My ReadyNAS Story . . .

The problem with Acronis not deleting old versions was in the 2011 version of the software I was using, and since Upgrading to the 2012 version, i switched to using a single file. So I can't really say if it's been fixed in the software or not. It would run ok for a few weeks, then after about the 3rd iteration it would stop deleting the old versions. I used a single version chain because of the factors Papabear already mentioned. i.e: It being mainly OS / program data I was backing up. I am making full images of the main system drive partition, but also of my games / multimedia encoding drive too. Both are saved to the same image file. I could, and probably should split these up into seperate backup jobs, having an image for each drive, but being the lazy sod I am, i just did it the quickest way I could to get the task done.

The reason i'm not recopying the backup from Acronis (that saves to a dedicated share on the NAS) back to the auxillary drive is down to space. I want to keep the maximum amount of space available for data from the remaining shares on the NAS, since the auxillary is 3TB, and the NAS has 5.4TB of space. Like I said, if I lose the Acronis data (in the event the main PC goes down, and the NAS), it's not a major deal. Only the loss of data from the other shares on the NAS would be a major deal.

I'd much like another NAS, but space, networking, layout of the flat where I live, price, and availability of a power source (as i've mentioned before) prevent it at the moment. In hindsight, giving away my trusty old Duo was a bit kneejerk. I wish i'd kept it now for just such a purpose. But the guy I gave it to, has just had one of his pc's drives fail on him, and having the NAS has stopped him losing 750GB of data, so i'm glad it helped someone. :)