I know this topic (backup, in general that is) has lots of different viewpoints and there is merit in all of them. I obviously take care of the backups for my job, but (because of lessons learned at work in fact) I am working on a backup strategy for my personal laptop which essentially has my entire digital life on it, which is nothing new I am sure.
I purchased a copy of Acronis TrueImage 2013 after doing a lot of research and it looks like a decent product all things considered.
I wanted to get some feedback on what everyone would recommend and a proper strategy for my situation. I have 2 HDs in my laptop. The first has 2 partitions, the System Reserved and C:\. On my second drive, I have 2 partitions. 1 for all my photography work and the other primarily for data storage.
Q1 - Should I create separate chains for each of the partitions individually, or just do them all together (I am leaning towards the latter but unsure)?
Q2 - Would a FULL (Once a Month), DIFFERENTIAL (WEEKLY), INCREMENTAL (DAILY) scheme make sense? Or should I just do FULL + INCREMENTAL ONLY?
Q3 - I am guessing that after the 2nd month (and subsequent as well), I can then immediately delete the prior month DIFFERENTIALS and INCREMENTALS, correct? Will TrueIMage handle this form me?
Q4 - Any other things I should keep in mind/consider? I plan on backing this up to a 1.5 TB Canvio drive. That generally means I will be carrying this around with me wherever I go in my laptop bag. What are some suggestions when it comes to creating a redundant copy of the hard drive either on another device kept in a different location (work or parents house, etc.). I want to try to stay away from the cloud for the cost, time, and bandwidth it consumes.
Anything else worth mentioning would be good to hear as well. Thanks!
Mike