Backing up an external hard drive
My computer only holds 300 GB, so as I accumulated files I had to move some over to a Seagate 2TB external hard drive. Some files are on both my computer and the external hard drive, but some files are ONLY on the external hard drive. This means that some files are not backed up. What do I do? Is there a way to backup that external hard drive? Carbonite will only back up what is on your computer.
I thought about getting an additional hard drive to back up the first one, but after the initial back up how do I add only NEW files to the back up hard drive? I think the back up drive will read the files already there and ask if I want to replace them each time? Will Acronis True Image allow me to back up my external hard drive to another one and only add new files as I go along?
Thank you for your answer. Please define and explain "incrementls," "differentials", "complete disk or partition image", and "files and folders back up." I am new to this.
I have Vista and I have copied my documents and music folders from my computer to the Seagate external hard drive because the computer was getting filled. I then deleted some of the larger files from my computer. I want to back up everything on that external hard drive to another external hard drive. The first time I want everything transferred, and after that I want to transfer only the new files to the back up external hard drive.
Sorry, double post
crescere,
You can look up incremental and differential with Google.
The short story is that ATI lets you do 2 types of backup:
- disk and partition backups (partition image, disk image, etc): this type of backup takes the information at the disk sector level. When a whole disk is backed up this way, you can restore the image to a completely new disk and get going again. If you defrag your disk, that changes the sectors. THis matters a bit if you do incremental or differential backups.
- file backups: this type of backup takes the information at the file level. You cannot use this backup to restore OS and applications. But it is OK for content files.
Regardless of the type, you have different ways of backing up:
- full backups back up all what is selected, regardless of changes,
- incremental backups back up only what is selected and has changed since the last backup (may that be a full or an incremental). You get a chain of backups that all need to be there when you restore,
- differential backups back up only what is selected and has changed since the last FULL backup. All changes accumulate progressively in each new backup. Differential backups always get bigger and bigger. All what you need to restore is the last FULL backup and the last differential.
- since defragementation changes sector information, that creates a lot of changes even if the files content didn't actually change. It is always better to defragment before a full backup to save space.
When doing partial backups (differentials or incrementals), it is better to set ATI to do a new full backup from time to time. A way to estimate this is to envision the catastrophic case when none of your partials is useful: if your last full backup is too old for you to go back to, you have made too many partials before a new full.
To recover your system you need 2 to 3 things:
- a disk and partition backup of the disk(s) containing your system(s). This backup has to include ALL the partitions on that disk. You can exclude files from the backup, but remember that when you restore, everything is deleted on that disk and only backed up files are restored,
- an Acronis recovery CD that you have tested: you have booted your computer on it, and you have restored a couple of files from the backup above,
- a file backup of all the content that is not backed up by the backup(s) above.