TI 10 backup location problem

TI 10 backup location problem

I have TI 10 installed on a XP system. I am backing up to an external USB drive. I created and configured a backup location via the TI 10 wizard for this. I set a maximum size on the backup location of 200 gigs, the drive has about 290 total gigs. I then scheduled a nightly task to backup the entire system to the backup location. I have it setup to do differential backups nightly and then a full backup every 2 weeks.

Per the TI 10 documentation, when using a backup location the backup task checks for restrictions. The one i have set is max size of 200 gigs. If it detects a violation in the restriction, it will start deleting the oldest backups to reclaim enough space evailable to do the current backup.

The backups work for awhile. But, TI keeps doing backups to the backup locaiton once it has exceeded the 200 gigs. It does backups until the entire drive is full. Once it is full, the backups start failing and the error message says that the destination drive is full and that i need to clean up old backups to make room for the new backup.

I did double check that the scheduled task was using a backup location and not a normal folder.

From what i understand, one of the main reasons to use the backup location is to allow TI to manage your backups and drive space.

Am i missing something here? Did i read this documentation and interpret it wrong? It doesn't make sense to me to have a size restriction and TI just ignore it.

Any ideas

Chris

 

Chris,

So far the most common cause of problems for Backup Location has been pointing the Task to an incorrect place. Just a few questions:

Are your backup files in this format: 2007_01_18_06_25_11_832D.TIB ?
Approximately how big are the files?
Is your Backup Policy for your Task similar to this image?

 

I have triple checked that the scheduled task is using the correct backup location. As well, when you select a backup location, the choice for filename changes and says that you do not need to enter a filename.

To answer your questions

Are your backup files in this format: 2007_01_18_06_25_11_832D.TIB ? YES

Approximately how big are the files? The full backup is in the 90 gig range. The differential backups range from 3 to 6 gigs.

Is your Backup Policy for your Task similar to this image? YES, exactly

 

Well, Chris, I just don't know. It seems that it should work, although you will clearly exceed your 200 GB limit before your second full backup has finished, as TI won't delete the prior full backup until it can finish the second one. Placing a limit on the number of backups allowed in the Backup Location may force some consolidation and help that way.

Have you read through this post, which seems to be similar? https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=159812

 

When i set it up, i wasn't really sure what would get deleted. The external drive is about has about 293 GIGs when completely empty. I had read and knew there were some issues with how the consolidation and deletion of old backups worked. This is why i set the size limit to 200 GIGS and not the full size of the disk, to allow for some overhead and padding.

What i was calculating was 90 gigs for the first full and then figuring worst case scenario for the differentials of 6 gigs each. If there were 13 differentials at 6 gigs each, that would take around 78 gigs. Adding this to the original full would give a total of 168 GIGS roughly. Now, if the next full backup took 90 GIGs as well, that would push me over the 200 GIG boundary by roughly 58 GIGS. At this point i figured TI would start with the cleanup process of the old backups. My curiousity was, what would it cleanup? Would it start with the oldest? The oldest was the full backup. But, if it did that, then the additional 13 differentials would be useless since the full they were children of is now gone. I didn't know if TI was smart enough to detect this and start deleting the differentials first. That is actually what i was curious about. I wanted to see the behavior of the cleanup with regards to differentials as i might change my backup settings accordinly.

Unfortunately, I haven't gotten to see the cleanup behavior because it won't do it. It just keeps backing up until the disk is full even though i have a size limit of 200 GIGS.

Not knowing what the problem is, i decided to start from scratch. I guess something could be corrupted. I deleted the backup location, the old backups, and the scheduled backup task. I recreated the backup location and the scheduled task. All i can do now is wait and see what happens.

Chris

 

You might set up a separate backup location with a much smaller limit, and select a small set of data to create a task to run manually, to push the smaller backup location to its limits and see what happens.

 

Well, i started from scratch, deleted everything and recreated the backup location and the schedule task. I have it setup to do differential backups everynight and then a full backup after 2 weeks. Once again, it ran the backups and exceeded the 200 GIG limit i set on the backup location. I can see from the log that it detectes this, but for some reason is unable to delete the old backups for the new one. I am attaching the log below as maybe someone can see something i am missing.

As well, i have the backup task setup to only do 14 differentials and then create another full. Yet, it is on the 16th differential currently from the full over 2 weeks ago.

This makes no sense to me. The disk this time is not full. The disk completely empty is 295 GIGS. I set the backup location with a size limit of 200 GIGS so there would be plent of room in case it needed a little more. The current state of the disk is 78 GIGS free and the size of the current backups is 225 GIGS. The size of the backups exceeds 200 GIGS. It just did a 16 differential backup even though i set it to only do 14. The disk is not full yet TI says in the log attached below it is.

It appears to me that the new backup location feature in TI 10 is pretty useless. This is unfortunate as this is one of the reasons i was sold on version 10.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<log build="1" product="Acronis*True*Image*Home" task="F1341A44-4126-4523-ADA0-541DFEDB3010" uuid="FD3ED458-DDED-4A59-92DF-EC4FBF8A9081" version="1.0">
<event code="2" id="1" level="2" message="The &quot;nightly backup&quot; operation started" module="100" time="1169539203" />
<event code="503" id="2" level="2" message="Analyzing partition 0-0..." module="1" time="1169539210" />
<event code="503" id="3" level="2" message="Analyzing partition 1-1..." module="1" time="1169539211" />
<event code="503" id="4" level="2" message="Analyzing partition C:..." module="1" time="1169539211" />
<event code="503" id="5" level="2" message="Analyzing partition 1-3..." module="1" time="1169539211" />
<event code="503" id="6" level="2" message="Analyzing partition 0-0..." module="1" time="1169539211" />
<event code="503" id="7" level="2" message="Analyzing partition J:..." module="1" time="1169539212" />
<event code="11" id="8" level="3" message="Priority changed to Low priority" module="100" time="1169539212" />
<event code="503" id="9" level="2" message="Analyzing partition C:..." module="1" time="1169539212" />
<event code="1008" id="10" level="2" message="&lt;bold>Create Differential Backup Archive&lt;/bold>&lt;endl/>&lt;tabpoint value=30>&lt;indent value=4>From: &lt;indent value=10>&lt;textcolor value=&quot;navyblue&quot;>NTFS (C&lt;/textcolor>&lt;/indent>&lt;indent value=4>&lt;endl/>To: &lt;indent value=10>&lt;textcolor value=&quot;navyblue&quot;>J:\backups\&lt;/textcolor>&lt;/indent>&lt;indent value=4>&lt;endl/>Compression: &lt;indent value=10>&lt;textcolor value=&quot;navyblue&quot;>Normal&lt;/textcolor>&lt;/indent>&lt;indent value=4>&lt;endl/>&lt;/indent>" module="1" time="1169539213" />
<event code="504" id="11" level="2" message="Pending operation 128 started: &quot;Saving partition structure&quot;" module="1" time="1169539213" />
<event code="504" id="12" level="2" message="Pending operation 131 started: &quot;Creating partition image&quot;" module="1" time="1169539213" />
<event code="506" id="13" level="2" message="Locking partition C:..." module="1" time="1169539213" />
<event code="53" id="14" level="2" message="Check for the 'backup location quota' rule violation is started. Set quota: &lt;indent value=10>214,748,364,800&lt;/indent>&lt;indent value=4>&lt;endl/>" module="64" time="1169540068" />
<event code="57" id="15" level="3" message="Quota violation is detected. Set quota: &lt;indent value=10>214,748,364,800&lt;/indent>&lt;indent value=4>&lt;endl/>Current capacity: &lt;indent value=10>225,551,900,672&lt;/indent>&lt;indent value=4>&lt;endl/>" module="64" time="1169540068" />
<event code="72" id="16" level="3" message="There is no action available to take against the limit violation. Limit rule: by location quota. By default, the 'delete' action will be used." module="64" time="1169540068" />
<event code="60" id="17" level="2" message="Trying to fix limit violation: by location quota." module="64" time="1169540068" />
<event code="73" id="18" level="2" message="Deletion is started. Rule: &lt;indent value=10>by location quota&lt;/indent>&lt;indent value=4>&lt;endl/>Number of backup will be deleted: &lt;indent value=10>1&lt;/indent>&lt;indent value=4>&lt;endl/>" module="64" time="1169540068" />
<event code="504" id="19" level="2" message="&lt;bold>Backup deletion&lt;/bold>&lt;endl/>&lt;tabpoint value=30>&lt;indent value=4>Location: &lt;indent value=10>&lt;textcolor value=&quot;navyblue&quot;>atis:folder?file:J:\backups\&lt;/textcolor>&lt;/indent>&lt;indent value=4>&lt;endl/>Number of backups: &lt;indent value=10>&lt;endl/>&lt;textcolor value=&quot;navyblue&quot;>1&lt;/textcolor>&lt;/indent>&lt;indent value=4>&lt;endl/>&lt;/indent>" module="64" time="1169540068" />
<event code="0" id="20" level="2" message="" module="0" time="1169548243" />
<event code="4" id="21" level="2" message="Disk is full." module="4" time="1169548243" />
<event code="24" id="22" level="4" message="Error while clone operation executed." module="53" time="1169548243">
<field name="token" type="TULong64">
0
</field>
<event code="21" id="23" level="4" message="Disk is full" module="7" time="1169548243" />
<event code="4" id="24" level="4" message="Disk is full." module="4" time="1169548243" />
</event>
<event code="24" id="25" level="4" message="Error while clone operation executed." module="53" time="1169548243">
<field name="token" type="TULong64">
0
</field>
<event code="21" id="26" level="4" message="Disk is full" module="7" time="1169548243" />
<event code="4" id="27" level="4" message="Disk is full." module="4" time="1169548243" />
</event>
<event code="504" id="28" level="2" message="Pending operation 3 started: &quot;Verifying backup archive&quot;" module="1" time="1169548244" />
<event code="6" id="29" level="2" message="Operation has succeeded." module="100" time="1169556912" />
</log>

 

One suggestion.

Perhaps the drive limit is imposed on the whole backup process. i.e. -

90G - initial full backup
78G - 13 diff. backups (worst case)
90G - 2nd full backup (first is not deleted until this 2nd one is complete)
258G - total (over your 200G limit)


As an experiment I'd try either: a) increasing my limit to 260G or: b)setting the diff. backups to 3 and full backups to every week which would net you less than 200G.

Just a thought.

 

I admit that I didn't read all of the details of your issue, but I believe this post:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=159812

will shed some light on things. I think your issue might be in the description of how the feature works. The limitations are checked only *after* the current backup completes. Then consolidation requires that you have enough room for your full backup and first incremental backup. Determining your exact size limitation needs seems more of an art than a science. Given the all of the constraints that go into the process, you almost need a crystal ball. Good luck!