Skip to main content

Nonstop Backup - Do I need to partition my drive?

Thread needs solution

Hello. Novice here. Forgive me if this has been asked before, but I've been hunting around for an hour and haven't found an answer yet.

System details:
Intel Core2 Quad
Windows 7 64bit
8 Gig RAM
1 Tb HDD
2 Tb external HDD
Acronis True Image Home 2010

I currently have ATIH set to create a disk image of my system C: ("Disk and Partition Backup") once per week, with incremental backups once per day at 4am. I am creating a complete new image every 7th backup and deleting the old image. These backups are going to the external hard drive.

I would like to use nonstop backup and store the backups on the same external drive, but the documentation says that NSB will continue to store increments until the available space is used. My questions are:

1) Is there any way to limit NSB to a certain amount of space on my external drive? If not, will nonstop backup just keep writing to my external drive, eventually rendering it useless for my full disk images?

2) If I can't limit NSB storage, would a reasonable solution be to re-format my external drive into two partitions, and use one exclusively for NSB?

3) Does it even make sense to use "Disk and Partition Backup and NSB at the same time? Or should I just use NSB?

Thanks in advance,

Tadashi

0 Users found this helpful

1) No. This is a limitation of NSB. You have to clean up old versions manually.
2) NSB will eventually occupy all the space and stop.
3) Use disk and partition backup for the system data. Use NSB for your content (my recommendation)

Thanks Pat. I guess what I'm wondering is, should I give NSB it's own partition? I'm assuming that once it fills the free space on my external drive, I won't be able to do much on the drive without manually clearing NSB.

Yes, that would be a way to limit the maximum storage that NSB will get to use.