Laptop Memory Management: How does freeing up space affects Backups?

Udor, rather than deleting files from your laptop and relying on accessing those files in your backup archives, you may want to consider a different approach.

Invest in an additional portable external drive to connect to your laptop of the capacity that you need for the files you were thinking of deleting.

Move those files to that external drive (or copy them to the drive before deleting them from their original location).

Then create a new backup task to backup the new external drive to your 10TB drive to provide the extra security for those files and the ability to add to that backup archive as changes occur.

Going this way will allow you to keep your 10TB drive safe at home / work and have the portable drive with your laptop for if needed when away from your base location.

External drives are very reasonably priced for good storage capacities with USB 3.1 giving good read / write access speeds. Plus you can add extra capacity as / when needed.

Udor, I don't recommend using Acronis True Image as the primary or only location for your important files.

As Steve pointed out, you might consider having a large external drive, possibly a NAS (with RAID), which could be used more as an extension of your primary storage rather than a backup. Just copy your files from the laptop or upload them in the same way you upload to your laptop.

You would still need to think about backups, but at least you could have instant access to the files as you do now. If they were only in ATI backups, you'd have slower access and need to restore them to some location in order to see them.

BTW, what is your laptop? Can it support a second internal drive?

Thanks Steve and Bruno!

Yeah, I figured I went the wrong way for what I was looking for... I had a misconception on how Acronis' backup would work.

Anyway, I used to do this backup, using another WD My Passport and My Book as an external harddrive and backed up my files all the time... but the capacity just run out and I got that 10TB drive.

Seeing what the issue is, I already ordered another 10TB WD My Book via Amazon and will have it delivered on Saturday.

So, now, as you both said, I will use one drive for ATI backup and the other one as an extension to my regular harddrive before deleting files off my laptop... it really is supposed to be a readily accessible archive.

Now, this said I want to automate that process, meaning when I get home, or after working and editing the photos, I just want to have both external drives connected and maybe there is a software that does the automatic copying (backup/storage) from my laptop.

Basically... I am editing photos, or just finished editing them... and the software detects changes, new additions, e.g. on my laptop and automatically updates the "non-Acronis" drive...

What software, if any, would you suggest to use... or should I just do it manually? 

Thanks again!

P.S.:  Oh, and Bruno, nope, I don't have capacity for another internal HDD. 

I've got one 500GB SSD and a 2TB HDD in my laptop and I am certain that there is no additional space for another internal drive available... that's why I want to back up like that to keep my laptop not choking on the last 40GB and me panicking because I have to upload 20GB and don't know where to... LOL

I've just been doing some googling on this.

I have not tried it, but there is a free program called Copywhiz which might work. Also, Windows XCopy could be used.

Windows RoboCopy is integrated into the OS and can be used though this is primarily a command line type tool but could be scheduled to run on a regular basis.

A free graphic sync program is SyncFolders which includes an option to create a scheduled task to perform the sync action (copy, backup or synchronise).

For automating copies/or synching from the source to a different drive:

synctoy is another pretty handy and free utility from Microsoft.

And https://allwaysync.com/ is another pretty decent one.  There are limitations in the free version, but worth checking out before you cough up $25 for the pro version if you end up liking it.

As you're finding out, Acronis is really a backup program and not a sync program or way to move files off one location and make it accessible in another with it's proprietary format.  What Acronis True Image is good for is data backup and being able to take backups of your OS and/or data as it changes so that you have various recovery points to restore from in the event you lose something, or need to replace it with a previously backed up version.  Backups are essential to recovery in the event of malware attacks, ransomware, the original data disk failing or becoming corrupted, etc. The more backups you have of critical data (to include frequency for various recovery options) the better!

3-2-1 is the standard (and should be the minimum for critical data).  3 copies of the data, at least 2 of which are backups and at least one of those is offsite.  There is no guarantee backup plan, but the more you diversify, the better your chances of recovery in the event of data corruption, fire, theft, flood, failed disks, spilled water on the computer, dropped external hard drive, etc. 

Bobbo_3C0X1 wrote:

And https://allwaysync.com/ is another pretty decent one.  There are limitations in the free version, but worth checking out before you cough up $25 for the pro version if you end up liking it.

First, thank you again Steve Smith and BrunoC

Thank you, Bobbo_3C0X1!

This info and the other ATI clarification you've provided helps me tremendously!

I am going to get the Allway Sync right now, the paid version.

My 2nd WD 10TB MyBook just arrived a few minutes ago and I will download and install Allway Sync and then start to copy my laptop in full to it.

My 1st 10TB, will be dedicated to ATI 2020 and be the system backup etc. safety check.

You and the others have been a great help!

Now I can consolidate all my other backup drives I have and get finally order into everything! :) 

Have a great weekend!

Udor