Video: Create Differentials with Full Backup Once a Week with Cleanup
Here's a video of how I create a full backup once a week followed by two differentials during the week, allowing for cleanup by Acronis:
http://screencast.com/t/duygm1PVQI
Activity as follows:
1) Click Disk and Partition Backup.
2) Switch to disk mode. Be sure drive to back up is selected.
3) Select a storage destination. In this case, it's an external USB hard drive.
4) Choose a file name that makes sense to you. Otherwise it is named after hard drive name.
5) Set up a schedule. In this case, I choose Weekly on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
6) Pick a time. I like to run in the middle of the night.
7) I look at the advanced settings, but decide not to change anything.
8) Under scheme I set it to Custom Scheme, and choose Differential method.
9) Set "Create a full version after every ... differential versions" to 2.
10) Click on "Turn on automatic cleanup" link.
11) Set this to "Store no more than 3 recent version chains."
12) On Advanced tab, I set a password and encryption so that if I decide to take the hard drive anywhere it will be OK if it's lost or stolen.
13) I set it to validate once a month at a time in the early morning.
14) I set a notification to let me know if the hard drive is running out of space.
15) Normally I'd set up email notifications as well, but don't do it in this video.
16) On the exclusions tab, I set it to exclude *.iso files. If you know of some large files you typically don't need to back up, add them to the exclusion list to save room.
17) Change "Back up now" to "Later."
18) Mark it as favorite so you can see it easily later.
Your list of activities are invaluable. This should be included in Acronis documentation because it is very hard to follow.
I have Acronis True Image 2014 Standard, Latest Build: #6673 (269.11 MB2014-02-22 00:00:00)
I have Windows 8.1 with MS updates.
I do have some problems in setting up the schedule as outlined.
I made sure that I had checked the "Save as default settings" at the lower left of the screen whenever it was there. When I clicked on OK for a setting, nothing seemed to happen so I closed out and then did a Save for the whole schedule. When I went back to check (more than once), the following items did not seem to be saved:
Step #12 - The password & encryption was not saved.
Step #14 - The notification for the parameters for "Insufficient disk drive" was saved but the email notification was not saved.
I would appreciate your suggestions on what I might be doing wrong or if it is a known problem.
Thanks much,
Ken Anderson
Another of Les's fine video's can be found here.
48911: Video: Manual Full Disk Backup in ATIH 2014
https://forum.acronis.com/forum/48911
If you need more viewing time, this link is a similar example except this example create full plus 2 diff; and the keeps 2 chains of 3 files each before automatic deletion begins via the cleanup.
GH13. Create Custom Differential Backup Scheme. 2 Diff, Keep 2 chains. The 2-2 is user choice.
Thank you GroverH. That is one scenario that I was interested in doing.
BTW I would appreciate an answer from Les Sellers on my question on his scenario. Is there any way that I can contact him by email? On the Forum?
Thanks much,
Ken Anderson
You can send him a Private Message (PM).
https://forum.acronis.com/messages/new/51221?destination=user%2F51221
Clicking on their user name will also give you access to their pm option.
I don't have 2014 installed right now(2015 beta installed) so cannot offer any comparison
My experience has been that once I check marked the save as default and saved the task, both the password and email notify appeared in future task creations. But there are some settings which only apply to that one session. but I am not sure which ones.
I believe you must have save or keep tasks in order for the settings to be retained.
On 2015 beta, if saved, the password and encrypt will carry over to next task.
Both the task notify and the disk limit also carry over to the next task--when the save as default is used.
Thank you, GroverH. I am on vacation until Sept 3 so I will check this out
Sorry, Kenneth, I don't seem to be set up to receive notifications of replies in this thread, so i just now noticed your request for assistance. I do not know what might be causing the problems with steps #12 and #14. I was able to do both of them during experimentation a few minutes ago, changing and saving the email notification settings and also encryption settings.
I suggest you post in the main forum and see if you can get assistance on those settings (if you haven't already).