Basic help for backups
Hope someone can help me. I should have set up my backups with tech help when I had it but I didn't have the time in 30 days and didn't know tech support wasn't included in my purchase while I owned the software, my mistake.
Anyway, I am running out of space on my external 2TB drive for backups. I have 3 drives I am backing up. The c drive is 250GB (166GB used), external 1 is 1000gb (453GB used) and external 2 is 500GB (209GB used). 1 and 2 are external drives set up as "custom" scheme "Backup method: "differential". In the options for these 2 I have backup method selected as "Differential" and the radio button for "Create only differential versions after the initial full version" is selected.
My C drive shows "C Drive with all partitions". I picked this because I think if my c drive crashes and is totally unusable I can get a new drive and somehow copy the image from Acronis to the new drive.
My immediate problem is that I have all these files on my backup drive, I thought when I picked differential I only needed the beginning backup then the last backup but I have a bunch in between. For example: Drive 1 my first backup is dated 3/9 at 166GB then I have 14 more files after that with varying sizes. Doesn't the differential version mean that I only need the initial backup and the last backup to recover in the event of a loss of data? With the C drive since I have selected "C Drive with all partitions" does that mean I am backing up the entire drive every time? I do want an image I can restore if need be but I don't need it to make these images so many times. I have 13 .tib files listed for the c drive, 11 files for drive 1 and 15 files for drive 2.
I am sorry, this is probably too long but I am real confused and worried. I am in college online and work full-time so if something bad does happen I am in a mess of trouble. I really thought I'd have tech support with the software when I needed it, again, my mistake and no fault of the software providers. I am sure it was stated somewhere that I wouldn't have it after 30 days. Should have read the fine print.
Thanks for the reply Pat. Since I do have the settings set at differential why wouldn't the last differential backup be the largest (not including the first full backup)? It appears that way for one of my drives but on the other two the last backup is smaller than some of the backups in between. I'd like to keep the differential setting but I want to be safe in deleting "in between" backups. I have attached a screen shot of the backup files I currently have.
Jeanine,
If you don't change exclusions, or selections, your latest differential should be the largest. If you didn't change anything, your results are a bit weird, in particular for the all partition backup.
The benefits of differential are, in theory, that you can delete intermediary differentials, and that you need only 2 files to restore. The problem with ATI is that you cannot delete intermediary differentials because of a bug. So, I suggest you use incrementals and limit their number so that it doesn't not become inconceivable for you to go back to the last full (you would have to do that in the worst case where the first incremental after the full becomes corrupted and corrupts the entire chain of incrementals: that has a very low probability).