Frustrated! Backup Locations... How To?

Running Acronis®*True*Image*Home® version 10.0 (build*4,890).

Is there any FAQ, docs, anything that fully explains how to properly and effectively configure the Backup Locations? I want the backup rules/quotas to work properly...

I have numerous backup locations defined, some the same some a little different. The problem is that when the criteria is met nothing is done except getting warnings/errors in the job logs.

Given...:

Location size quota: 25.0 Gb
Maximum number of backups: 4
Storage period limits: 4

How does one get TI to observe the above? Is the above settings appropriate?

The total space for all backups going to this location allocated is 25Gb, I only need to keep the current + last 3 backups.

I'm not doing incrementals and/or differentials, I'm only doing full backups. Once a week I have manually go into the backup locations and manualy remove older backup files.

What am I doing wrong? or is this not what this feature is suppose to do?

Help!

Thanks...

 

Chapter 7

http://us2.download.acronis.com/pdf/TrueImage10.0_ug.en.pdf

 

Your answer might be in this thread, if I'm understanding the problem: https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=910088#post910088

 

I read this and followed it closely. Towards the end of the section in Creating... it states "When a user starts backup, the selected location will be checked and, if any limitation is exceeded, the oldest backups will be consolidated or deleted".

I can see in the log where it is evaluating the rules and trying to perform a deletion but nothing gets deleted... I guess I need to find out the reason for the error, below is the last few lines of the log...

Warning:
Quota violation is detected. Set quota:32,212,254,720
Current capacity:51,595,715,584

Warning:
There is no action available to take against the limit violation. Limit rule: by location quota. By default, the 'delete' action will be used.

Information:
Trying to fix limit violation: by location quota.

Information:
Deletion is started. Rule:by location quota
Number of backup will be deleted:1

Information:
Deletion is started. Rule:by location quota
Number of backup will be deleted:1

Error:
Archive is invalid or its type is unsupported.

 

I went through this whole piece in creating each backup location. I assumed each location was created properly as each backup job is using them.

The backup locations are all on a 500gb USB drive connected directly to my laptop.

According to the backup log the job is trying to delete the oldest backup but then gives an error... "Archive is invalid or its type is unsupported."

 

I sympathize with you AJMASKE! I have yet to get V10 to do a delete---I get the same exact log you get except the last error---in my case I don't get that error---the program just hangs and stops responding. As is your case, the rule violation is acknowledged and it attempts to do the delete but gets within 1min of finishing(98%complete) and hangs. I've contacted Acronis support to no avail. I'm trying to back up my 2yr old Dell to a 300gig Seagate Firewire drive.

Since it sees the rule limits and reports in the log that it's going to delete the oldest backup I can only assume we are setting the rules up correctly. I have tried various rules--actually only limiting the number of backups (left size and time unset)---same thing happens. I'm stumped and don't know what to do.

Some have had some success by doing a full uninstall to include cleaning the registry and device manager and then reinstalling---I tried that too with no luck either. You might try this---do a search and you will find a description of this in the forum

Sorry I can't help---just wanted you to know there are many of us with similar rule problems and that's why I bought it in the first place. Maybe try the uninstall advice

 

Thanks Speedster! Atleast I know other's are experiencing the same problem. Considered uninstalling and re-installing, however, atleast I'm getting my backups completed and they are usable; for now I'll keep it that way.

As far as maintaining the directories, I'll do this manually for now until Acronis comes out with a fix. Fortunately I only have about 8 backup folders so it only takes me 30 seconds to manually traverse them. Not so say though that this is acceptable.

 

Did you have a prior version of ATI before installing ATI10? IF so. Try unistalling, deleting any Acronis directories under ProgramFiles\ and deleting any Registry entries that contain "Acronis" or Trueimage", then install ATI10. I think Acronis also can make an uninstal scrubber available but I don't recall the thread or link.


sh

 

As stated in my other post, I have the same problem. ATI 10 doesn't delete any of the older backups, no matter what restriction I apply. I went from ATI 8 > 9 > 10. I am going to try the uninstall/cleanup/reinstall suggestion. It will kill the commercial time during the Patriots/Jets game this afternoon - which the Pats will win

 

Thanks Shieber, ATI10 is the first version installed.

 

Can't help with all the automated stuff - far too complicated and unreliable for me.

why not just continue to keep it simple ?

25 gig location. Just make a full back up. the next time you make a second.
before making backup 5 just delete an earlier back up. I would probably keep the oldest - just in case - and delete say the second oldest.

 

"Upon further review" I could not agree more. The few seconds it takes me to delete the backup is no big deal. Thanks Long View - Keep It Simple always works for me.

 

I've only heard of the managed backups not working under two scenarios. 1) the backup location selected when creating the task is not from the Backup Locations on the Tree, but selected from one of the disk drive directories listed farther down the tree. In this case, the fix is to select the backup directory from the Backup Locations.

2) ATI is installed over an older version of ATI and something fails in the updating of one or more of the files. In this last case, unistalling, and scrubbing is the known fix.

sh

 

Another option - run a post command counting the number of backups you have then remove the oldest one. A simple approach (based on some unix backup scripts I have written):

* Run the backup

* Once each archive is done, rename the file to a julian date for easy reference (google for "fdate" - very good tool).

* Look for and remove the file with the earliest date (fdate "today - 5 days" should get you close)


My $0.02

 

Schieber, I am doing the backup location correctly based on your post and the manual---picking from the top of the tree ( I made that mistake the first time--this forum helped correct that) and I have done the scrub one more better by going to device manager and deleting what is left there after an uninstall.

Of course I could be missing something but after doing all that, the rules still don't work--hangs in my case 98% complete when it attempts to delete an old backup in order to enforce either a size rule or quantity of backups--so while the scrub works for some it doesn't in my case and I don't know why.

Also yes, it's easy to delete old backups and not use the rules at all. The backups 'appear' good that V10makes. However I consider this type of software very critical to good computer maintenance and I get worried about the integrity of the rest of the software if a major feature like backup rules is defective at least on my computer. In my mind it just makes the whole thing questionable--ie: what other things don't work on my computer that I won't know about until I need them?

Does anyone know of an easy and fool proof way to 'test' the backups and the startup disks to be sure they will work when I need them?

Thanks but just wanted to go on record that using the best wisdom I can find on this forum I still have nonfunctioning software. I wrote to Acronis again--so far no response.

 

The only way I know is to actually use them. When I first bought Acronis years ago I was naive enough not to even imagine that it might not work. I was also fortunate in not having visited this site or others like it (some of the horror stories might have put me off). So I make a system image - destroyed a few folders to simulate a problem - and then restored with no problem. Next I tried my data partition. I find that I very rarely have to restore a data partitions but that system partitions get restored very often - sometimes several times a day.

If you don't want to put your system at risk then installing a second drive and restoring to that would be another way to test backups.

 

Thanks BChat,

When I originally installed ATI 10 there was a problem with creating and saving the EMail backup jobs. Acronis tech support had me download an updated version of ATI 10 that fixed this problem. I installed this new version on top of the original installation.

Out of curiousity and from your suggestion, I completely removed ATI 10, cleaned up the laptop of any existance or remanance, then reinstalled the updated version of ATI 10. I confirmed this morning that the backup location quotas are now be carried out successfully.

Looks as though the ATI folks need to take a close look at their installation/uninstall of this product.

So I'm now good to go.

 

Yes. It appears that there is a not wholely uncommon situation where an installation does update some file or setting and then cannot properlyl impose backup policies for managed directories. It might be due to some interaction between the MSI installer for ATI10 and some PC security software, which I suspect, or something else. While there is a manual fix (scrubbing and then reinstalling) it's a bit of a pain. Hopefully, the next build will have this problem fixed.

sh