Is Backup Policy unreliable?

I have a scheduled task set up to do an incremental image backup of my D: partition to a Backup Location. I have no rules set on the backup location, but in the task I have the Backup Policy set to 6 incrementals. The task runs every evening; my intent is to accumulate a week's worth of incrementals and then start over with a full backup.

This worked fine the first week. Then the second week, when it should have made a full backup, it made a 7th incremental instead. I tried deleting the incremental and running the task manually; it made an incremental again. I tried changing the scheduled time to 5 minutes ahead and letting the scheduler run the task; again it made an incremental. Finally I moved the previous full and incremental files out of the way and ran the task to make a full backup.

I won't know until next Monday if it follows the policy and makes a full backup or not; but while I'm waiting, I wonder if anyone has any experience or insight here. Should I expect this to work? What do I do if it doesn't? I don't want to use the backup location rules because I don't see any way to get the behavior I want; I want to leave previous weeks' backup sets in the backup location so I can use the Search function, I don't want my older backups consolidated, etc.

TIA...

 

I'm using ATI 10 (build 4942). I've been experimenting with the backup policy and quota for the past week and spending alot of time reading the posts regarding same in this forum. I am doing disk backups and also want to have a full, 6 differentials (as opposed to incrementals) and then another full backup. My goal was to have 3 weeks of backups to restore from. But, I never get the full backup again. I've tried it with just a file quota set, with all quotas set, with a size quota set.. I just can't get the second full backup to happen. It just does another differential, completely ignoring the backup policy (though the log shows it always checks the quotas). And since all the differentials are reliant on the one full backup, this is very risky. If that one full backup was corrupt, all the differentials would be useless.

Many have had problems with the backup location quotas not working, but I have seen at least the file quota being applied (I had a differential deleted last week because it surpassed my quota of 7 files). I then realized the 7th file would've also been a Full backup, so I deleted the backup location and re-created my task for a Full, 6 differential, Full task, setting a 21 file quota this time. I ran the task 8 times, and got a full and 7 differentials. Big waste of time and disk space. I am now considering just doing the full backups, but at 100GB each backup, it'll eat up my 500gb external fast and leave me with only 4 days to recover from.

This has been very frustrating.

 

To add yet another comment, I think I will give up on differentials completely, not just because I can't get another full backup, but because when the quota is reached, whether it's by size or file number, a deletion takes place (with incrementals, which I don't do, I believe a consolidation takes place) and that in itself adds 2 hours to the whole process.

So, if I did a full-differential backup for 8 days, after I reached my 8 file quota for the differentials my backups would start deleting, adding that additional 2 hrs. to the 1 1/2 - 2 hr process of backing up and validating. So, I've decided to do away with the differentials. I haven't reached a quota yet with my full backups, but I imagine the process shouldn't take as long because the program will not have to re-validate every backup in the location, as it does with the differentials. But, we'll see.

 

Back to the original topic ...
I'm not using the backup location rules (aka. quotas) because I want to keep my old incrementals as-is for searching, without consolidation and without a quota on the total number of incrementals. Backup Policy should do what I want: limit the number of incrementals per full backup, so I can accumulate "backup sets", consisting of a full backup and its associated incrementals, on a weekly basis.

So (1) is anyone else trying something like this? (2) Is it working? I seem to be geting inconsistent results: last week I failed to get a ful lbackup when I expected one, and this week I got one when I shouldn't have. I'd like to write up a problem report for Support but I don't have a consistent picture yet.

 

Hello MKairys and Brigette,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please delete the backup location and the task using Acronis True Image interface, then recreate them.
Please also do the following:

- Download and run schedmgr.exe application;
- Issue the following commands:

service stop
service uninstall
service install
service start

- Close schedmgr;

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.

- Open the command prompt (Start -> Run -> cmd);
- Run the following command in the folder the schedmgr.exe file was saved to:

schedmgr get report > schedreport.txt

- Collect schedreport.txt;
- Run Acronis Schedule Manager program (schedmgr.exe) once more;
- Issue the following command:

set logflags support

- Schedule backup creation once again;
- Wait until the scheduled backup will break the policy;
- Collect the log file schedul2.log that is placed in the \Program Files\Common
Files\Acronis\Schedule2 folder;

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

Please also collect the acronis_backup_place.cfg file from Acronis Backup Location folder.

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

 

Thank you, Marat. MKairys, have you tried this? (Sorry about dominating your thread earlier on.)

 

Actually I just took the first step tonight: I removed and recreated the backup location and task and let it run. I see that I got an incremental where I expected a full backup. I shall proceed to gather the information requested.

No problem, it's all good information.

 

I can't reliably reproduce this problem. I tried setting up a test with a scheduled task that repeated every ten minutes, and the backup policy worked correctly over many iterations. Since any failures of the policy with my "production" task only show up on Mondays, it's been difficult to accumulate data.

I've read elsewhere that Acronis development is working on the backup location feature, so I think I should put this problem on hold for future releases.

 

Eventually your disk will fill up and you will have to manually remove some backup sets or your backup task will fail to create new backups. So you might consider setting a size or file number limit in the backup location to automate this for you.

 

Yes, I manually move previous weeks' backup sets to another drive and manually delete ones older than two months or so. I suppose I could set a quota on that location - but I don't want to get involved with consolidation...

 

I just had a backup fail because the "disk was full." I had set a 420GB quota on 1 of 2 backup locations. The other backup location I hadn't used in a while. It contained 105GB of data (1 Full and several differential backups which I gave up on because of consolidation taking too long). The quota for the backup location in use was based on the disk drive's space, not the folder's space. The backup location in use had 3 103GB full backups in it. I had expected the oldest backup in this folder to be deleted, but it was not. Instead, I got a disk full error in the log and no backup.

When I had done my last full backup, I saw ~53GB left on the disk and was waiting for the next backup to see what ATI 10 would do. I am very disappointed. I don't believe having more than one backup location should affect the deletion of files if there is more than 1 backup file in the folder.

 

Hello Brigette,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please notice that all deletions/consolidations are always performed after a new backup is created. If there is not enough space to create a new backup, then the "disk is full error" will occur.
Please be aware that different Acronis Backup Locations do not affect each other.

You can find the detailed instructions on how to use Acronis True Image 10.0 Home in the respective User's Guide.

If you have any further questions concerning Acronis software, please feel free to submit a request for technical support or post any of them on this forum. We will certainly try to help you in resolving any issues.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

Marat:

Thanks for the reply. But, what does that mean? Eventually, you will run out of space for the next backup, right? When does a deletion occur? Last week, I had 155GB free. It backed up. This week, I had 53GB free (my backup .tibs are ~103GB) and I expected a deletion of one of the other 3 backups. This did not occur and it should have. Every week, my log reflects that ATI 10 checks for violations and I know my backup location is set up properly. There was a violation this week and nothing happened.