Newbie question: Simple Backup Question

Hi, nothing wrong with the question, and the answer is yes it can be set up to do this.

It does seem potentially rather a lot of data to backup in one operation with the resultant backup file being rather huge. I'm positive if I were to set this up for someone I would split it into smaller tasks, not necessarily one for each disk but depending on what would be logical to have in each backup. This would reduce the risk of any backup failures and the need to restart the whole job again or risk a 'bad block' somewhere from invalidating the whole thing for instance.

Thank you very much for your reply.

I was planning to spread music, films, home video, etc. across the 6 disks and as I rip my physical media to these disks, obviously the used storage will gradually increase.
All I'll want to do is a weekly overnight backup to the external drive as I can easily stomach losing a weeks worth of data.

I was wondering as I think it is not an insignificant challenge, how Acronis TruImage handles this scenario though:

1. Let's say that at the end of year 1, my total storage utilisation across the 6 disks is 1.8TB (my external drive being 2TB)
2. On one of my 6 drives which holds Bluray films, I add a number of big Bluray files (mkv container format) which takes me over the 2TB capacity of my external drive.
3. I have another 2TB external drive available and plugged into my PC
4. Can you tell me how TruImage handles this scenario as essentially I guess it needs to put the new data onto the new drive pointing at the source folder structure (Acronis has got to be clever enough to be able to manage backed up data that comes from the same Source folder structure but put it in more than one Destination backup location)
5. Is it clever enough to do this? Sorry, I'm not really familiar with what home backup solutions can do.

Like what you say about splitting up my backups. That makes sense and after the first backup, they'll get a lot smaller if I take the incremental option.

One final question, the amazon.co.uk comments about Acronis TruImage 11 are simply awful. A lot of dissatisfaction with customer service and the fact that Non Stop Backup simply does not work. I just want to run a simple weekly overnight backup in the configuration I've described on Windows 7 64bit - do you think I have anything to worry about?

I don't think ATI2011 (or previous versions) can handle your scenario in that you can only specify one location for the backup files. I am pretty sure that 'Backup & Recovery 10' can handle multiple destinations for backups but I'm not familiar with the product - others here are though and can verify this and provide more info. This software could be your best option but you would need all the disks online I think.

Using ATI2011 you would have to monitor the system quite closely I think and may be change the strategy a little bit to use two of your disks as backup destinations - I reckon if using differentials or incrementals you would soon be pushed for space. I don't know the actual volumes of data you are talking of though and how quickly it may grow.

As far as what they say on Amazon I shall stick with what I know from personal experience. I had a few problems with TI2009 but apart from that everything has worked as it should and so I would recommend Acronis products to anyone. I recommend you install a trial version and try it out.

Thanks again Bin.

I've had a look at the user manual for Backup & Recovery 10 and it seems to agree with your summary which is great news. I think it even does split backups in case you run out of space on one external hard drive.

I will go and post the scenario on the Backup & Recovery forum. Cheers again.

You're very welcome. I shall follow the post, good luck.