details on quotas on backup locations?

It does work if you set the quota so that it is low enough that there is enough room for consolidation when the quotas are hit.

I have a 30 gig volume set up for backups. Full backups are taking 3.6 to 4.3 gig. Incrementals are taking anywhere from 170 meg to 950 meg.

I have my quota set to 20 gig. That means there is always 10 gig available for consolidation (more or less - actually 10 gig has to hold one more backup, and THEN have enough room for consolidation). I found I had to leave this much available to ensure consolidation can complete.

Admittedly, I don't love this setup. I have a lot of space unused. If some backup got a lot larger, this could fail - as it has in the past with larger quotas. And, when it fails, you have to clean up manually.

I do use the email capability, so I can easily check the status each day.

As for the last question about "aren't all the incrementals needed for recovery?" - consolidation is TI's way of pruning the incrementals while maximizing the # of backup versions you have. I *wish* they offered an option to just drop the entire full/incremental cycle when the quota was hit, and that they had some error recovery when it runs out of space DURING a backup. But, I can say that I am getting my backups done at this point.

Dan

 

I've been watching this post in the hope that someone will post the definitive answer.

This hasn't happened, so here's how I think it works.

TI10 only checks for quota busts after running a full or incremental backup. If the quota is exceeded, it consolidates the original backup plus the first increment, and so on. To do this, there may need to be fre disc space considerably in excess of the quota. Acronis should publish the rules, but my rule-of-thumb is that you need free disc space over and above the quota of one full backup plus two incremental backups.

 

I have been running into the same problem and came across this thread. I find it truly odd that NOBODY from Acronis has bothered to actually explain - CLEARLY - how this works.

As a developer, if I behaved this way, I'd lose my install base quite rapidly. Its ridiculous. Especially when you consider that this is backup data - a critical issue - we're discussing.

I have religiously upgraded through every version of ATI and DD since I started using them and this is not the first time I've seen Acronis tech support either handle something in a shoddy manner or flat out ignore it.

I for one will NOT be upgrading past the current versions of this software.

 

Hello majones and dsmart[3000ad],

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please notice that in his previous two posts in this thread Aleksandr provides a clear explanation:

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

I'm sorry, but thats just not good enough. To a layman, that explanation is as clear as mud.

First of all, WHY is this not documented?

Second, the settings are highly contradictory and misleading. Why else would people - including a mainstream developer - get the wrong information from those settings? Do you folks think that we're just stupid and not getting it or don't you think you folks have - clearly - FAILED at accurately documenting this one critical feature? How else do you explain the various topics on this specific aspect?

If I have a 320MB external USB 2.0 HDD (as I do) and I uncheck ALL the options,

• location size quota
• maximum number of backups
• storage limits per day

...thus setting them all to unlimited with no restrictions, I expect JUST THAT. Nothing more, nothing less. I don't want to guess ANYTHING or be faced with error messages and an aborted op.

If I have a full back that takes up 100GB and each [daily] differential takes up to 25MB, I don't expect to see an error message on day 7 because the software was not smart enough to take into account what it is trying to do internally. That - to me - is a [bBUG[/b] or a bad design. Trying to explain it away - with disappointingly sparse documentation and cryptic forum posts is foolish and condescending.

If what you folks have posted is in fact the case, the following action should be taken :

1. How it actually WORKS should be accurately documented in the next build and with clear examples of how it actually works. We shouldn't have to rely on rather fuzzy information or a text file (from one user) to show how it is supposed to work.
2. ATI should take into account the user defined settings and rather than just trying to do something that it can't do, thus aborting the op (as in the case of day seven above), it should handle all its settings internally. Leaving it up to the user to guess what settings to use in order to satisfy the internal workings is foolish. No, in fact, its rather stupid.

 

Marat,

I agree with dsmart[3000ad] that you need to make the workings of your quotas much more transparent. The impression given by your documentation is that a specified quota of, say, 100GB means that TI10 will work automatically within an available disc space of 100GB. This is not the case, and I think you should clarify to existing users and potential future purchasers precisely what the disc space requirements are for TI10 quotas to work properly.

Regards,

majones

 

I agree with dsmart. Excellent post.

I've been a programmer since the late 80s and have written 100s of pages of documentation. My humble opinion:

The documentation on this "quota" feature is terrible and my having to contact support and / or look around on a forum for this is inexcusable. I've had to spend hours looking for a thread like this one to try and figure out exactly how this quota function works. And yes, I contacted support and the answer I got was woefully short and clear as mud -- no offense to the support people; I blame the company.

For the life of me, I can't figure out why there isn't an option for "delete the orginal backup before the next backup when this quota election has been exceeded" and I'll take my chances? Why not? I'm not stupid -- I know what the ramifications are. And if the new backup fails after it deletes the old backup, that's fine! After all, what are the chances the source disk also failed at the same time the backup disk did? And if the backup fails, just be sure to warn me -- I'll get a new external drive. (In my case, I also have another external drive that has an older backup on it sitting in a safe deposit box so it's not like I'm at a complete loss -- I can get my system and applications back.)

Nonetheless and like I said, I'm willing to accept the risk. And if there's a big concern by company there are others who are not so bright and don't understand the risk, just add a big popup when you make the election that says WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! yadda, yadda, yadda.

I am very disappointed with this product. Now I'm stuck with either buying a much larger hard disk, or having to do full backups each and every time I do a backup, or having to manually delete files using Window's Explorer every so often and let Acronis start over on the next scheduled backup, which is the most likely scenario for me. I really don't want to have to do full backups every time I want to backup.

My next test will be to see if I can make this deletion exercise a part of the scheduled task using the "pre/post command" and "before backup process." Has anyone tried this?

If nothing else, Acronis would be well advised to add a section to their documentation that provides a number of "typical examples" of how one would set the program up for scheduled backups. I mean really... How many days of writing documentation would this take? A day? Two days? And from the company's standpoint, how much money would they save from having to answer email for this question? Or are you going to tell me were the only few people that have had this problem. (For those lurkers out there who found this thread and are having the same problems - please speak up so the company knows how much of a problem this is. Look at how far back this thread dates!)

No disrespect intended, but I'm left having to be a little suspicious of how much money is being made by the company from those who have to pay the $30 for a tech support phone call for this issue. Do you blame me?

Come on Acronis! Don't just respond to this problem -- do something substantive about it.

 

Acronis - we need you to reply and action.

 

Acronis - reply and action.

 

Well, it looks like I'm not the only one that's not getting it. I've been trying to figure this whole thing out and I thought I had it, but it's still not working like I expected AND I have to manually delete old backup files still. That's not what I thought this feature did. I'll explain my current settings and if someone can help me understand if (it seems obvious that Acronis won't) I'd greatly appreciate it.

I'm backing up my C:\ drive to another physical drive D:\CDriveBackup. I created a backup location as D:\CDriveBackup, and an XML file appears in that folder named acronis_backup_place.cfg. I open that file and here's what it contains (I hope I'm not revealing any security of mine here):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<backup_place_cfg>
<limit_list>
<k_8B741D95-EB63-4951-8F06-AE5C0A7B7F8F slice_count="7" type="2">
<action_list />
</k_8B741D95-EB63-4951-8F06-AE5C0A7B7F8F>
</limit_list>
</backup_place_cfg>

The idea is that I wanted to create 7 differential backups and then create a full backup. My assumption was that once 7 files existed in this location, TI would start deleting the oldest one. I'm attaching a snapshot of that backup location to show that clearly more than 7 backup files exist in this folder (hopefully it'll be there). Anyway, I see one full backup from 6/29 and then 10 differential backups since then.

So what should I be expecting to happen with my current settings? This doesn't makes sense to me and the explanations I've seen from Acronis so far don't make sense either. Thanks.

 

Just for additional information I figured I'd include a screenshot where I was setting the backup location limitations.

 

Sorry, I took the wrong snapshot. Attached to this post is the settings for the backup location. The previous post showed how I was setting up the backup task.

 

airveen,
Your setup looks OK to me. What does not look right to me is the "D2" at the end of the file name for your first 6/29 backup. The full backup from which the differentials key from should have just the "D", with no number, then the first differential would be "D2", second differential "D3" and so on. I suppose the lack of a file that TI would see as a full backup might affect the total backup limit. Also, and more important, a restore might be compromised.

My suggestion would be to either delete the current backup location and start over, or create new backup location and edit your scheduled task to point to the new one, and see what happens. A quick test is to create a task backing up just a small amount of data and then manually run the task enough times to evaluate whether everything is working properly.

Regards, CatFan

 

Hey CatFan432,

I've tried that already. When I specify that I want to use a backup location, it states that I don't need to provide a filename, which I don't provide. So the filename is manufactured by TI. Thanks for the help - I'll try it again just to be sure.

 

airveen,
The automatic file naming should produce the sequence I mentioned, "D" for the full, then "D2" for the first diff. I'm just guessing something has gone haywire with either the backup location or the backup itself. Have you tried to validate the backup location with the questionable files?

CatFan

 

Hello airveen,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

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.

Please notice that CatFan432 is correct. It would seem that the naming sequence got corrupted and it prevents the Backup Location from normal functioning. Please recreate Acronis Backup Location and the backup task (using Acronis True Image interface), start a new backup set and see if that solves the problem.

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 acronis_backup_place.cfg file of the problem location.

Please also collect the application log of the operation that involves quotas violation (creating more backups than specified):
- run the program;
- select Show log on the toolbar or from the Tools menu;
- select the log with error messages;
- 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

 

FWIW, I'm another professional software developer (15 years experience ) and I also have been unable to make this feature work reliably so far. I am constantly experimenting with the settings to find a combination that will not fail to get the expected results - and I am still trying. I normally end up with a condition of Acronis just getting stuck half way through the process at the time my quota is reached. I have been setting my quota well below the space limit of my backup dive, but after reading this thread I am starting to think that the problem is that I have to set it yet lower. I am trying that now and hopefully the program will finally start working correctly.

After reading the documentation and experimenting with it I couldn't see what was the problem. Therefore imagine how it must be for people without the same level of computer experience? I concur with those who have said that the documentation is not acceptable.

Furthermore, it is clear to me that this feature has several flaws in its current form. For example, I have experienced the corrupt name sequence mentioned in the prior message.

What bothers me most, as I mentioned, is that when I reach my quota, I get a situation where I see Acronis True Image get stuck at some % level of completion and just stay in that state indefinitely. I would have assumed that if my quota settings, etc. were not correct, then there would be some reasonable problem recovery, backing out of the failed operation and an email sent.

In reality, it seems to be a design flaw that I have to guess at how much extra space the drive should have below the quota to make things work. Even with the guidance of the "size of the backup plus the first incremental.. .yada yada yada... ", the problem is that the size of the backup varies with what I do on the source of the data. If I add amounts of data to the source drives or folders, I shouldn't have to go back and re-evaluate my backup settings. A smarter approach would be that the software would do the analysis of what temporary space it needs. It then check what space is available on the physical drive and properly handle conditions where it would be exceeded. I want it to properly fail to complete and notify me when there is a problem. It often does not do that (and yes I am running the latest build)

A good enhancement would be to provide a feature where the user could configure a "scratch drive" space for temporary files on another volume/partition - different from the backup destination. For example, if I am backing up my "D drive" to my "G Drive" (backup drive), I could configure it to use available space on my "E Drive" for temp files, so that I could set the quota of my "G Drive" to a figure near its capacity.

By the way, please do not ask me to help you debug your software (ie. "submit a request for technical support", or "phone support", etc.) unless I can invoice you for my regular rate of $75 per hour. I get a kick out of companies that release buggy software and expect me to pay them (e.g. paid support phone calls, etc.) to help them solve the bugs in their product. You have been told and you need to debug and fix the flaws or you will lose your customers.

 

Further to this... personally I use a dedicated hard drive for backups. It is partitioned with half of it used for a "Secure Zone" to backup complete images of my "C Drive". The other half is a partition that is used only as a "Backup Location" for backing up selected volumes / folders of my other drives.

The secure zone backup of C Drive is implemented with a weekly full backup scheduled job and a daily incremental scheduled job. I found it awkward to do it that way. I also had to read this forum to find out that the separate jobs is how to make the secure zone feature work as expected (for weekly full, daily incremental), so that again points to poor design and poor documentation. Despite that, I now have that feature working reliably using the two separate jobs.

So I wonder why it is that the secure zone backup can work as expected without "quota" problems, whereas the “backup location” type of backup does not. Why the difference? Does the secure zone backup treat the whole zone as a quota that includes it's temporary file space requirements? Does it use space elsewhere for this? Whatever it does, why can't the “backup location” type backup do it the same way?

Why also is the design of the two features so different - in the sense that the secure zone backup need separate full and incremental jobs and the other type can do it as one? Is it two development teams that don't talk to each other? It seems the secure zone backup is more reliable and stable where as the other type is better designed (in terms of scheduling options) but unstable (in terms of applying the quota).

Is it advisable to do all my backups with the secure zone instead to solve my problems (making the secure zone the full size of my backup drive) ? I had setup the non-"C-Drive" backups to use backup locations because I liked the additional options, better user-interface for viewing archives, etc. I was also unsure of the reliability of scheduling two unrelated backups into one secure zone as the documentation didn't seem to mention whether or not this was okay (or at least I couldn't find it in the docs).

 

Hello Traveller99,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

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.

Please notice that if it happens near 98-99% of progress, during that time Acronis True Image 10.0 Home checks for quotas violations and consolidates backups as needed. The consolidation is a complex process and may be quite lengthy.
If it happens earlier, it's possible that Acronis True Image has encountered an error. It may be caused by drive corruption (which is often fixed by running "chkdsk /r" on the respective partition), or something could prevent Acronis Drivers from proper functioning. You can download and install the latest version of Acronis Drivers here. For solving other cases, I'm afraid, we would require some information collected.

Acronis Secure Zone indeed treats it's size as a quota, and only uses it's available space for all backups directed into it. There are two main differences between Acronis Secure Zone and Acronis Backup Locations. First one is Acronis Secure Zone can normally be accessed only by Acronis True Image itself, so it's content won't be damaged by malware or user's carelessness. The second one is that the only action available for clearing old backups from Acronis Secure Zone (when it's full) is deleting the whole oldest backup set with all incrementals.

Please notice that Acronis Backup Locations are a new feature in Home series of Acronis True Image. It was implemented per requests of users of Home versions that needed a similar to Acronis Backup Server (a component of Acronis True Image 9.1 Workstation and Acronis True Image 9.1 Enterprise Server) feature, that would allow automatic management of backups.
Acronis Secure Zone, on the other hand, was implemented several versions ago, and since nearly didn't change (aside from fixes) as it serves it's purpose adequately. It was designed to use on computers with a single hard drive for whole drive backups, hence it's isolation.

Please notice that it's safe to destine unrelated backups into one secure zone in that sense they won't conflict. However, they all will be treated as one backup sequence, so it's possible to end in a situation when there are no backups left from one of the schedules at all. For example: you run two full backups of two drives of similar size and resulting backup are nearly half the size of Acronis Secure Zone each. If you back up first drive once, and then second one twice, the oldest backup of first drive will be deleted (even though there will be no backups of first drive left).

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

Just an update - it looks like the backup naming for my differentials is working. However, I have not created enough backups to see if the backup location is working correctly. I'll find out in a few days. Thanks to all for the help.

 

The whole thing is rubbish really. To prevent errors in my ext 320GB ext USB drive, these are the settings I use

Location Size Quota: OFF (Unlimited)
Maximum number of backups: 5
Storage period limits: OFF (Unlimited)

I setup my daily backup task to do a max of 5 diff backups before doing a full backup. I end up with a .cfg file that looks like this:

Code:

<backup_place_cfg>
	<limit_list>
		<k_206B5E2B-BDF6-459E-B44A-4B0945A4F4A6 slice_count="5" type="2">
			<action_list />
		</k_206B5E2B-BDF6-459E-B44A-4B0945A4F4A6>
	</limit_list>
</backup_place_cfg>

At this very moment, I have backups that look like this:

2007_07_09_06_09_18_853D.TIB // 53.6GB full backup
2007_07_09_06_09_18_853D2.TIB // 5.7GB
2007_07_09_06_09_18_853D3.TIB // 7.2GB
2007_07_09_06_09_18_853D4.TIB // 10.2GB
2007_07_09_06_09_18_853D5.TIB // 21.1GB
2007_07_09_06_09_18_853D6.TIB // 13.3GB

As I type this msg, the file below is what is currently being created because I have a backup running. It appears to be a full backup though I won't be able to tell for sure until the backup is completed and the file written to disk.

D5AD0B13-83FD-49E4-9990-37B26EA70D2CFDP1.TIB

Oh yeah, did anyone notice that ATI will not wakeup (from sleep) the computer to do a backup? Nope, it won't. I have a new machine which supports both S1 and S3 sleep states. Every program I have (including Perfect Disk) will wakeup the computer to do the task. Not ATI. I set it up to run at 2am. It is now 9:17am and its at 49%, having started when I manually woke up the machine myself a few hrs ago. I am running Vista Ultimate.

 

I've set up ATI on my PC almost identical to Airveen's setup, except that my Backup Policy is set to do 3 differentials followed, hopefully, by a full backup.
The task scheduler just finished, so I checked the backup folder and found thise files:

I would have expected the 7/1/07 save to end in "D", not "D1" based on the info in this forum, as it should be the second, full save.
I originally expected at the end of today's task, since the "Maximum number of backups" is set to 7, that it would delete the oldest full save and its associated diffs. When it didn't, That's what led me to finding your forum documenting all the problems with TI backup folder (mis)management. Before today, I didn't know about "consolidation" or that it existed.
I was impressed with TI's disk cloning, which I used several times after I first purchased it, as it worked so well. Now, I'm greatly dissapointed with its backup tasks. I keep running out of disk space! This shouldn't be this difficult!!
Hopefull, someone at Acronis will wake up and realize there is a serious problems when so many users are having the same problems.

 

My own solution to the various Backup Locations problems is not to use this facility at all!
I took a quick look at it when I first got V 10 and decided it offered me nothing better than what I was currently doing. This was before I became aware of the enforced "consolidation" protocol.

There are lots of other ways to schedule backups so that they are self managing and can be overwritten before a storage area overflows. No one is obliged to use the "Locations" method though having provided it Acronis should of course correct its short comings.

Some long standing TI users have developed scheduling schemes which they have shared with other users and I hope one of them at least will come forward with links back to them as I am sure many others could benefit from their ideas.

Because I like simplicity and the least amount of user effort I use the FIFO method of backup management provided by the Secure Zone. I have this on a second internal hard drive and as it is large enough I only have full disk images scheduled. It is however easy to schedule in increments or diffs if they were required.

Xpilot

 

I was wondering if the Maximum number of backups quota counted full backups or all backups . For example, if you have a full + 4 incremenetals on it then another full + 1 incremental on it... then is this 2 backups or 7 backups towards the quota ?

I checked the User Guide .PDF file and I found this which didn't explain anything that was not obvious:
"maximum number of backups
This is the total number of backups allowed for a location"

I checked the help file and found this similar sad joke of a decription:

"Maximum number of backups - select this option to set maximum number of backups in the backup location."

ya ... that's useful. If my English comprehension wasn't sufficient for understanding "Maximum number of backups" then I wouldn't understand "select this option to set maximum number of backups in the backup location" either. If my English comprehension is sufficient, then basically I just read the same thing twice. Thank you so much.

 

I thinks its all backups. Looks like the trick (heh) is to let it do a full backup. This will give you an idea of how big those can get. Then, when it does the first incremental or differential, you also have an idea about those. So, going by those numbers, you can pretty much guess (heh) how ATI is going to act.

e.g.

If your full backup is 50MB and each inc. is 5MB and you have a 300MB backup location, it stands to reason that you'd want to set this to a max of five backups. Here's why.

It will do a 50MB full + (5MB x 4) inc. for a total of 70MB. This means that you will - or should - get a history of at least 2 full backups (100MB) and 8 (140GB) inc backups before it either (a) correctly removes the first full backup or (b) chokes, splutters, gives up the ghost and gives you a nice error msg about the backup location being full.

The trick (heh) is to never - ever - fill up the backup location disc. You should leave as much space as a full backup. In the example above, two full sets will take up 240MB, leaving about 60GB free at all times. Yeah, what a waste. If you set the number of backups higher, e.g. to unlimited, you will probably never get another full backup because you will get a disk full error message at the point where the disk fills up with 50GB + (5GBx50). And if you bother to tell it to do a full backup after n number of inc. backups, you're playing the same old hit or miss game trying to guess what number to use.

The whole thing is rather stupid and foolish if you ask me.