OK, but maybe I am missing something here. I can get any size I want but I
was thinking the whole point of this kind of back up is in case I have to
I assume when you say "this kind of backup" you mean a full image,
which is similar to a snapshot. Restoring such a backup puts
everything back where it was on the day the backup was created.
format this I can just put it back to how it is the day I back it up instead
of taking it back to factory original?
Exactly, and Gene and several others have done a good job of
explaining that there's real benefit to being able to restore your
computer to a more *recent* state than just the one time you decided
to create a full image backup. That's a general case, though. In your
specific case, things may be different and you would know best. If a
single image is good enough, then more power to you.
This would work for me but Wife would be sure to lose something next time I
had to format her machine as I have never been able to get her to back up
stuff and gave up on the battle.
My wife isn't big on administrative things like backups so I take care
of it for her by using the built-in scheduler within Acronis. I have a
15-drive server hanging on the network, with 14 of those drives being
the 2TB variety. Four drives are reserved for backups. In Acronis, I
set up a rotating schedule so that every week a full system image is
created and saved to one of the dedicated backup drives, in rotation.
I have a similar schedule set up on my own computer. If one of the
backup drives happens to fail, there's a 25% chance that it will
contain the most recent image for a given computer. If I needed to
restore or rebuild one of my computers, I would naturally reach for
the most recent image. To me, restoring an image from a year ago would
be unacceptable, but I see that your requirements are different from
mine, and that's fine.
To keep the backup drives from filling up, I only keep the most recent
4 weekly backups for each computer, plus any backups that were created
during the first week of the month. So if I look now, I will find a
full image from the first week of July, (when I set this up), likewise
an image from the first week of August through November, plus an image
from the next 3 weeks in November, and finally an image created last
weekend from the first week of December.
We do other backups, too. The stuff described above only refers to the
system/boot drive, typically the C:\ drive. I have separate backup
jobs set up for photos, digital music, etc.
Lastly, as Gene pointed out, once you do a full image backup you don't
necessarily have to make more full images. You can opt for incremental
or differential backups, which are much smaller. I don't use those
types myself, but they are a valid choice.
