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Lost trying to back up to one drive only

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This is my first post.  I am quite confused.

I have approx 1.5 TB of data spread over four drives on my computer (Win 10).  I also have a 2 TB external drive which serves as my backup drive.

I want to use this 2 TB as my only backup drive (I do not want to swap out two different drives).

Here is what has happened so far:

The initial full backup of my internal drives created a 1.43 TB file on the backup drive.  Since then an additional 7 incremental backups have completed successfully.

The problem is that I do not have room for any more incremental backups and I get an error message telling me this.

Is there a way to setup so that I don't run into this situation?  I'd like to do the full backup and then some incremental backups and then, when there is not enough room for another incremental, a restart of the process where a new initial file overwrites what is already on the drive and then incrementals are created until the process needs to be repeated.

I hope that this makes sense.

To summarize; how can I set up so that I can keep 1.5 TB of data backed up onto a single 2TB drive without having to manually erase all ot the backup files myself to make room for a new full backup?

Thanks for listening,

Rich

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Rich, welcome to these User Forums.

Sorry but there is no automatic method of doing what you are asking here.  All of the Acronis backup schemes work on the principle of not deleting anything until the next backup has been created successfully, so that you are not left without any means of recovery.

So if your current backups add up to 1.43TB and you only have a 2TB backup destination drive then you have insufficient free space to allow for a further full backup to be created before the original one can be deleted.

You may want to reconsider your choice of including all 4 of your internal drives in a single backup image file, and look instead of making separate backups of each individual drive.  This would have the advantage of making any recovery process much simpler by only having to select the specific backup image for the drive to be recovered, rather than having to select that individual drive from a backup containing all 4 drives.

Doing the above may also help with the size issue, as each individual backup image will be that much smaller, and therefore less space is needed to allow for a new backup and automatic cleanup actions.

The alternative, of course, is to invest in a larger backup drive!

Rich...I would like to add my welcome to the user forums.  My personal recommendation is the backup drive should be a  3x the data to be backed up.  You should definitely purchase a 4TB drive.  A situation where you have to delete your only backup prior to completing the follow-on backup is unacceptable to me.

Regards,

FtrPilot

Thank you for the responses.  I appreciate it. 

I had never thought about making separate backups of each drive rather than one big backup of everything.  I think I will start doing it that way.

I also think I will order a 4TB drive as suggested so that I won't have to delete anything before it's backed up in a new set.

One more question.... will the software, once it's started a second set of full backup and incrementals and once it does the first full backup, go back and delete the previous set?  That way it could set it up and not have to manually delete the old set once the second set is built for the first time.  I hope this makes sense.

Rich, the options for Automatic cleanup, that are found on the Backup Scheme configuration settings page, do exactly what you are asking, based on what you configure.

Example: You configure to create a new Full backup after making 5 Incremental backups - this is then defining the size of your backup version chain, i.e. 1 x Full plus 5 x Incremental files.

In your automatic cleanup rules, you can then configure to "Store no more than 2 recent version chains" which means that your backup drive will always store the latest 2 version chains (2 x Full plus 10 x Incremental files) after which, when the next chain is started with another Full backup, the oldest chain will be deleted.

What this means in practice is that your backup drive must have enough space to hold 2 recent chains plus 1 Full backup file - this because nothing is deleted until the new Full backup is created thus starting a new chain.

Thanks Steve.  Now it all makes sense.  I appreciate the help.

To update and close I did two things.  I bought a 4TB external drive and upgraded to ATI2018.  As my luck would go, Newegg put a 6TB drive on sale for the same price that I bought the 4TB one.

Now that I have this solution in place I have created a new problem with my backups - getting ATI to delete an earlier set to make room for a new set.

Discussion of that on the 2018 forum

Thank you again for all of the help.