Using two drives for a continuous backup process

Stefan, when you talk about a continuous backup process, do you mean using the Acronis Non-Stop Backup function or are you just meaning a regular scheduled backup task?

Acronis Non-Stop Backup has the restriction that only one such NSB backup task can be created and for Home products, this can only be pointed at a single destination drive.

If you have a regular schedule backup task, then you could have multiple such tasks each pointing to different destination drives, where you could schedule the tasks to run on different days giving a spread of backup protection across the different target drives / NAS.

As far as I am aware there is no significant different in this respect between ATIH 2015 and 2017.

The other option here is to remove any older backup files from your current target drive to make more room but please note that if you do this outside of ATIH by not using the Automatic Cleanup rules, then you should always run a Validation for your backup task(s) that created any removed files, to reconcile the file status with the Acronis Database information held.

Hi Simon,

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, I was referring to Non Stop Backup and with the understanding, but without saying in my post, that there could be only one such job.

It looks like I will need to do as you say - have two or more jobs backing up defined subsets of the data to separate volumes/drives. Just won't be able to afford to do more than one full backup or there'll be no room for any incrementals...I've a feeling I can't set up a job like that though.

By the way, did you mean to imply that othe Acronis products outside the Home arena might be capable of targetting backups over several destination drives?

Kind regards, Stefan

Stefan, if you will be splitting up the source data between different target NAS / external drives then you should have more room on each drive for full backups plus incrementals, unless you intend to backup all the same source data to each separate target drive via two alternating backup tasks.

I only really know the Acronis Home products but I would suspect that their Business products would have more features than are offered to home users, albeit with an appropriate increase in cost.  You should take a look at the main Acronis web site and browse the features of the other products or else open a chat with the Acronis sales people.

Hi Steve,

Thanks again for your thoughts.

My backup device is full now with a Non Stop backup - in effect it was a full backup with perpetual incrementals (which at least can be pruned). If I split the data now over two devices (of the same size) I would only be able to hold two full backups on each beffore both devices would be ful so there would be no room for any intervening incremental backups. I can't [see how I could] create a job that does a full backup (using half a given device as above) and then just does incrementals (which would eat away the remaining space over time).

I tried a Chat with Sales - couldn't even get that to work. Once you are registered it takes you to a dialog that asks you which product you are having a problem with (see the Severity). There's no apparent way of contacting Sales to make a product capability enquiry - the best suggestion they make is to ask the forum or send an email which they may respond to at some stage. I chose the former :)

I think I'll have a play around with Storage Spaces or the like to see if I can map a single logical volume over a set of physical drives and get that to work with ATIH. Just not really sure if this is possible or whether it would produce something that would be recoverable in the case of computer failure.

Kind regards, Stefan

Hi Stefan,

If you want to get assistance in choosing the right product or have any licensing related questions, select in the support form the following criteria: Presales\Licensing questions. Here you'll find more information.  

Thank you,

Hi Ekaterina,

Thank you for your reply.

I did try posing a pre-sales questions but it seems that once one is registered as having a product then there is no easy way to pose a question about a product which one does not yet have - one is required to identify with which registered product one has  a problem or want support and I want to ask a question about a new product. The suggested approach is to ask the Forum which is what I did.

It looks like there is no satisfactory answer for my question.

Kind regards, Stefan

You do not  have to login to use the pre-sales option.  

http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/contact-us.html

See screenshot.

If you follow the link you provided and try to ask a question by email you end up at a page (see attached) that only formally allows you to raise a support ticket requiring you to give a severity for your issue - I suppose I could have stated I have a Business Down problem but somehow that didn't seem right for a pre-sales enquiry. You are also encouraged to login in - I suppose I didn't need to have done that. Still, on the way to the email a problem page I was encouraged to get the best and quickest response from the forums.

Kind regards, Stefan

If you follow the link you provided and try to ask a question by email you end up at a page (see attached) that only formally allows you to raise a support ticket requiring you to give a severity for your issue - I suppose I could have stated I have a Business Down problem but somehow that didn't seem right for a pre-sales enquiry. You are also encouraged to login in - I suppose I didn't need to have done that. Still, on the way to the email a problem page I was encouraged to get the best and quickest response from the forums.

Kind regards, Stefan

2 things...

1) you do not have to enter your user account and credentials on the right and should not here.  Also, don't log into the site at all. It works, I've done this several times in the past and just tested without providing any information in the login.

2) Use chat - email takes several days and chat is almost instant.