What I hate about Acronis - I cannot run backups on specific days!
Sorry for the subject line but I am truly frustrated that I cannot run a full backup on a specific day of the week and a differential or incremental on the other days. I tried running a full backup after every six differentials but that does not work because TI just ran a surprise full backup after only four differentials.
I assume I cannot create two weekly jobs, one that runs a full backup on Friday and one that runs a differential on the other six days because TI will view the backups as different chains and I would not be able to recover.
If anyone has a way to overcome this limitation I would appreciate hearing about it. TI is a great program except for the extremely limited scheduling options.
Bill
I agree with what you say with one exception. I rotate backups off site on a portable hard drive weekly. Using a combination of full and differential backups means I can have a lot more depth on that portable drive. I remember one case on a GE 600 mainframe where be discovered corruption in an IDS database that could not be repaired. We were back 29 days in the backups before we found a good version of that database. Lots of depth does provide more protection. :)
Remembering the days of model 029 card punch and the model 10 Teletype...
Bill
I agree with the original poster: it would be nice to schedule backups with your work schedule in mind.
As for just doing a full backup every day, while it's true that big disc drives are getting cheaper, that applies to the amount of data that needs to be backed up. If I have a terabyte of data to back up, a three terabyte external drive would only hold (perhaps) four backups. If (as I do) I back up every night, then I'd need an awful lot of external drives; and I'd have to be swapping them constantly.
To hold even a month's worth of backups, I'd need ten or so drives. I like to keep six months worth of nightly backups. Incredibly cheap <> $0.
Well, I've never heard of anything like that! What the heck would you be keeping SIX MONTHS of daily backups for. I mean, that's 180 backups. And also, assuming your 3 TB drive and the necessity to backup 1 TB per day: What's the problem? Backup 1 TB on first, 1 TB on second, 1 TB on third day. Then delete day 1 to continue with day 4. As the backup is full (= complete), and the successors are full (=complete) - what would additional sets of "full" be good for? Every data entity has a portion that is fixed, i.e. will no further undergo changes, and a portion that still is. This is how I have organized my data. The fixed part is archived and most probably will never need to be backed up again. The flexible part is what I am dealing with in daily backups. That's probably 1-5% of the data. I keep two copies of the actual version local (one in the PC, one in the NAS), while up to five go online. And I am talking of five computers to back up. I neither need ten drives nor 180 copies of something. On the other hand, if your data is really changing in the magnitude of 1 TB daily, then you should not be dealing with Acronis TI and a 3 TB drive.
Your assumption that a grandfather, father, son backup system is adequate is based on the assumption that the only thing I will ever need a backup for is recovery from some obvious catastrophic event such as a hard drive failure. Many computers store data that is accessed infrequently. Therefore, it may be many days before you discover that a file was deleted or a database corrupted. Adequate backup depth can save you in those situations. In my case I consider 30 days of daily backups the minimum acceptable. What is prudent will vary widely from one installation to the other but, particularly in a business environment, I don't think you will find many that are comfortable with three generations. IAC, this is getting way off topic. Regardless of the backup depth you need there are certainly situations were more control over what runs when than Acronis provides would be very valuable. Most freeware backup programs provide more control than Acronis.
Bill
That's not what I meant. I use Windows File History to observe and backup my frequently used data. Every ten minutes for dozens of versions. That entire drive (among others) is saved daily. So each of these backups provides for a window that goes back to almost the beginning of time. What would I need 30 copies of that for? I already consider my five online backups of "everything ever" to be quite extreme.
Again, you're talking about a catastrophic failure. If I need last year's version of whatever, I need backup from last year. Having 100 versions of this day's, this month's, or this year's won't help.
As Bazsl said, this is way off topic except that we are attempting to explain why we want a certain feature. Since that feature doesn't exist, and you don't need it, you're all set the way things are.
A couple clarifications.
Each task begins with a full backup and subsequent backup types will be as configured within the task.
It configured as full only. Then each backup will be a single standalone version and each backup will have a different B#.
If configured as Full plus Incremental. First will be a full followed by subsequent incrementals. All backups within that chain will have the same B# but each backup will have a different S# (slice). The B# will change when a new full is created which begins a new chain.
If configured as Full plus differential. First will be a full followed by subsequent differentials. All backups within that chain will have the same B# but each backup will have a different S# (slice). The B# will change when a new full is created which begins a new chain.
To have backups created on variable weekly days, the Weekly schedule can be used and specific days of the week can be selected.
The first start day for the first full will be the soonest approaching as per the schedule.
So depending upon which days you select as backup day, this offers some improvement.
It is also possible for you NOT to use the Acronis scheduler, but instead, use the Windows schedule in its place and that offers many more options such as specific start days, etc.
A. How to use Win7 scheduler to run TIH backup tasks
Some users have written their own batch programs do do their custom choices.
As to whether you will ever see this feature in TrueImage, I am doubtful. We have enough trouble getting the bugs fixed before new featues could ever be considered. Other Acronis backup programs which are designed more for business offers some features different than the home version. You might want to investigate
Tasks can be created as cleanup task and set so the program will allow a user set number of chains to be retained before the program automtically deleted the oldest chains based on the user specified retention quota.
------------------------------------------------
Depending upon the type of backup scheme you wish to create, here is an example of each type. These can be set up for Disk image, or Partiton, or Files-folders backups. These example show how to set up automatic cleanup so the program will do the deletion after it reaches your set goal of how many chains to retain.
Editing an existing task is not recommended. Rarely does an edited task perform to user expectations. It is usually better to start with a new task using a new non-identical task name and point to a new storage sub-folder so each task has it own storage folder/sub-folder. Old task can be stopped or deleted from the task listings.
GH25. Understanding differences between Incremental and Differential backups for data recovery.
GH64. 71342: 2015 How to save a non-scheduled task.
GH63. 64640: Hints to help prevent issues with your TIB backup files creation.
GH63. 75086: A discussion on how to configure backup schemes.
Official Log File.
https://kb.acronis.com/content/49484
GH63. 48404: Acronis True Image 2015: Creating an Entire PC Backup
https://kb.acronis.com/content/48404
48404: Acronis True Image 2015: Creating an Entire PC Backup
-----------------------------------------
Perhaps you would like to see this suggestion in a future patch / version in this regard:
Karl Heinz,
When I click that link I get a page with the message:
Access denied
You are not authorized to access this page.
Bill
Thanks for the explanation of backup chains Grover. Very helpful.
Bill