By Gene Barlow
User Group Relations
Copyrighted November 2010
As an avid photographer, I have learned to take digital photographs at the highest resolution possible on my camera. By doing this, I capture the most details possible in my pictures. I have also learned to avoid certain photographic file types that lose resolution each time I copy the file. I don’t want to lose any of the details in my pictures that I worked hard to get in the beginning.
As I prepared to write this article, it dawned on me that doing important backups of your computer is very similar. You need to take frequent backups of your main hard drive to capture the most information possible about your hard drive. Taking a backup only once or twice a year leaves you with very little details about the thousands of changes that happen to your hard drive each week. Daily or weekly backups are the best way to capture the details you need in your backup system.
Most users may not be aware that they can lose details from their backup if they use a couple of optional features available in Acronis True Image Home 2011. These are Image Consolidation and Differential Image backup. This article will show you how using either of these two features can cause important backup files to be removed and lost in your backup system.
I recommend using the Incremental Image approach to doing backups. You start each month with a full backup image of your entire hard drive. Then each of the following weeks in the month, you make incremental backup images of just the changes to your hard drive since the last backup was made. The incremental images are much smaller than the full backup and complete in a much shorter timeframe. When the next month begins, you start a new full backup with a new file name followed by weekly incremental images. This is the best way to capture the most details possible in your backups and still use a minimum amount of space on your backup hard drive.
After a few months of doing backups, you end up with many files on your external backup hard drive. Eventually, you run out of space on the drive and need to delete the oldest backups to make room for additional backups on the drive. A couple of years ago, Acronis introduced the ability to consolidate your backups into a smaller space. The full backup image and the incremental images that were associated with it were merged together giving just a consolidated full backup image in its place. This saves all of the space on the backup drive that was used by the incremental image files.
Consolidation was probably a good trade-off to totally deleting the entire old image file. At least you were left with a consolidated image instead of nothing. However, Acronis did not tell you that the consolidated image file lost details from the full and incremental image files it replaced. Valuable information could be lost from your backup images this way. This can happen in two ways – losing all of the drafts to an important document and losing the entire document itself.
Losing drafts to an important document can be a major loss to you. Let’s say you are writing an important paper over several weeks. Each week, you backup the current status of the paper in an incremental backup image. At the end of the month you consolidate these images into one combined image. As you read over your final draft, you determine that it did not turn out as you expected. An earlier draft a couple of weeks ago was much better. However, since you consolidated your backups, you have lost all of these drafts that were available till the consolidation. All you are left with is the last bad revision you were not happy with at the end of the month. You have lost all of the drafts prior to that. They were consolidated out of your backups.
Losing an entire important file is much worst. Let’s say you worked several days one week on this important file. At the end of the week, you backed up that completed important file. Sometime between that backup and the last incremental backup you made of that important file, it was accidently deleted from your computer. The last incremental image saves the deletion of that important file. When you consolidate your full and incremental images, only the last image of that important file will be saved. That is the one where it was deleted. Hence, you have totally lost that file by consolidating that month’s backups. When you consolidate, all you end up with is what was in the final image of that file and nothing else.
Using the Differential Image backups works much the same way as consolidation, only it is an on-going consolidation that occurs each week. Differential backup approach starts with a full backup image, just like the incremental backup approach does. As you do the weekly backup images, the changed files are consolidated into last week’s differential image file. So, you are losing details from your differential image each week as you make your backups. This is much more destructive than consolidating images after several months. You are consolidating each week with the differential image approach. Only by using the incremental image approach is all of the details you saved in your backup protected from loss. This is why I recommend the incremental backup image approach provided by Acronis True Image.
Acronis True Image Home 2011 continues to be the most powerful and flexible backup utility on the market. Used correctly, it will do an outstanding job for you in protecting the important files that you have stored on your main hard drive. To order True Image 2011 at our holiday special price of just $25 per license (half the list price of this excellent product), just go to www.ugr7.com and click on the appropriate Buy Now button. Enter the special code of UGHOLIDAY when you check out your order. If you have two computers to back up, order two licenses at this tremendous price. Just a reminder, you can order additional copies at this user group discount price to give as a holiday gift to family members and friends. They will welcome your gift and you will be protecting them from serious loss in the future. Act soon, as this price is only available till the end of the year.
User Group Relations
Copyrighted November 2010
As an avid photographer, I have learned to take digital photographs at the highest resolution possible on my camera. By doing this, I capture the most details possible in my pictures. I have also learned to avoid certain photographic file types that lose resolution each time I copy the file. I don’t want to lose any of the details in my pictures that I worked hard to get in the beginning.
As I prepared to write this article, it dawned on me that doing important backups of your computer is very similar. You need to take frequent backups of your main hard drive to capture the most information possible about your hard drive. Taking a backup only once or twice a year leaves you with very little details about the thousands of changes that happen to your hard drive each week. Daily or weekly backups are the best way to capture the details you need in your backup system.
Most users may not be aware that they can lose details from their backup if they use a couple of optional features available in Acronis True Image Home 2011. These are Image Consolidation and Differential Image backup. This article will show you how using either of these two features can cause important backup files to be removed and lost in your backup system.
I recommend using the Incremental Image approach to doing backups. You start each month with a full backup image of your entire hard drive. Then each of the following weeks in the month, you make incremental backup images of just the changes to your hard drive since the last backup was made. The incremental images are much smaller than the full backup and complete in a much shorter timeframe. When the next month begins, you start a new full backup with a new file name followed by weekly incremental images. This is the best way to capture the most details possible in your backups and still use a minimum amount of space on your backup hard drive.
After a few months of doing backups, you end up with many files on your external backup hard drive. Eventually, you run out of space on the drive and need to delete the oldest backups to make room for additional backups on the drive. A couple of years ago, Acronis introduced the ability to consolidate your backups into a smaller space. The full backup image and the incremental images that were associated with it were merged together giving just a consolidated full backup image in its place. This saves all of the space on the backup drive that was used by the incremental image files.
Consolidation was probably a good trade-off to totally deleting the entire old image file. At least you were left with a consolidated image instead of nothing. However, Acronis did not tell you that the consolidated image file lost details from the full and incremental image files it replaced. Valuable information could be lost from your backup images this way. This can happen in two ways – losing all of the drafts to an important document and losing the entire document itself.
Losing drafts to an important document can be a major loss to you. Let’s say you are writing an important paper over several weeks. Each week, you backup the current status of the paper in an incremental backup image. At the end of the month you consolidate these images into one combined image. As you read over your final draft, you determine that it did not turn out as you expected. An earlier draft a couple of weeks ago was much better. However, since you consolidated your backups, you have lost all of these drafts that were available till the consolidation. All you are left with is the last bad revision you were not happy with at the end of the month. You have lost all of the drafts prior to that. They were consolidated out of your backups.
Losing an entire important file is much worst. Let’s say you worked several days one week on this important file. At the end of the week, you backed up that completed important file. Sometime between that backup and the last incremental backup you made of that important file, it was accidently deleted from your computer. The last incremental image saves the deletion of that important file. When you consolidate your full and incremental images, only the last image of that important file will be saved. That is the one where it was deleted. Hence, you have totally lost that file by consolidating that month’s backups. When you consolidate, all you end up with is what was in the final image of that file and nothing else.
Using the Differential Image backups works much the same way as consolidation, only it is an on-going consolidation that occurs each week. Differential backup approach starts with a full backup image, just like the incremental backup approach does. As you do the weekly backup images, the changed files are consolidated into last week’s differential image file. So, you are losing details from your differential image each week as you make your backups. This is much more destructive than consolidating images after several months. You are consolidating each week with the differential image approach. Only by using the incremental image approach is all of the details you saved in your backup protected from loss. This is why I recommend the incremental backup image approach provided by Acronis True Image.
Acronis True Image Home 2011 continues to be the most powerful and flexible backup utility on the market. Used correctly, it will do an outstanding job for you in protecting the important files that you have stored on your main hard drive. To order True Image 2011 at our holiday special price of just $25 per license (half the list price of this excellent product), just go to www.ugr7.com and click on the appropriate Buy Now button. Enter the special code of UGHOLIDAY when you check out your order. If you have two computers to back up, order two licenses at this tremendous price. Just a reminder, you can order additional copies at this user group discount price to give as a holiday gift to family members and friends. They will welcome your gift and you will be protecting them from serious loss in the future. Act soon, as this price is only available till the end of the year.