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Backup drive to another same size drive: automatically delete backup

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Regular Poster
Messaggi: 198
Commenti: 120

Hi,

First of all, my apologies if this has already been discussed, haven't found any solution yet on the forums.

I'd like to backup a drive to another same size drive, which means I need a way to automatically delete the previous backup before creating a new one.

I suppose I have to fiddle with pre/post commands to achieve this.

Can anyone help me ?

Thanks

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Vincent, welcome to these User Forums.

What is the size of your drives here, and how much data is stored on the source drive you want to backup, i.e. how much used / how much free space on the drive?

Acronis uses compression and also makes a number of default exclusions for data which can result in a much smaller backup image size.  Note: the exclusions are primarily for Windows OS files that are rebuilt automatically by Windows during the start process (pagefile, swapfile, hiberfil).

The only time when there would be a 1:1 relationship between a source and target drive is when cloning is being performed where this process creates an identical duplicate copy of the source data on the target drive, including the drive signature etc.  Cloning cannot be automated or scheduled as is a manual activity.  See the link in my signature for a document describing the differences between Backup and Cloning operations.

Regular Poster
Messaggi: 198
Commenti: 120

Hello again, 

Thank you for your quick answer.

I have 400GB of data on the 500GB SSD, the other 500GB SSD is empty.

I've read about the difference between backup and cloning, and I'm going with the backup solution (faster and schedulable)

I just need a way to tell Acronis True Image to automatically delete the previous backup when doing a new one.

I know the risks of doing so and I'm fine with not having a backup for a few minutes until the new one is complete as this backup itself will be copied on another external drive once in a while.

Thanks

Vincent, the safest recommendation would be to invest in a larger backup drive to store your backup image files on, but if you are not in a position to do so, then there are ways to do what you ask by using a Pre-Command for your backup task.

Note: with ATI 2018 if you have Acronis Active Protection turned on, this will prevent any attempt to delete any existing files on your backup drive, so AAP would need to be turned off before attempting to delete an existing .tib file.

Note 2: you will get a pop-up error message every time you run this backup task after deleting the previous backup file for which you will need to take the Ignore option.

2018-08-15 20_18_28 Deleted file error.png

The Pre-Command batch file should contain the following lines:

Example: Stop_AAP_Delete_Tibs.BAT

@echo off
sc stop "AcronisActiveProtectionService" > NUL 2>&1
del L:\Test\Downloads*.tib > NUL 2>&1
sc start "AcronisActiveProtectionService" > NUL 2>&1

This will turn off the AAP Service to allow the .tib files to be deleted.
You will need to change the 'del ...' line to reflect the path and file names used for your task from the example shown above (L:\Test\Downloads*.tib)
The last line restarts the AAP Service to resume protection.

The batch file Stop_AAP_Delete_Tibs.BAT should then be selected in Pre Command entry box in the Advanced Options for your task.

2018-08-15 20_33_50 Pre Command.png2018-08-15 20_34_34Test Pre Cmd.png

Click on the Test command button to ensure this runs correctly / successfully.

I would also suggest you consider getting a larger external drive. The suggestion made by Steve is the second best solution.

Ian