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Copy backup including all version history to secondary physical drive

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Dear Acronis team,

I want to create a full clone of my backups. Here is my scenario (yes I am a backup maniac, but my kind are your best customers ;-):

I have a USB HDD, where I use incremental backups with a full backup every 30 versions.
This USB HDD is always connected to my notebook and TrueImage 2014 does daily backups there.

Every now and then I power up my huge superfast NAS and want to clone all history there.

Is it enough to simply copy all new "*.tib" files there? Or do I need to do something else?

Is there an easier way to do this than copying them by hand and manually looking for "what is already there - what is new?"

Thanks - maybe some option for a secondary drive could easily be implemented in the program. Something like "create secondary copy of all version history now".

Another question: I have no idea what the difference between incremental and differential is supposed to be. Which option is the more secure one/ why would I choose it?

Thank you very much,

Michael

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1. The program does have a "Backup option" which will create a "Reserve backup copy". This option performs an additional backup eachtime the task is run but the reserve backup is ALWAYS a new full backup and there is no provision for the backup to any type other than always full.

2. An incremental backup records the used disk sector changes from the last created backup (last may have been a full or may have been an incremental. The next backup again backs up any new changes since the last backup.(not the last full but the last actual backup--whatever type is was). If you have 1 full plus 30 incrementals and you want to restore the most recent INC. Then the restore program will first restore the full and then restore each and every one of the 30 Inc files so all 31 files must be present and readable or non-currupt is order to have a successful restore.

3. Whereas, the Differential backup is backup of all disk changes that have occurred since the last FULL.
Likewise, the next Diff backup is again a backp of all changes since the last FULL.
So, if you have 1 full and 30 Differentials and want to restore the most current Diff, the recovery would only need to restore the full plus the single most recent Diff file inorder to have your system data identical to what it was on the day the Diff file was created.

Personally, I prefer the Diff procedures but they do require considerable more storage space but you lesson the risk of corruption.

In you have to maintain additional copies on the NAS, I would use a special copy program (not the normal Windows copy) and copy them using a progam which will help test the copy process to make sure the copy process does not induce any copy errors. There are several programs which will do this. I like Karen's REPLICATOR if it is still available.

Hi thanks for the quick answer.

Concerning the differential backups:

If I make a full backup and then change a file (once). Will it then have the changed file in the 30 consecutive differential backups or will it have to write it once into differential backup number 1 and the reference to it in differential backups 2 to 30 if that particular file does not change again?

I am asking because I sometimes move files, which obviously increases the backup a lot as it is dumb and deletes the files at the origin an creates new files at the destination. That is ok, but if in plus differential backup then needs to rewrite those files every single time (even if they don't change between differential backup number 2 and 30) that would kill my HDD.

If it only writes them once when they are acutally changed that should be ok.

Concerning copying the backups to my NAS: I think I will use a freeware called "freefilesync" (http://freefilesync.sourceforge.net/) to copy and compare my backup database unless you think this program won't compare the files properly or do a good job. So far I can only advertise this software.

Thanks,

Michael

Each differential type backup records all disk changes that occurred since the last full backup.
Each diff file will be larger than the prior one if additional changes have occurred.
The file which was changed after the full will appear in every diff backup which is created after the change.
The program works based on changed disk sectors. If file locations changed due to an automatic defrage, then these disk changes will be included in each of the next diff backups.

When restoring a diff backup, you need only to select the single most recent diff file and the full and single diff file will be restore and your system will be the same as it was at the time the diff was created.