Issues with Incrementals on 2014

With some discipline, much of what you want to do may be possible but cannot be totally automated. Clarification needed on some points before what procedures would be required.

1. Is the backup type to be a disk backup of all partitons which is the full plus 6 inc? or are you considering only a "Files & folders" backup. A "Files and Folders" backup cannot create a replacement disk.

2. When does the disk swap occur. Before or after the Friday backup? Is this rigid? What is to be the scheduled backup start time which would have to be the same time each day.

The full backup is the base followed by 6 incrementals. The full backup would be the first backup onto the new disk after a disk swap. The last backup onto the old disk would be a smaller incremental backup.

2A. How many weeks backups are to be retained on one storage disk?
when that limit reached, do you want to program to delete the oldest week stored on that disk?

3. You would need a different backup task to be mated with a specific disk.
When the disk changes, the backup task has to change. If 2 storage disk involved, then 2 different tasks needed. Acronis matches the disk ID for both source and target to the specific task--which is why 2 disks = 2 tasks.

4. You would be using the Weekly schedule with all days checked so a backup would occur each day. In the beginning, Each task would be activate on a specific day so the Full backup would occur following the activation

5. Following a disk change, the old backup task would need to be manually changed to "do not schedule" and the new task to be schedule activated. Or the backups could be initiated manually but 2 tasks still needed.

Those are some things to ponder and answer before an exact procedure is possible.

1) it is a disk backup

2) It is Friday before the backup. I would like it to be rigid, but sometimes it does not make it. If the Friday is missed, the drive will be left until the following Friday. Every once in awhile, the drive will get replaced off time in the middle of the week, but we can work on that part.

Backup starts at 8PM

2A) I am only trying to keep one previous week on the backup drive. I only have 4TB on the drive. The full is about 1.2TB and the incrementals come close to 800GB-1TB on max compression.

3-5) So would I need to have the disks be different drive letters? Different tasks was something I had not tried but considered. My hang up with it was exactly what you described, I would need more than changing the backup drive. I would love to make this as fire and forget as possible. I will do what I need to to make this work, but I want to make it as simplistic as possible. :)

Thank you. :)

The backups task can be configured for the routine 1+6 backups--1 backup each day beginning with a full backup on 8pm Friday after a disk switch.

The problems occur when the computer is not available on Friday for the scheduled switch and full backup. Or, a different problem if the day missed is prior to Friday.

A. TrueImage has no method to create a create a specific type or full backup on a specific week day. The only workaround is to start the first backup (after task creation) which is the full on that specific day and then control the next full based on the number of projected backups (i.e. after 6 incs, or after 12 incs).

B. Conversely, the C2G helper program for TI has the capability of clearing the storage folder on a specific day of the week. An empty storage folder will cause TI's next backup to create a full backup resulting in a full backup on that designated day. You may want to spend some time reviewing Chain2Gen found at link 1 below, index item #5 inside my guides index.

B-1. If C2g used: If the backup schedule does not run on Friday (for whatever reason), C2G will allow the backups to continue until the following Friday (or continue to 3rd Friday if computer not available on the 2nd Friday). Same storage disk is remain in place to match the task being used for the extra days.

B-2. if C2G not used and TI does the controlling, then, any missed day (no matter which day), the schedule gets delayed by the number of days missed.
The TI schedule is set that a full backup does not occur until after the 6th inc. The only method I know of getting the schedule back on track is to run the backup manually multiple times to make up for the lost days so that 6th would have been completed some time prior to the Friday backup time and switch.
Or, prior to backup time on Friday, the storage folder gets renamed to something else and the original storage folder get recreated so that TI finds an empty storage folder of the exact same name as configured in the original task. This would have to
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C. Here is one link which could be helpful in making sure the task and target disk were properly matched--if you wanted to use such assistance.
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D. Perhaps even an alternate 3rd backup task (holiday task) might have some bearing if the 7 backups needed to be a fixed but different number
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/42887
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E.. The problems described in B-2 make the most likely choice to be using C2G for backup control and just using TI or Windows to do the scheduling. Regardless, there will have to be corrections made following delays caused by computer not available.

F. I have not finalized my suggestions yet but offering you some of the things that must be considered. The more I think on this, the more things I imagine can go wrong and be provided for.

Bill,
Did you get a chance to review Chain2Gen. It has the fewest limitations but stil would require some manual intervention.