BACKUP LOCATIONS dont work

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by GregWH, Apr 22, 2007.

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  1. GregWH

    GregWH Registered Member

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    Has ANYONE actually EVER been able to make BACKUP LOCATIONS work with TI 10 for home user?

    I have it set to a 50 gig quota limit and currently my backup is 61.3 gigs. It doesnt ever seem to obey any rule I set and my backup is to a physically separate drive inside the computer to the root of said drive ("D" drive" which is the second hard drive).

    If anyone can steer me the right way I would appreciate it. Thanks.
     
  2. screenname

    screenname Registered Member

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    AFAIK, the limits are checked prior to the backup. If your backup ended up to be over the limit you set, it will be deleted on the next time the task is run.
     
  3. GregWH

    GregWH Registered Member

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    That SOUNDS reasonable but unfortunately it isnt the answer - and in fact so far there is no answer.

    I delete all configs. I reinstall the whole program, I set things up, delete all backups and do them all over again. In short I do everything from scratch and NEVER has it obeyed limits. So, thanks for the answer but it isnt correct.
     
  4. babac

    babac Registered Member

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    Hi Greg Wh,

    Yes, me.
    The very first step is to create a backup location.
    Then, when you create your backup setup, you pick that backup location as the destination backup file.
     
  5. GregWH

    GregWH Registered Member

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    Been there, done that. It makes no difference what I do, backup locations just dont work. I have taken them out, uninstalled the program, installed it again and put them back. Same thing. No matter what I set, the program doesnt take any notice of it.

    So, seeing yours works, where do YOU back up? I have begun to wonder whether the prog doesnt like the fact that my backup location is D: which is normally a CD/DVD drive on most machines but is, on my machine, an internal separate hard disk. Wondering if there is a hard coding problem here.
     
  6. babac

    babac Registered Member

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    Hi Greg Wh,
    As Ihave 2 computers, I do backup on different medias,i.e.

    1)External usb HD
    2)Internal HD
    3)Acronis Security Zone of my main internal drive.
     
  7. CatFan432

    CatFan432 Registered Member

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    GregWh,
    Backup Locations work well for me, also to several different HDs.

    A few questions, in no particular order:

    1) Are you doing only full backups, or incremental or differential?

    2)How large are your individual backup files?

    3) Do you have more space you can allocate to the Backup Location?

    4) What are the parameters you've set on the Task the backups run from?

    5) And, just to be sure, are your backup file names in this format: 2007_04_23_05_25_07_679D.TIB ?

    Regards, CatFan
     
  8. Slaycock

    Slaycock Registered Member

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    Are you sure yo have selected the backup folder rather than just reselecting the folder you designated as the backup folder.

    This is one of the more frustrating aspects of ATI.

    When defining where to put your backup you *MUST* select backup locations to get to the directory you defined earlier.

    SO when you see th list of directories scroll upwards to look for the 'backup locations' emtry and click on this and then select you backup location from teh branch that opens under 'backup locations'.

    Regards

    Steve
     
  9. Acronis Support

    Acronis Support Acronis Support Staff

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    Hello GregWH,

    Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

    Please see this post explaining how to enable backup policies.

    Please make sure you use the latest build (4942) of Acronis True Image 10.0 Home. To get access to updates you should first register your software.

    If updating does not solve the problem, please delete and recreate backup locations via Acronis True Image interface.

    If the issue persists, please collect some information to let us investigate it thoroughly:

    Please create Acronis Report and Windows System Information as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

    Please collect the application log of the operation that breaks the limits:
    - run the program;
    - select Show log on the toolbar or from the Tools menu;
    - select the respective log;
    - click "Save the log entry to file" (the diskette icon).

    Then submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to 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 a solution.

    Thank you.
    --
    Marat Setdikov
     
  10. GregWH

    GregWH Registered Member

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    Not really sure what the point of directing me to that was. It has nothing to do with my problem which is that backup locations dont take any notice of the limit quota you set. Eg, I set to 50gigs and have currently close to 65gigs of backups with no end in sight as it gets larger every day. That post you showed me had nothing at all to do with that.

    Greg.
     
  11. GregWH

    GregWH Registered Member

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    Not even sure what the heck you are talking about.

    I have a completely separate drive (not a partition) which is D drive, a hard drive.

    All it has on it is backups done by TI10 at the moment.

    The drive is a 120gig and I want to limit backups to 50gigs. TI10 doesnt do it even though the backup location is set as D drive and all backups go to the root of D drive not to a folder on D drive.

    Cant get any clearer than that. I suspect there is a large BUG in TI which wont allow backup locations as D drive as that is normally a CD or DVD drive but I really dont know for sure.

    Greg.
     
  12. GregWH

    GregWH Registered Member

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    I do incremental backups. Each individual file varies with what has changed that day. Adding more space to the backup location would achieve nothing as 50gigs is a fair slice and it ignores that anyway. I originally had it at 40gigs and upped it to 50. No change.

    Parameters are backup C drive to D drive incrementally at 4:30PM every single day. Use High compression, low priority and validate at the end. That's it.

    Nope - backup has never had a name like that ever. It asks for a name so it follows that name I use and adds a number, incrementally, to the end. Eg, starts at "2" and keeps going up every day. Oh, extention is .tib of course.
     
  13. CatFan432

    CatFan432 Registered Member

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    To this question: 5) And, just to be sure, are your backup file names in this format: 2007_04_23_05_25_07_679D.TIB ? You answered:

    Greg,
    If you are not getting the file name format shown, you are not pointing your backup Task to the correct location. Once you choose the correct location, file naming becomes automatic. This is a very common mistake that many of us have made.

    Take a look at this post: https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=865637&postcount=9

    I'm also going to attach a text file that will give you a step by step guide and also give you some information of what to look for regarding file naming and consolidation.

    Regards, CatFan
     

    Attached Files:

    Last edited: Apr 28, 2007
  14. GregWH

    GregWH Registered Member

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    Thanks for that text file. Rather silly thing that. Easy to miss that location bit at the top. In any case it has started from scratch again and I am well below the 50gigs seeing it did that thus wont know for a little while what happened.

    Having said that, I am certain what you sent was right. Thanks again!

    Greg.
     
  15. CatFan432

    CatFan432 Registered Member

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    Greg,
    Very glad to help. I hope it all goes smoothly. -CatFan
     
  16. shieber

    shieber Registered Member

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    Don't forget that you can set up a backup location and a task that backs up just a few files. Then you can run the task manually multiple times quickly and ensure that limits are being observed. this usually only takes a few minutes.

    sh
     
  17. randman

    randman Registered Member

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    CatFan432 - thanks! That's a great writeup. We need to have more information like that in the Acronis User Guide. I did some experimentation, but with differential backups. It's somewhat odd that differentials would work the same was as incrementals. Instead of consolidating, I would think that at first, it would just be more efficient to get rid of the oldest differential. For example:

    - I want to do one full file (not image) backup a week and a daily differential backup on the other days of the week.

    - I setup my backup location to hold a total of 8 backups. Thus, I would have 1 full backup, 6 differential backups, and a 2nd full backup.

    - I setup a scheduled task to do a full backup after 6 differential backups.

    So, eventually, I will have 1 full backup, 6 differential backups, and a 2nd full backup. When the first differential backup for full backup #2 is created, it will be a lot more efficient if Acronis just dropped the oldest differential backup associated with full backup #1, rather than doing consolidation. In fact, consolidation of differentials doesn't make sense, since each differential is independent of other differentials.

    So, how does consolidation really work when differentials are done instead of incrementals? After the 8th backup, I had the following files:

    A-F.tib (full backup, where A is a long file name containing date and time information)

    A-F2.tib (1st differential)

    A-F3.tib (2nd differential)

    A-F4.tib (3rd differential)

    A-F5.tib (4th differential)

    A-F6.tib (5th differential)

    A-F7.tib (6th differential)

    B-F.tib (full backup)


    Since my backup location set was configured to only support 8 backups, when the 9th backup is executed, I wound up with the following files:


    A-F.tib

    A-F2.tib

    A-F3.tib

    A-F4.tib

    A-F5.tib

    A-F6.tib

    B-F.tib

    B-F2.tib

    Note that the file A-F7.tib no longer exists. Interestingly, the A-F6.tib file had a new size. It was much smaller before, but after the 9th backup, A-F6.tib's size was about the same as the size of the A-F7.tib. All the files' timestamps were also updated to have the same time.

    So, it's not clear to me what happens with differential backups. Theoretically (but not sure if true), that doing differentials should be more efficient than incrementals as far as consolidation is concerned, since differentials are independent of each other and are only relevant relative to the previous full backup. But, I don't know if that's the case. My experiment only consisted of backing up about 125MB worth of data.

    Does anyone have any experience on using backup locations with differentials? Is consolidation time really slow or an issue? If so, then I may be better off buying a really large external disk and doing fulls all the time?
     
  18. RF Hayes

    RF Hayes Registered Member

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    This helps, sorta, kinda. My backup location is Acronis Secure Zone. The "ASZ" does not seem to have any way to allow you to limit the number of incrementals or differentials, in fact my understanding was that the ASZ did all that automaticly.

    If my Backups are to be stored in the ASZ isn't that my "Backup Location"?

    http://haze.smugmug.com/photos/153458801-L.jpg

    If I am supposed to create another another "Backup Location"? If I do that then the purpose of even having the ASZ is lost. What am I missing here?
     
  19. Menorcaman

    Menorcaman Retired Moderator

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    Hello RF Hayes,

    The Acronis Secure Zone is not the same as the new Acronis Backup Locations feature introduced in TI 10.0 Home. If not aleady done, download the <TI 10.0 Home User's Guide> and then check out the explanations in chapters 3.3 (ASZ) and 3.5 (ABL).

    Regards

    Menorcaman
     
    Last edited: May 17, 2007
  20. shieber

    shieber Registered Member

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    Well, any place tyou backup up to is, in general parlance, a backup location. However, to use the limits you have to select a location for Backup Locations on the tree in the window to the left -- "Backup Loactions" is a formal name for the backup locations created in ATI for doing managed backups.

    It's much more versatile than using the secure zone and doesn't muck about making a hidden partition like secure zone. SZ was craft for folks that only have one hdisk -- but having a second disk provides so much more security against hd failure.
     
  21. RF Hayes

    RF Hayes Registered Member

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    What you say is true, except I'm not setting this up for myself, it's for my daughter on the other side of the continent (in California) and she is not nearly as computer literate as I am and I'm barely literate myself. :oops:

    I need to have ASZ installed and running on this laptop (one HDrive) before I box it up and send it to her, because I'm sure I can show her how to recover her c: drive from ASZ if it ever fails to boot.
    It's the only way I know of to help keep me from seeing it again in 6 months:rolleyes:

    Otherwise I will have to get her an External USB drive for automatic backups and have her send the laptop and USB drive back to me in the (remote) case of a major failure for full reinstall of Vista and then do the image install from the USB backup. I think would be a little to much for her to use the boot disk successfully.

    All of the above is what I had hoped to escape from by using the ASZ.

    The manual seems to say that ASZ can manage the backups the same way as "Backup Locations" except that so far it doesn't, IE: the files just keep growing until I get the message that the partition is full. At that point, having the files on a hidden partition becomes a problem of it's own.

    What I need now is an up or down answer, does ASZ handle the files like in "Backup Locations" or doesn't it?

    So far, from what I read here and in my experiences, the answer seems to be 'no' regardless of what the manual says, either that or I'm am doing something wrong.

    Thanks for your help..
     
    Last edited: May 17, 2007
  22. Acronis Support

    Acronis Support Acronis Support Staff

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    Hello RF Hayes,

    Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

    Please notice that, as described in the User's Guide, the rules that Acronis Secure Zone follows when managing files are:
    • If there is not enough free space in the zone to create a backup, the program 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 Acronis Secure Zone.
    Therefore, to ensure that backups are created without running out of space we recommend you to schedule a regular full backup.

    Thank you.
    --
    Marat Setdikov
     
  23. RF Hayes

    RF Hayes Registered Member

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    Yes, thank you for your reply, but I have already read that part backwards and forward. The only thing I have not done was read it in a mirror while standing on my head......

    This is the part that does not seem to work. I left enough space for at least three backups but the first backup just keeps growing until there is no more room. TI is not attempting to delete any thing or to start a new backup. ( I use task scripts to do incrementals)

    It would appear that if the user is using the ASZ then the user cannot used scheduled tasks and must make backups manually (for each backup) since there is no way to specify the number of backups you wish to make.

    This is probably where my original plan for using the ASZ is fell apart. I assumed that the ASZ was programmed to know how big the ASZ partition was and could then after the first backup was made, it could tell how many backups it could attempt to make in that remaining space.

    But I believe I have a work around for my problem here that can preseve my idea of having her backups done aoutomaticly and that is to put one backup in ASZ on her HD (in case there is ever a no-boot situation)

    Then using "Backup Locations", all of the other full backups on a USB drive which she can use after she recovers her partition using the ASZ.

    Not exactly what I had in mind, but it is what it is and it will get me there.
     
  24. Christopher Pratt

    Christopher Pratt Registered Member

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    Thanks SO much CatFan for your brilliant Guide to Creating and Configuring Backup Locations, you must have spent a lot of time working out exactly how TI was doing it's backups, consolidations and deletions. I have been having trouble for weeks with trying to set my quotas, but kept getting "Disk is Full" messages and not knowing why. TI is a brilliant program itself, but is totally let down by the poor guidance to setting it up. What's the good of such an excellent program doing such a vital job in our PC when it fails us just for the sake of poor instructions. Thank goodness for people like you doing TI's job for them. I hope TI take note and include your guide in their future instructions.
    Chris
     
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