Another Acronis question

[andsome]

I have a plug in USB hard drive on which I save regular backups with Acronis. One day this drive is bound to fill up, what do you do then for further backups?

[Chris]

Delete the old backups.

[andsome]

Is this a straight forward right click/delete? If so I suppose that it is best to save the original back up after the fresh Windows install and then save again with the current back up??

[-pops-]

Are you using the Acronis Secure Zone?

If yes, then occasionally make a full backup rather than an incremental one. Then, when your drive is approaching being full, make another full backup and if there isn't room on the drive, Acronis automatically deletes the oldest backup and all its increments.

I always keep at least two full backups (with their increments) on my backup drive.

[r4may]

I always keep three System full backups, Two on removable media, one month apart and the latest on the second hard drive.

As I tend to keep all my data on a different drive to my system I back this up separately in the same manner.

I use Ghost which suits my purpose very adequetely and can recover anything from sinle files to full system off any backup.

[woodchip]

andsome

It's alway's best to keep the oldest one also, where the OS as not been loaded long and not lots of software. Then delete the one you know you do not want. Only you can make that decision

[deuces wild]

I store backups of my music and photos on my external drive (from my partitioned D drive), as well as full weekly backups of my C drive.

Prior to the backups I do a full virus, spybot and ad-aware scan.

I normally delete the oldest backup prior to the new backup.

How big is your external drive andsome?

[andsome]

My plug in drive is 80GB. I have not sorted out Acronis secure zone. I have the original full back up and several incremental ones stored on this drive. It just occurred to me that it will eventually fill up, and I wondered if it is possible to just right click and select DELETE on some of the old backups, prior to creating a new incremental backup, always keeping the original FULL backup as the basis.

[-pops-]

I think you can delete your incrementals with a non Acronis Secure Zone setup.

What I would do in your case, Keith is create a new FULL backup. Then and only then, delete your incremental backups from your first set so you still have your original Windows system and keep that as it is. After about three or four increments have been added to your new backup, start another FULL backup and add increments to that as before.

So, at this stage you have

1. A backup of your original system.

2. A first backup with 4 (or so) increments.

3. A second backup with 4 (or so) increments.

You can then either start a fourth FULL backup OR delete your first backup with increments (No. 2 above) and start with a fresh FULL backup.

I wouldn't recommend keeping really old backups (except the original) as they won't represent the system as it was when it became necessary to use the backup.

(a bit longwinded but I hope you understand this.)

[andsome]

Many thanks

[andsome]

I have just done as suggested. I did another FULL backup, then after that I deleted two of the incrementals. I noted that the size of the remaining space on the drive did increase by the correct amount after the deletion. I'll get to fully understand Acronis one day. Thanks again folks.