My data is too large for one hdd

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greetings,

My largest drive which I want to use for storage shows about 2 gigs of space available for backup. But my total data to backup is well over 2 gigs . Is there a way for me to span the data across two drives?  Thanks for any help.

Sherm

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2GB (Gigabytes) is way too small for a backup drive.
If you are using Macrium Reflect to make drive images, you should have at least 1-2TB (Terabytes) of drive space to use for backups.

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shermank

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PKCano wrote:

2GB (Gigabytes) is way too small for a backup drive.
If you are using Macrium Reflect to make drive images, you should have at least 1-2TB (Terabytes) of drive space to use for backups.

dumb me…I meant my  target backup drive(s) are 2TB, but my total data I wish to backup is larger than will fit on a single drive. So, is there a way to  use more than one drive, kind of the way we could do it back in the days when data was backed up to a DVD? Thanks

 

Sherm

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shermank wrote:

I meant my target backup drive(s) are 2TB, but my total data I wish to backup is larger than will fit on a single drive.

How large is your data collection?

What backup software is in use?

Are you cloning or creating a backup image?

External hard disk drives come in 16TB and 32TB these days.

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shermank

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Sherman,

1. So what is the actual size of the data to backup?
2. How many generations of backup to you want to keep?

Macrium has settings to keep multiple generations and to set when the oldest should be deleted if space is an issue.

The only way I know of to use multiple disks is if they are pooled into a single drive using something like Sotrage Spaces (in Windows) or a NAS box.

My recommendation would be to get larger backup drives and use an external USB Dock so each drive only contains one image and you rotate drives to obtain generational backups. FYI: this is how I do it.

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
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shermank

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Thanks for the advice…hoping not to have to buy another drive. I already have 3 internal and 5 externals.

I am thinking that I would back up my c drive with windows 10 professional and other data, plus all but one or two externals. Then, I would backup the remaining drives separately to another drive. Would that work?

overall, I have about 2.52 TB data to backup.

thanks

sherm

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Considered a NAS device or cloud backup?

Susan Bradley Patch Lady

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shermank

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In Macrium Reflect you can image a whole drive and/or any given partitions on that drive. You just need to setup a separate BFD (Backup File Definition) for the items to image to a given source drive. This is a simple process and they are saved so you only have to create them once.

Do a search here for “Backup for Non-Technical Users” and give the instructions in the .zip file for ideas how to do this.

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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shermank

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Susan Bradley wrote:

Considered a NAS device or cloud backup?

Thanks Susan but NAS is not how I want to go and I think there is too much data for easy cloud storage. I will work this out, possibly move data from one of my hard drives to the cloud until the total backup will fit a target drive.

Thanks.

Sherm

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I know this thread is marked as resolved, but in my early computing days, I had some very close calls during drive failures. I tried to be clever with juggling inadequate backup media. It was not worth it. Painful, and I’ve never forgotten it.

My best suggestion is to bite the bullet, get 2 17TB drives geekdom mentioned plus cloud storage and image backups. It may feel like overkill, but that feeling will instantly reverse to thankfulness if you ever experience serious data loss.

It’s hard to put a value on POM (Peace of Mind) until the data loss occurs.

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shermank, Sky

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How much is your data worth? Losing mine would cost me a very significant amount of time and a (very hard to determine) amount of money. And I can’t guarantee to be able to recover all of it.
For this reason I choose to spend less than $200 on sufficient backup drives to hold all my data and keep them in separate locations.

To your question on using multiple drives.
Use an external drive to image the OS drive. This should be big enough for multiple images.
Use one drive per disk to backup the other data. Again you should be able to fit multiple backups on a disk.

cheers, Paul

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shermank

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