Operation Manual

3.6 Using Acronis Nonstop Backup

Acronis Nonstop Backup provides easy protection of your disks and files. It allows you to recover

entire disks, individual files and their different versions.

The main purpose of Acronis Nonstop Backup is continuous protection of your data (files, folders,

contacts, etc.), though you can use it to protect partitions as well. If you choose to protect an entire

partition, you will be able to recover the partition as a whole using the image recovery procedure.

Limitations

 You can create only one nonstop backup.

 With Acronis Nonstop Backup you cannot protect:

 Windows libraries (Documents, Music, etc.)

 Data stored on external hard drives

 Nonstop Backup and Try&Decide cannot work simultaneously.

How it works

Once you start Acronis Nonstop Backup, the program will perform an initial full backup of the data

selected for protection. Acronis Nonstop Backup will then continually monitor the protected files

(including open ones). Once a modification is detected, the changed data is backed up. The shortest

interval between the incremental backup operations is five minutes. This allows you to recover your

system to an exact point in time.

Acronis Nonstop Backup checks file changes on the disk, not in the memory. If, for instance, you are

working in Word and do not use the "Save" operation for a long time, your current changes in the

Word document will not be backed up.

You may think that at these backup rates the storage will fill in no time. Do not worry as Acronis True

Image 2016 will back up only so called "deltas". This means that only differences between old and

new versions will be backed up and not whole changed files. For example, if you use Microsoft

Outlook or Windows Mail, your pst file may be very large. Furthermore, it changes with each

received or sent E-mail message. Backing up the entire pst file after each change would be an

unacceptable waste of your storage space, so Acronis True Image 2016 backs up only its changed

parts in addition to the initially backed up file.

Retention rules

Acronis Nonstop Backup keeps all backups for the last 24 hours. The older backups will be

consolidated in such a way that Nonstop Backup will keep daily backups for the last 30 days and

weekly backups until all Nonstop Backup data destination space is used.

The consolidation will be performed every day between midnight and 01:00 AM. The first

consolidation will take place after the Nonstop Backup has been working for at least 24 hours. For

example, you have turned on the Nonstop Backup at 10:00 AM on July 12. In this case the first

consolidation will be performed between 00:00 and 01:00 AM on July 14. Then the program will

consolidate the data every day at the same time. If your computer is turned off between 00:00 and

01:00 AM, the consolidation will start when you turn the computer on. If you turn off Nonstop

Backup for some time, the consolidation will start after you turn it on again.