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Does the Full Backup need to remain online in order to do incremental or differential backups?

With all the nasty viruses out there, I'd like to make full backups of all my drives, and then take them off line.  Ideally I'd continue doing incremental (or differential) backups, and (manually) copying the AOMEI .afi files offline where a potential virus cannot access them.  I don't mind leaving the incremental .afi files online, but I don't have enough room to keep all the full backups of all my drives online. 

I guess it comes down to whether your internal directory of file information is separate from the actual data? 

Comments

  • Hello Alan,


    Incremental backup is based on the last backup, and differential backup is based on last Full backup. So if you copy the image file to other location, the incremental or differential backup is not able to be created without last backup.

  • if you get the full version you can "flatten" the incrementals into the primary backup. However i know what you are getting at and not you wanting them all online. The only way to do what you want is do a full backup each time and move it. You could copy the full backup and incrementals each time to a different drive but that doesn't achieve your requirments to save space. Sounds like you need some more space in either case.

  • What about doing an incremental and letting it do the full thing the first time and then after doing the second one, moving the first (full) one offline?  If the second contains the full directory, then in theory that should work.  I can test this on a small directory.

  • Does the full version allow multiple incrementals to be flattened into a single incremental?

  • edited December 2014

    Well, the answer to my proposed solution above doesn't work, since it appears each incremental is using information in the full backup, and not just the latest incremental.

    I just wanted to avoid having to DOUBLE my overall storage.  I've got 4-5 TB and wanted to avoid having to put an extra 5TB drive online all the time just for (timed) backups.  I guess I can do it with either an internal/external though.  (It just raises the cost by $200.)

    You should seriously consider a "Full Directory" option in the full version, writing only the directory information, and not the data.  It could then be used in place of the full backup when doing either an incremental or differential.

    Such an option would be much more useful to me than any of the extra features in the full version.  I wouldn't even have to think twice about it.  I think a lot of folks would pay for this alone.


    Thanks for listening.

    Alan

  • edited December 2014

     Nice product, by the way!

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