acronis true image 2012
My external hard drive is full of backups. How do I clean up old backups without having to delete them individually? I only want to keep recent backups. I am doing incremental backups. Thanks in advance.
You might want a backup task that retains only a certain number of backups and then auto-deletes the oldest one once a new one is created. If so, create a new task with your preferred options. Once it's working you can delete the old ones.
A task for Incremental or Differential will always begin with a full backup. That is necessary, as that becomes the baseline.
For an Incremental task, after the first full backup, subsequent backups will be incremental, each one based on changes since the previous Incremental backup, all the way back to the second backup being incremental based on changes since the full backup. As such, you need all links in the chain, all incremental backups right back to and including the first full backup, in order to Restore.
For a Differential task, after the first full backup, subsequent backups will be differential, each one based on changes since the first full backup. To restore, you would need just any Differential and the Full backup on which it is based.
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.
29618: Grover's new backup and restore guides http://forum.acronis.com/forum/29618
You should not allow an incremental chain to become too long. An incremental restore depends upon every incremental in the chain being valid, including the original full. It's better to limit each chain to just a few incrementals, followed by a fresh full backup to start a new chain.
You should validate backups periodically. That would have alerted you much sooner if the full backup were missing or unreadable.