Start-up Issues
Ordinarily, I'd be taking issues such as these up with customer support. At least at this stage, that seems difficult, so Forum's my best, current bet. I should also point out that I'm a brand-new Acronis user (within the past 36 hours). Below are a few issues that come to mind...
- Admittedly, I'm backing-up a rather large hard drive. I noticed, yesterday, that the expected time for a complete back-up was more then 90 days. Doesn't that also suggest that I wouldn't be covered before that time elapsed? Is there any fix for that issue?
- I purchased 1 terrabyte of on-line storage. What happens, should that prove insufficient?
- Ordinarily, it's been my practice to power off my desktop computer at night. How might that impact the Acronis back-up process?
- Does your firm have a publication and/or a video covering such issues?
Thanks very much!
Dr. Shumacher,
As a word of advice from someone who also uses the cloud for backups... regarldess of the backup product (Acronis in this case), do not rely on Cloud/offsite backups as your primary or sole backup method. As you've found, backup time can be quite slow. If you need your data after a hard drive failure, you can expect recovery to take nearly as long for a full disk recovery. Cloud/offisite storage should be considered as your secondary, offsite backup location and here's why.
A local backup, to another local hard drive or NAS device (network attached storage), should take at the most hours - not days. It is much quicker to backup locally and much quicker to restore - this is the primary reason for having a local backup.
A Cloud backup is offsite/remote. When used in conjunction with a local backup, it adds a layer of security and redundancy for your data backup plan. Should your home or office be burglarized, lost to natural disaster, or there be a catastrophic hardware failure (any of which could make your primary, local backup unusable), then you have your slower, offsite cloud backup to revert to.
Using a combination of a local backup and a cloud backup also gives you 2 data backup copies that you can try, should one, or the other somehow have an issue of its own (backups, although reliable are not infallable - especially if they are on disks that have been compromised to hardware failure or malware).
As for addressing the Cloud speed, as Steve mentioned, that is primarily based on your Internet Service Provider upload speeds. In most cases, uploads are assymetrical and approximately 1/10th of the download speeds. Additionally, by default, the Cloud backup setting in Acronis (advanced tab) is set to "optimized". This ensures that you do not saturate your Internet Connection, which can cause download issues and make web surfing problematic. During non-peak usage, you can move that from "optimal" to full and it should chug along as fast as your ISP will allow - hopefully speeding up the cloud backup, although it's still likely to take days, or longer, if you have a lot of data to upload to the cloud. Once all of the data has been initially transferred to the Cloud, subsequent backups should go much faster as only the changes are replicated after that.
You an pause a a cloud backup at anytime to allow for local backups to run from time to time and then resume the cloud backup when the local backup is complete. Likewise, if you reboot the machine or turn it off and back on, the cloud backup should pick up where it left off; however, each time it starts up, it must scan the entire disk to identify changes that have occured so that can take some time as well.
As you have a 1TB hard drive, I would suggest you consider getting an external USB 3.0 hard drive that is at least 3-4TB. This should allow you to have a backup plan that can grow over time, and allow you to create at least one new full backup prior to cleaning up older versions.
Automated grooming tasks are highly recommended so that your backups remain at a reasonable size, based upon your retention needs and backup scheme.
My personal preference is 2 backups of the same data (locally). One that has a an initial full, followed by daily incrementals. I allow those incrementals to run for 2 weeks before the next full is completed (1 full + 13 daily incrementals = 2 weeks of backups in that version chain). I then keep 2 version chains (essentially 1 month of backups) and let Acronis groom old ones out when the chains are complete.
The other backup is another full, followed by 4 weekly differentials (one per week). I also keep 2 version chains of that one, giving me approximately 1 month of recovery points to rely on. If I need a recovery from yesterday, I look to the incremental. If, for some reason, there is a problem with the incremental, I can go to the last differential, which will be the most recent version.
Many users have set up a backup with never ending incrementals, only to find that after some period of time, one of their incrementals was damaged - meaning that every one that came after it is unusable. By limiting the # of incrementals to a reasonable number, you can reduce the chances of this occurring. By using a duplicate backup scheme with differentials, you also afford yourself more recovery points at more recent intervals that can be used. It would be better to only lose 1 week of data, than say an entire month.
I also use Cloud backup, but it should be considered only part of your backup policy. Backup to USB3 HDD is also important, as is the possibility of having an off-site physical backup. I have backed-up important files and disk images on my mother-in-law's PC. I take my USB drive to her place regularly and copy the files to a (hidden) HDD on her PC. By hidden I mean that she does not have access to that HDD.
I have found with backing up to the Cloud (or any backup task) that it is best to break the process into smaller tasks. I do this by having a SSD with my OS on it, and a raid-5 setup with three data patitions. The OS Partition is backed-up daily (includes email and standard document directories), and the other data partitions are backed up less frequently (as they do not chage much). If I make a major change to them I do a manual run of the back-up task.
With Cloud backup the major issue is your upload speed. I have a 100Mbps/2Mbps cable connection (although normally runs about 110/2.7), so it can take several days to do an initial backup. In addition to fine-tuning the Acronis settings, check the Quality of Service (QoS) settings on your router. Lowering the priority to games may help if you are not a gamer.
Ian
Thank you, so much, Ian!
I really appreciate your taking the time to get me headed in the right direction! I've had a Western Digital My Book Live backup drive connected to my system for a long time. Trouble is, once I made the change to Windows 10, the backup program ceased working. I've talked to tech support on the issue. They usually make concerned-sounding noises and give me advice that doesn't work. It may take me a while to digest your suggestions, but I'm sure they will ultimately head me in the right direction.
Jim Schumacher
Jim, when you say "once I made the change to Windows 10, the backup program ceased working" - is this the Acronis backup program you are speaking about, or was this a different backup program?
ATIH 2017 should work fine with your WD My Book Live drive - I have one of those on my own network along with some other WD My Book drives and a Synology NAS and have not had any issues using all of these as backup devices for my Acronis devices.
Jim, in case if there are still any uncertainties for you, or doubts, or you would like to get assistance in German, please contact the German Support Team during European business hours at http://www.acronis.com/de-de/support/contact-us.html
You can call us (a toll-free number for calls from Germany), use a live chat service or submit a request by email. Just make sure you stay at acronis.com/de-de to get support in German.
Regards,
Slava