Secure Zone Not Deleting Old Backups...

I have two identical drives (C and D). C: is the primary drive that gets backed up... and the entire D: drive is converted to an Acronis secure zone. So if C: fails (or the system gets a virus), hopefully I'll still have D:, and if D: fails, hopefully I can just start another backup of C: This whole process is automatic nightly, or at least I thought.

I was under the assumption that once the Secure Zone was full, Acronis would delete the oldest backup(s) to make room for the current backup operation. I was also told by Acronis support that this was the only way to get 'revolving' backups (i.e. - using secure zone so that old gets pushed out to make room for the new).

After a dozen or so backups, I am getting the following error:

"Acronis Secure Zone is full. Acronis Secure Zone is full and cannot be cleaned automatically. We suggest that you start the Manage Acronis Secure Zone Wizard for increasing free space."

Operation with partition "C:" was terminated.
Details:
Disk is full (0x70015)
Tag = 0x0
Disk is full. (0x40004)
Tag = 0xC4AB60A831327ED2

I can clear the drive and start over, but how do I prevent this from happening again?

Thanks

 

What are the details of the backups you are creating?
Are they all FULL; some FULL some INC/DIFF? How did you set up the schedule?

To be honest, I see no point at all in using the ASZ when you have a dedicated backup drive.

 

I wouldn't use it either but he does want to have automatic deletion when necessary and this seems to be the only way to do it.

 

Originally done as a full backup, and now the job is set up as:

- Create incremental backup if possible (recommended)

Scheduled daily in the early AM. Set to restart if missed.

I also thought that using the Acronis secure zone was unnecessary with a dedicated backup drive, but I told by support (phone) that it was the only way to have Acronis delete older backup as disk space was consumed. This supposedly was not possible with a normal backup.

Now I'm wondering if this is possible at all?

- Thomas

 

I don't do what you are trying to do so I can't help you based on experience. However, from various posts it is obvious other people do use the SZ to obtain automatic deletion and it does work.

It does have a set of rules it follows to determine what to delete. You might want to review them in the User Guide to ensure what you are doing conforms to them.

 

The rules that Acronis uses to determine when or if to delete in the SZ don't seem to be very helpful to me.

They are:

- If there is not enough free space in the zone to create a backup, then Acronis True Image deletes the oldest full backup with all subsequent incremental/differential backups;

- If there is only one full backup (with subsequent incremental/differential backups) left and a full backup is in progress, then the old full backup and incremental/differential backups are deleted;

- Otherwise, (only one full backup left, and an incremental/differential backup is in progress) you will get a message about space error. In that case you will have to either re-create the full backup or increase the Acronis Secure Zone.

If someone could explain how the last option may apply to me, I'd be grateful.

I have two 400 GB drives (C and D), and I'm backing up approx. 300GB. Only about 3-5 GB of data changes daily. Currently Acronis SZ states that I have 99 GB free in the secure zone.

 

Well I use the secure zone all the time to manage my firstline backups. I have the zone set up on a separate slave drive. A scheduled backup is run each day and at any one time I have 10 complete backups avialable. The zone manages the backups on the FIFO basis with no problem at all.
However I only use use full HD images and do not complicate things with incremental or differential images. I have a feeling that if one has one full backup followed by sufficient incrementals to nearly fill the zone the FIFO method may fail. This is because the oldest image, that would normally be deleted first, would leave all the rest orphaned and therefore useless. So if my logic is correct you could make it work by having fewer incrementals followed by another full image before the zone filled up. The the original image space can be recycled as intended and the orphaned incrementals will drop out as space is used by the new images.

Hope this makes sense.

Xpilot

 

"Otherwise, (only one full backup left, and an incremental/differential backup is in progress) you will get a message about space error. In that case you will have to either re-create the full backup or increase the Acronis Secure Zone."

It sound like this is your case.

"Originally done as a full backup, and now the job is set up as:
- Create incremental backup if possible (recommended)"

If you only have 1 FULL, TI will not delete it.

 

Thanks you guys... this is starting to come together for me.

What Xpilot is saying makes sense, but if the SZ is saying that it still has ~ 100 GB of free space. It seems reasonable that it could just delete the older incrementals and create a new one.

Like I said before, the daily data change is ~ 3-5 GB.

Perhaps the original full backup is so old that TI can not use it anymore and therefor can not create more incremental backups? Does that make sense?

Thanks again...

- Thomas

 

Not sure what you mean here -
"It seems reasonable that it could just delete the older incrementals and create a new one."
but you cannot delete INCs in the middle of a string and still be able to restore from anything beyond that point in time.

 

I guess I mean... with 100 GB of free space, why can't it continue creating incremental backups?

 

I get it... so your saying that TI needs every single incremental backup it's built on top of the full backup and the main backup obviously can't be deleted.

So would two backup jobs accomplish what I'm after?

Let's say the drive can hold 2 weeks of incremental backups. At that time (two weeks) I have a separate full backup job run that replaces the main full backup file... and then when the incremental backup job runs later.. it'll just be building on top of the new full backup?

Hope that makes sense...

T

 

Do you know how many images you have in the ASZ? You should be able to tell by stepping through a restore and counting the number of different dates you are presented with.

 

I just formatted and started over, but if I remember correctly it was about 20 (all increments).

 

If you could define, in detail, what your needs are as far as archiving and disaster recovery, I’m sure someone can come up with a better scheme than using the ASZ. There are a number of ways to define scheduled tasks to meet all sorts of needs.
For example:
I have 9 scheduled tasks, all Full images.
One each for the 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd and 29th
A Weekly each Sunday
Then three more, one each on Mon & Thu, Tue & Fri and Wed & Sat
Once these 9 images are created, they just cycle through and get written over.

 

As far as the secure zone is concerned I just have one scheduled task. This is for a full image to be created each day. My secure zone is big enough to hold 10 complete images and as a new image is created the oldest one is automatically deleted. I can not think of a simpler or more effective way to manage backup images and that is why I have taken this route.

Xpilot

 

If going back no more than 10 days fits your needs, then that's a great scheme for you. It may, however, not fit everyone's needs.
That's why everyone needs to define exactly what they hope to accomplish and set up their schedule accordingly.

 

The backup drive is 400GB... A full backup of my system is around 300GB.

I thinking it's going to be pretty hard to get more than one full backup on that drive?

Any ideas of how to get backups for more than one day (preferably a few weeks) without having to eventually delete everything and start over?

As I said before, a full backup followed by incremental backups worked well until I got the error that started this thread (after 20 backups or so).

Thanks again...

 

Well, I’d say you need an additional backup drive then.
You could alternate each month. Start with a FULL and add INCs until time to switch drives. You would have the previous month on one drive and be building the current month on the other.
What compression level are you using?

 

Thanks Weaz...

I also have a NAS drive I use to create a full backup on every two weeks.

Compression is set to normal, but I don't bump it up because the backup operation simply takes too long. With normal compression, the backup already takes over 6+ hours.

Your advice is good... I was just hoping to have a totally automatic solution on my daily backup drive. I don't like having to go in... erase... start over.... etc... every two weeks.

I used veritas backup exec on the server at my last job, and it can do what I'm talking about. I think in that app, the incremental backups are based on the main backup, not built upon all the other incremental backups. So when the drive is full, the older incrementals can be deleted...

Anyway, back to TI... What if my full SZ backup was recreated weekly. Then when I create incrementals from that full backup, would TI figure out it could delete the old incrementals?

be well...

 

“I think in that app, the incremental backups are based on the main backup, not built upon all the other incremental backups”
I would define that as a differential backup.

“What if my full SZ backup was recreated weekly. Then when I create incrementals from that full backup, would TI figure out it could delete the old incrementals?”
Once the FULL is overwritten or recreated, the INCs will begin to write over themselves. They will not, however, be deleted – just overwritten.

 

One other thing – once the FULL is overwritten, any INCs you have will become orphaned and unusable for restoring.

 

Hello Nordiam,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are very sorry for the delay with the response.

The reason why Acronis True Image gives you this message is that there is not enough free space in Acronis Secure Zone for the next subsequent incremental image creation. It is, by the way, explained in your post #6:

Most likely, it's because Acronis True Image tries to create to create a very large incremental image (larger than the amount of free space left in Acronis Secure Zone). There may be three reasons for this:

- Too many changes were made to your hard drive after the full image was created;

- Your hard drive was defragmented;

The following is a quotation from section 3.2 of Acronis True Image 9.0 User's Guide:

- There are some file system errors on your hard drive.

In this case Acronis True Image recognizes the file system as corrupted and creates a raw sector-by-sector image of a backed up disk\partition. Please take a look at this previous thread for details.

Whatever the actual reason is, we recommend that you check each partition of your hard drive by Windows utility:

- For Windows 9x please use Windows menu Start\Run then enter the command "scandskw" and test all drives;

- For Windows XP please use Windows menu Start\Run, then enter the command "chkdsk c: /r" "chkdsk d: /r" for every partition of your hard drive.

Note that you will need to reboot your computer in order to scan the system partition.

Then recreate the full image anew and proceed with creation of incremental images.

If the problem appears in the future, please create Acronis Report as it is described in Acronis Help Post. Then submit a request for technical support. Provide the report collected in your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with the solution.

As for ability to limit the amount of images created by Acronis True Image, there are three approaches available:

- Use Acronis Secure Zone;

- Use batch file (script) which deletes or renames images as a pre\post-backup command (see section 5.3.3 of the above mentioned User's Guide);

- Schedule four tasks so that two sets of images covering last two weeks\months will be created (see these previous threads for details: Can TI9 control the number of backup sets?, differential back up Q's).

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

 

Thanks Alexey,

My drive is defragmented daily before the backup, so this is probably my situation.

Could you explain the following, or point me to a location that has the information to setup the script... specifically the commands and the arguments, 5.3.3 doesn't have much info?

"- Use batch file (script) which deletes or renames images as a pre\post-backup command (see section 5.3.3 of the above mentioned User's Guide);"


I have room for one full backup and 5 incremental backups.

Thanks...

 

One of the reasons it's called a Secure Zone is because you can't delete or rename files kept in it. So I don't think this will help you.