Backup & Recovery 10 - MAJOR FLAW - doesn't overwrite archives in disk rotation

[neteng]

My clients use multiple USB drives that are rotated daily M-F. They are accustom to doing a full image on each disk and having it overwrite the existing image the next time each drive is used. This has never been a problem and follows the same paradigm as a tape backup that overwrites a tape each time a backup is run.

In Backup & Recovery 10 the introduction of Vaults and Backup Plans has made this simple and extremely common way of backing up impossible. Many of my customers can only fit one backup on a disk and need it to overwrite each time it is used. In the past an archive (i.e. servername.tib) could be created and overwritten each week. Now you tell Acronis that you want to create a full backup with an archive named servername.tib and it will create something like "servername_2009_08_03_20_00_05_913D.TIB". Appending this timestamp information to the archive name makes each backup unique. The next week when the disk is used again it does not overwrite the previous weeks file. Instead it creates a new one with a unique name.

In the backup plan setup you can identify retention settings to delete archives that are a certain number of days old or limit the size of the total archive. However, when you do this it creates a MANUAL Cleanup Task that does not run before the backup job. You would need to manually run the cleanup task every day to delete anything off of the backup disk. We manage and monitor backups for our clients and they just rotate disks. They are not going to go in every day and run manual cleanup tasks. This is horrendously inefficient for us if we have to remotely connect and run manual cleanup tasks daily on all of our client's servers.

If you delete the previous archive on the disk manually then it starts creating archives with names like "RecreatedArchive_89C380CC-4731-4761-A453-CDB3E27BFF77_2009_08_06_19_04_52_447D.TIB". These will never get overwritten either.

There is absolutely no way to simply rotate a disk each day and have a full backup image written to the disk overwriting the existing image if present. This is the most basic and logical way to do a nightly backup and Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 has removed this functionality from it's product. This has rendered it useless in all of my installed base.

I have contacted support and the rep didn't have a clue about this monumental shift in functionality. He acknowledged that he could not figure out any way to do a basic full backup in a nightly disk rotation that didn't require manual intervention to remove the previous image. He said he will email me when he has a better answer.

[Acronis Support]

Hello neteng,

Thank you for using Acronis Corporate Products

I suggest you to create a batch file that will allow to remove old files with .tib extension. You should use it as a Pre command. You can learn more on how to set the desired option here.

For example:

del d:\MeinBackupOrdner\*.tib /q

Thank you.

--
Oleg Lee

[gejfay]

Despite deleting the files as you say with a precommand you still end up with backups with names like:

RecreatedArchive_6CDAA0CF-5433-4BA9-A67F-1398AC379C9C_2009_08_06_11_30_06_093D.TIB. This despite removing all TIB files prior to the backup.

The backup was created in "Backups and Tasks" to be called ServerDriveC.tib, plain and simple. The first time B&R creates it with that name. All subsequent backups even if the first is deleted have these bizarre "RecreatedAchive" names.

The naming scheme in B&R is absurd!

Please fire the idiot who came up with that naming convention.

If I ever have to recover this disk how the he** can I tell by looking at the file name what disk it is??

This needs to be fixed and soon.

[gejfay]

P.S.

To all those who are appalled at the stupidity of this naming convention please keep this thread active!!

[tellysurv]

I agree. I just switched over from True Image, which was working fine, by the way to this new product and they have totally changed it. I am also having the same problems as you regarding overwriting/deleting old backups so my disk doesnt fill up.
I even tried to put the retension settings on a schedule but it still says it is a manual task

I do hope they fix this soon. I will be checking this thread from time to time for updates.

[DwnNdrty]

Originally Posted by neteng

My clients use multiple USB drives that are rotated daily M-F. They are accustom to doing a full image on each disk and having it overwrite the existing image the next time each drive is used. This has never been a problem and follows the same paradigm as a tape backup that overwrites a tape each time a backup is run.

Why did you switch to ABR10?