Incremental backups in Acronis

[jmt356]

Last week, I made a full backup of my computer on Acronis. This week, I'm trying to make an incremental backup. I got up to the screen that asks me to "Please select the partitions or disk drives" in the attached image. What do I choose here? I want to backup everything. Do I select everything? I can't remember what I chose last week, as I don't even remember seeing "System" as an option (I think there was only the C, D, and E drives). What is System? What happens if I choose to back it up but it's not located in last week's full, original backup??

Thanks

[StuartR]

To make the incremental backup you MUST backup exactly the same drives / partitions as when you made the full backup. The usual way to do this is to run the SAME backup task, rather than creating a new one.

Even if you manually start each backup, Acronis should allow you to select the previous backup job, modify it to make incremental backups, and start it.

Have you read the very fine Acronis user guide, which explains how to manage backups?

[DaveA]

If one has ever rebuilt a machine using "Incremental backups", one may not ever use them again.

But, if one was to do a Full backup at the first of each month, and then a Incremental backups each week, then it would not be to bad.

I had to help some one rebuild a system that had one Full backup and then each week one Incremental backups , for about 6 months. Each Incremental backup has to be installed in the right order or you will get a some messed up and or missing files.

I have found that if I do a full backup each time, it takes a bit longer, but a rebuild goes a lot faster.

[viking33]

I have found that if I do a full backup each time, it takes a bit longer, but a rebuild goes a lot faster.

Totally agree with this, Dave.
Depending on just what I've changed, I'll usually do a full image every 2-3 weeks or so. If an important change or addition, then a new image immediately after.
Also back up my data files to a different HD frequently, so restoring an image will not cost me anything but a little time.

[StuartR]

My backup schedule is a full backup every Saturday and a Differential backup every other night.

When I have to restore I just need two of these, the most recent and the previous Saturday. This makes it much better than trying to restore an incremental.

I delete all the differential backups when they are more than a week old, but keep the full backups for longer, so that I can recover to earlier dates.