Controlling Version Rentention in Nonstop Backups
Hi all,
I am starting to use nonstop backup to run alongside me while I work throughout the day. I appreciate it saving many versions of my files while I work so that if I do something stupid or a project gets corrupted, I can go back and restore at any point along the way. However, each night it consolidates all my versions throughout the day into one daily version. So if I see an issue the very next morning, I don't have all the versions from the day before, just the very last one. I would like to tell True Image to keep all versions for at least a week, before consolidating into dailies. Tech Support said no way, but then again, the guy struggled to even understand how the software actually works. Anyone have a solution for this? Surely there is some config file or registry entry to control this behavior, even if it is under the covers. Even the user guide admits the limitation, but makes it sound as if I'll have all versions for at least 24 hrs, and then anything older than that are consolidated to dailies. However, the behavior I am getting right now, is that all versions from yesterday were consolidated last night into one. So when I got up this morning, I only had one version from yesterday which was my final, one version from the day before, one from the day before that, etc. If I find an serious issue today, I can lose the whole day's work from yesterday.
Thanks,
Rob
James,
Thanks for responding. I am pretty stunned, actually. It's one thing that a "home" version doesn't offer that feature, but quite another that NOTHING from Acronis does. There's no "Pro" version or business version that unlocks this bizarre consolidation strategy. I mean, all this company makes is backup software, that's it. So let's re-cap. Acronis implements a potentially useful feature that backs up files (more or less) as they change throughout the day. However, at midnight, everything becomes a pumpkin and is lost. All for the sake of "managing my disk space for me". Well, I've got terabytes of free space, as do many of us. What I can't afford is to lose data, whether it be from a bonehead move on my part, or some form of corrupted file. Here's the upshot for me: I get backups of a bunch of versions of my modified projects throughout the day. At any moment, I can roll back to one of dozens of versions. That's cool. When I come back the next morning I only have the last version of the night before. Gee, I hope nothing got corrupted there... From what I can tell, that's the way it has been for at least 3 or 4 versions now, so it isn't just a brand new feature that wasn't fully thought out. What I was hoping for is some under-the-covers type of setting that can override Acronis' deep concern for my disk space.
In the meantime, I'll just run an hourly incremental against a specific set of directories that I'm working in and then try to find the magic combination of retention settings to give me my peace of mind. Does anyone have a suggestion for a product that implements this feature properly?
Rob
Acronis True Image was designed as a drive imaging tool. Over various versions, other features have been added, but at it's core it's still primarily an imaging tool.
Nonstop backup is a relatively recent addition, and as James says perhaps it will evolve. But, if you really want a real-time mirroring/synching tool, you might be better advised to find a tool with that as its primary function.