Using Acronis TrueImage to backup to a Online hard disk

Hi Support,

I want to use TrueImage to make an image on a online hard disk. This hard disk made available by a provider by the internet, which makes it a network disk (FTP). The online hard disk has its own disk letter in the explorer by which I can access it as a (local) normal hard disk.

When I run a backup task the TIB files are very small. The size is only 4 MB. The settings in ‘backup options’ --> ‘Archive splitting’ are ignored. The result is of course a large amount of small TIB files on that hard disk which results in an error. (I guess there are too many entries ). Switching between active of passive transfers makes no difference.

What it is causing this problem?

BTW: If I do run a backup task to my NAS everything is normal, which means only one TIB of almost 40 GB is created.

Regards,
Skroets
Acronis True Image 2009, build 9709 (UK)

 

Here is part of your answer and a suggestion.

The 4GB size limit is due to you backing up to a harddisk which is formatted as FAT32. If the hard disk was formatted to NTFS then you would just have one big file.

Backing up to on line storage I would probably go for a 2 step approach in case there were upload problems. So backup to a local hard disk and then move the backup file which will be compressed to the online storage site.

 

Actually, he said the files are 4 MB, so something else is going on. At 4 MB, there would be at least 1,000 files in a 40GB backup. That's ugly.

The real problem is that Internet upload speeds are typically 512 Kb/sec. At that speed, to upload 40GB would take 180-200 hours. Can't do weekly full backups because each backup takes over a week to upload.

It's time for a different plan.

Software such as Mozy can actually handle 40GB of data because after the first backup only incrementals are done. Note, that Mozy only handles data files not the full operating system and programs. That way the incrementals are small, and the process is practical.

 

Hi Jehosophat and John,

Thank you for your replies. I tried to figure out how the online hard disk is formatted, the file system seems to be ‘EHSO’. Never read about it before. Unfortunate changing it to NTFS is not possible.

On the other hand I am not sure speed is the problem. My internet connection it rather fast. Uploading a file of 1.4 GB takes approx. 20 minutes. The size of the upload file seems not a problem. When I try to upload a file of 7 MB, the files on the local hard disk are still sized 4 MB.

So that leaves me to try out your suggestions. If I go for the 2 step approach, I guess I am bound to a file backup as the image backup has no copy option. Or maybe I can play with the pre/post commands, but I am not sure yet. Any idea how to do that?

BTW I will also contact the provider, maybe they have a solution.

Thanks,
Skroets

 

That calculates to something like 10Mbits/second upload. What sort of connection do you have that runs that fast? Also, what's your download speed?

That's as it should be.

What Jehosophat meant was to make the image and store it locally and then in a second step send it to the online drive. I suppose a post command to copy the image would be possible. However, before bothering with that, I'd just manually make the locally stored backup and then manually try to copy it to the online drive. If it fails, you'll be absolutely sure that won't work and not have to worry about post command problems.

A good argument for using file and folder backup software would be to just copy the files to the online drive without compression. Very few files would be larger than 4MB unless you have lots of photos, music and videos.

That 4MB file size is really weird.

I'm sure others have tried to upload large files since the connection is so fast. The providers should have some useful comments on this. It would also be interesting to hear why they have a 4MB file size limitation.

 

Hello Skroets,

Thank you for your interesting in Acronis True Image

Can you please attach log file with the error message to your next reply? We are looking forward to hearing back from you at your earliest convenience.

If you have any questions concerning Acronis software I'm always ready to help you.

Best regards,
--
Dmitry Nikolaev

 

Hi All,

Sorry it took a few days before I could get on this. Busy doing other things

I know I am a lucky guy on this. I am connected via the campus I live on to SURFnet, the network of the Dutch Universities. My download speed is the same.

Meanwhile I contacted the provider where the online disk is hosted and they told me, that the Online Hard Disk was not designed to cooperate with backup software like True Image…

To be sure I also contacted Acronis via the Chat but unfortunate I wasn’t able to produce a log FTP file. It looks like my connection to the Online Hard Disk is not recognized as a FTP connection. I guess the connection to the Online Hard Disk is some kind of special FTP connection, which makes it impossible for True Image work as expected.

I already spent a lot of time on this and decided to give up on this. Manually is the best option left. Although I don’t like it because I will forget of course to do that daily…

@Dmitry

Thank you very much, but I think it isn’t relevant anymore.

Thank you all for trying to help me.

Cheers,
Skroets

 

On a related / general note, you should also ensure that you have a means to access backed up files that are placed on remote media when your OS / hard drive / system goes down.

Doug

 

Yep, good point.