Deleting Differential versions

For ease of managing disk space, let True Image manage the backups. Create a backup task limiting the number of saved backups, or the age of the oldest backup, or the total size of the backup folder. I do this to make it easy for non-technical users, as ATI can run and manage their backups without their intervention.

Check out the many user guides and tutorials in the left margin of this forum, particularly Getting Started and Grover's True Image Guides which are illustrated with step-by-step screenshots.
In particular, 29618: Grover's new backup and restore guides http://forum.acronis.com/forum/29618

Other than myself I know of quite a few well experienced users of Acronis and similar programs who will have no truck whatsoever with either differential or incremental backup schemes. It isn't that they don't work - they do, but it just requires one accident to happen to the baseline backup or, in the case of incremental backups, to one of the incrementals, and you can lose the lot. This cannot happen if you simply take a full backup each time, but many ppl are deterred from that as it can take so long due to the volume of personal files that may be present but which don't actually need backing up every time.

The simple answer is to move the "My" folders to another partition or to a permanently connected second drive, leaving just the operating system and your installed software on the system partition. There are just so many benefits from this approach -

- Backing up the OS drive typically takes just 15 minutes

- If you need to restore the OS the restore won't overwrite your personal files

- Your personal files are not being backed up in a proprietary format - you can simply use a sync program to back them up as necessary in their original format.

The "My" folders are designed to be moveable btw, as each has a Location tab in its Properties which you won't find with other folders. You can use the Location tab to move the folder and its contents to another drive in such a way that other software, Office and so on, will still know where your files are located.

I realise that this doesn't answer your actual question but I offer it as food for thought.

Anyway, we wouldn't want you to go away thinking that no one here can be bothered to answer your question ;-)

EDIT apologies tuttle, you posted while I was typing

Thanks for taking the time to reply, guys!
WasEarthling: I agree with keeping data out of the windows partition and always try to do that. I can see that a full backup each month after first (no room!) deleting the old one would solve my problem but I was hoping that buying ATI would do this for me as I could do it manually with free programs!

Tuttle: I can happily (!) create and validate a partition full backup and one or two differential versions of it but it is the consolidation that is the problem.
ATI seems to consolidate by spending ages creating a huge clone of the backups and then merging that with the full backup (and a second deferential if I specified a max of 2) This means that the backup folder doubles in size during the operation.
I just want it to make a new differential each month and delete the old one (leaving the full backup untouched) and taking a fraction of the time and space compared with consolidating. This seems far easier than the unwanted complication of consolidating.
I can't understand why ATI can't do this simple deletion!
If it can do the complicated stuff why not the simple stuff?

I think I can Schedule Windows 8 to automatically delete the unwanted second differential on an age basis but why do I need to? (And somehow protect the old full backup - can I store the differentials in a different folder to the full backup?)

I have spent a lot of hours (well, days actually!) researching this and testing schemes - which is exactly what I was hoping to avoid by buying ATI! Did I buy a turkey or am I missing something?

(I also want to backup data over FTP - here consolidation takes days - I have yet to see it finish!)

Pat100 wrote:

I just want it to make a new differential each month and delete the old one (leaving the full backup untouched) and taking a fraction of the time and space compared with consolidating. This seems far easier than the unwanted complication of consolidating.
I can't understand why ATI can't do this simple deletion!

ATI can do that. I've already explained how, and it does not involve the Consolidation function.

Tuttle: (See bottom * first!)
Sorry but I can't make it happen!
I choose differential. This gives me two choices:
The First radio button gives me "Create only differential versions after the initial full version" Which is what I want. But it will add an additional new differential every month I.e. after a year there will be 12 differentials with the original full version. It offers automatic consolidation settings on blue but I want to avoid consolidation.

The Second radio button gives me "Create a full version after every "n" differential versions" (I'll choose n=1) But I don't want to create a new full version every month! I just want to create a new differential, replacing the last differential. Automatic Cleanup is offered in blue and gives various settings.
If I chose the tick-box "Do not delete the first version of the backup" then presumably, after 12 months, I get;
Original full
12 fulls (One created each month)
11 differentials

*Ah! ... has the penny dropped? ... Would the following work?
(For a monthly partition backup - created size 17GB - container size 34GB)
- Choose "Differential"
- Choose second radio button:
- Create a full version after every 999 differential versions
- Delete version chains older than 1 day
- tick "Do not delete the original backup"

That won't work. A version chain is the combination of a full and its partials (incrementals or differentials).
There is no way out of the box to do what you want to do.
Maybe a hack could work, but you'd have to try and make sure you can validate the backup correctly, and that you can restore:
- create a script that deletes any file containing the "diff" chain,
- run the script as a pre-command of the backup

The script will delete the diff, and ATI will do a new differential, without delete the full. The problem is that the ATI database will still track the delete diff. In your case, it will be easy to find out which still-tracked versions are in fact non-existing. Anyway, validate your backup and make sure you can restore without problem.