Freedom9 USB - Manual (Page 24)

freeStor Mini 210/310 User’s Manual
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4.2 Rescan Disk(s)
Click the Rescan Disks button ( ) any time you want to rescan your computer to discover new
disks or remove disks that are no longer attached to your computer. You can also rescan the
disks through using “Rescan Disks” under the Drive menu.
4.3 Performing a Backup
freeStor SBC can perform both full backups and incremental backups of your local hard drives.
The software can also partition the freeStor Mini 210/310 hard drive to store these backups
during the backup process if required. Each local hard drive partition needs its own partition on
the freeStor Mini 210/310 for full backups, and another partition for incremental backups if
desired.
For example, if your computer has two hard drives configured as follows:
Hard drive 1: 120 GB, partitioned into an 80 GB drive C with 50GB used, and a 40 GB drive D
with 20 GB used.
Hard drive 2: 80 GB, not partitioned, assigned as drive E with 30 GB used.
For full backups, the freeStor Mini 210/310 should be partitioned into an 80 GB partition to back
up drive C, 40 GB to back up drive D, and 80 GB to back up drive E. Note that less space can
be allocated for each partition, but if the required space exceeds that available in the partition,
the partition needs to be deleted and recreated.
For incremental backups, an additional partition needs to be created on the freeStor mini
210/310 for each local partition (three partitions in total if all drives undergo incremental
backup). The size of these partitions depends on how many backups you want to keep for each
partition, and how often the files on these partitions change. The more backups you want to
keep, and the more frequently the files change, the larger the space required. If the partition
assigned for incremental backups becomes full, the oldest incremental backups need to be
merged into the full backup (a process known as Synthetic Backup in freeStor SBC) in order to
allow for additional incremental backups.
In the scenario above, a possible allocation of space on the freeStor Mini 210/310 could be as
follows (note that each partition on the freeStor Mini 210/310 is assigned a standard drive letter
under Windows Explorer):
Hard drive: 400 GB
Drive I: 80 GB for full backup of drive C
Drive J: 40 GB for full backup of drive D
Drive K: 80 GB for full backup of drive E
Drive L: 20 GB for incremental backups of drive C
Drive M: 10 GB for incremental backups of drive D
Drive N: 40 GB for incremental backups of drive E
Drive O: 130 GB for standard file sharing and backup
As shown above, the freeStor Mini 210/310 can also be used as a standard external USB hard
drive by creating a partition used specifically for file storage and not system backup (see
Creating Partitions under Windows for more details).