup? Is that correct?
Yes, that is correct.
For example: Create task 1 and include the name "Odd" as part of its name. Maybe assign the name even to the exteral disk 1 and assign drive letter Y to this disk. Do not schedule the task but perform backup manually via the "Backup now" option or a desktop shortcut. This task would be used for each "odd" numbered month backup.
Create task #2 and include the name "even" as part of its name.
Maybe assign the name even to the exteral disk 2 and assign drive letter X to this disk. Do not schedule the task but perform backup manually via the "Backup now" option or a desktop shortcut. This task would be executed for each even numbered month backup.
Unique drive letters are suggested in order to help keep the task operting correctly. If you simply keep the normal assigned drive letter, any insertion of a flash drive, camera or new usb printer could cause the task to cease creating backups.
2) It appears I do not have to worry what backups are listed on the Acronis screen in order to do a restore, because I can boot the Acronis disk, browse, and select the file to restore from.
Yes, that is correct.
Can I do a validate on the file I select from the browse before the restore to make sure it is ok? I would normally select Validate from the Acronis backup list.
Validation can be initiated manually at any time either from within Windows or when booted from the recover cd.
3) I did not want to let the program do the old backup deletions, because I wanted to save the last two or three backups in case the newest one is corrupted
It is best to have the program do the deletion from inside the Acronis BAckup Explorer where all he slices of each backup appear. Any manual deletion will cause a change of numbering within the backup scheme. Also, any restore of a prior backup will also cause a change in numbering as the program will realize that the upcoming backup has already been created before--and may become confused. When I do a restore, I create all new tasks pointing to new empty sub-folders.
4) I stopped using the disk mode because I was having a problem when I deleted and old archive from the acronis list, it sometimes failed to completely delete, and after trying the delete again, it deleted the wrong file on the HD. I then had to manually delete the file I no longer needed manually via windows. When I select Partition Mode, I just check off all the partitions to backup. I don't know why I have experienced this problem, but the delete has also failed after going back to Partition Mode. This must be a separate issue with Acronis. I thought it was always better to delete an old archive via the Acronis screen instead of manually deleting it directly from the HD so that Acronis would always reflect what was on the HD.
Whether the backup is a partition image or disk image, both will should be deleted manually via the program.
In summary, do you think I could just install a second WD HD, then, during the task setup, point to the HD I want for the ? If so, will Acronis keep on showing the stored backups on its list?
See the preceding. Basically, yes the backup will be created to the proper location if the task points to correct path. As for the lists, all new backups will be added to the listing. The user has controls to delete listing or to add already created backups to the listing. When a restore is needed, For me, the listing has little value as I know where I store my backups and when I need one, I just browse to the known location and select it. When booted into the recovery CD, the backup file listing provided by the program usually has the disk letter wrong due to it being a Linux disk letter which means you usually have to browse for the backup anyway--even it if the backup is listed but wrong path.
Thanks again for your interest and comments. I still have problem sometimes when I do a deletion from the Acronis (Not directly from the HD using windows) where it doe not delete, or deletes the wrong file. At the moment, my main concern is the fact I only have one external HD for all my backups. If anything happens to this HD and I need a restore, I am dead. Instead of adding a second HD and trying to alternate them during backup, I was thinking about adding the second HD and copying the new backup from the original drive to the new drive via normal windows copy & paste. If this works, I will have two copies of my current backup, one on each drive. If I needed to do a restore, I would use the Acronis CD to load Acronis, then do a browse to either HD for the restore. Does anyone see a problem with that?
If you choose to do the copy routine, you need to use a different program such as free Replicator by Karen Kenworthy.
http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp
This program will check for errors and do a much safer, quicker, better job of copying than the normal Windows copy.
I would be concerned if the wrong file is being deleted. If you open the task properties into the Acronis Backup Explorer as illustrated in the attached link, the user selects which specific slice or backup is to be deleted. Note, if you delete an intemediate incremental, then all incrementals newer will be useless as the chain has been broken. If all backups are full, then the deletion of any should not cause any harm but may need correction of the TrueImage data base that is tracking each file.
http://forum.acronis.com/sites/default/files/resize/mvp/user285/2012-ht…
I purchased another 2TB USB 3 capable External HD which is the same as my original. I did a simple copy and paste of one of my archives (59.8GB) from the original HD to the new one. After verifying the byte counts matched I did a Verify on the newly created file on the new HD.which was done by Acronis, and everything went OK. I then opened the new copied archive and it displayed just as my C drive displays. I was able to open a Word file without a problem. There may be a sleeping dog somewhere in what I am doing, but it appears that I now have a backup to my HD if the original one goes down at a critical restore time.
So far, I have not had to do a restore on my Windows 7 machine, so I really don't know if a restore will work. I have needed and used a restore a few times on my XP machine with Acronis TI Home 2009.
I still have an occasional situation where when I try to manually delete an older backup archive via the Acronis screen (Acronis TI Home 2011), I get a message saying it could not be completely deleted. I then try the delete again from Acronis, and do not get the error, but it did not delete. On the third try it may delete the file in question, or another archive instead. I don't know how it can not delete the entire archive when I only do full backups. When this happens, I delete the referense in Acronis to a wrongfully deleted file on the HD and delete if necessary any file on the HD that does not match what Actonis says is there.
I thought of going to Acrois TI 2012, or maybe even 2013, but am afraid I will get into a problem where I cannot complete a new upgrade because of some left over software from the previouse version. I am not a PC GURU capable of making changes to the Directory to fix these problems. If I did sucsessfully install the newer version, would it still be compatable with my present backup archives on the HD? I remember this being true in the earlier upgrades.
Thanks again to all who took an interest in my problems and offered suggestions. I am still in "learn mode" using Acronis.