TI11 cannot find backups

I am recently using trial of TI11 on Vista. Unfortunately I've ordered a boxed version before I found this problem, and from the looks of the skimpy support, I feel I may have just lost my money.

I sent a message to Acronis support about 6 days ago, of course no reply as I had expected after reading the posts here.

The problem : At first everything was fine. I created a Secure Zone on my main drive, as partition drive D. I created a full backup. I created several incremental backups. I took the plunge and even restored to a backup just to test it (I realize now how serious a mistake this was, and how lucky I am that it worked). But the restore did work fine, I made more incremental backups and mounted them, all good. Then all of a sudden, when I try to mount the SZ, I get a message that says I have no backups. So

1) what changed
2) any idea how to correct
3) if it is uncorrectable, can I just re-create a full backup over top the
so-called non-existing backup?

I also tried the Try-and-decide, what nightmare of hangups and errrors, but thats a whole other thread I guess.

Thanks to anyone who may have a suggestion, as I don't expect anything from Acronis at this point. How dissappointing. As a side note, I think it would be great to get recommendations on other products that are reliable, perhaps a link to reviews. I'd be willing to chalk up my money as "live and learn", yet again.

 

Up to this point, everything is normal. I have a personal preference never to use a Secure Zone because you can't copy backups out of the SZ. I prefer to save backups to either a normal partition on the same drive (no protection against drive failure, but handy to have if there is corruption on C.), on a second internal drive (not applicable to most notebooks) or an external USB or Firewire drive. I've never had any backups "disappear" from normal partitions.

I don't understand what you mean by mounting the SZ. Did you try to validate or restore a backup by starting TI and looking for it in the SZ?

If TI shows that there are no backups in the SZ, then you can create new backups there. However, I'd want to know why there aren't any backups in the SZ before I'd trust this as a backup.

Wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole.

My guess is that there was some very odd user error if the SZ actually contains no backups. Since this is a new program for you, perhaps something happened that won't happen again.

One good reason to put backups on normal partitions is that you can see them with Windows Explorer and know that they are there and move them or delete them as needed.

Since a SZ on the same hard drive as C offers no protection for a failed hard drive, you really should find a place to store backup images off the hard drive. USB external drives are cheap, and that would be my suggestion.

 

Open TI and find the build number in "Help About". If it is not 8053 download this build from the Acronis web site. You will need to register your purchased version first.
Then do a straight forward removal of TI before installing the latest build. Although one can have a good install without removing a previous trial version or build there is less chance of problems by starting over.

You say that you have created a secure zone as partition drive D. This, as I read it, cannot be true because although a secure zone is a partition it is hidden and has no drive letter.
If you have taken free space from partition D and created a secure from it by using the manage secure zone wizard the secure zone should exist.
What you may have done is saved your backups to partition D and have left the secure zone untouched.

One cannot "mount the Secure zone". The procedure is via the TI GUI to find the .tib file within the secure zone that you wish to work with and then mount it.
If the backups are in the open in partition D they can be viewed and explored without mounting first.

When you made your backups did you have to give them names? If so they are not in the secure zone as there the naming is automatic being a time and date stamp.

Xpilot

 

I was going to respond to this along similar lines, until I checked the manual, it actually has instructions on mounting an SZ image.

As SZ images don't have a TIB suffix I didn't think you could mount them - Echo of course you can, by converting them, perhaps this is where the OP has gone 'wrong' following the manual.

Colin

 

Update: I received my boxed version today and installed it. It is build 8053. Same problem exists.

Sorry about the confusion in my post, some thoughts did not translate well.

What I should have said, is that I have 1 drive, with 2 partitions - C & D. I split the D drive in roughly half to create the SZ. The SZ is 80GB.

Well, it is an option to mount it and explore it within the program, but no it cant be mounted as a normal drive. I was talking about mounting within the program. Also, at no time were backups made to the normal drive D. As mentioned, I did mount and explore the SZ several times, no problem. So I know the backups WERE there at one time, functioning correctly. Why suddenly TI says they do not exist when I try to mount and explore the SZ exactly as I have in the past is the problem. It may also help that the SZ is 38GB in size at the moment, I know at one time it was in the 70GB range.

Yes, I would love an external drive, and that is something I will do in the future. However for the moment, I`m stuck with the SZ.

I guess since I really cant lose anything, I`ll just try another full back up over top whatever else is in the SZ and just see what happens.

 

MikeJ99,

Thanks for the clarification of what you actually did.
The most likely scenario is that there is some kind of corruption in the secure zone area of the disk.
As you cannot use the past contents of the zone I suggest that you first remove the zone using the manage secure zone wizard. The space released should be allocated to the D partition. Now you will be able to run CHKDSK R on the whole of the D partition.

The reason for this convoluted process is that CHKDSK cannot be run on a secure zone so this is the only way to check and hopefully repair the area.
The CHKDSK results can be found presumably in the same place as XP ie under event viewer/ applications/Logon.

You will now be able to recreate the secure zone and start over with a fresh backup.

I strongly suspect some kind of disk corruption as it is most unusual to see a large drop in size of the used space in a secure zone.
What normally happens is that it steadily fills up with increments until a second full image is created. At that point FIFO management kicks in . BTW you should schedule full backups into the mix or you will eventually get an out of space error.

Xpilot

 

Xpilot, I will try your suggestion to delete/recreate the SZ. It does sound feasable that something goofy simply corrupted the archive.

The next obvious question would be how to prevent it happening again, but of course the answer is Who Knows, since we don't know what caused it in the first place.

You just pre-answered another question I had, as in "What should happen when I no longer have space for another incremental save?" I had been wondering, what if a small incremental backup actually overwrote the older, original full backup, thereby causing the huge drop in size, and Voila, TI can no longer find any backups because the full backup is gone But it would sure seem silly for TI to perform this action at all, let alone with no regard to any user input on the matter. But the more I read, the more I wonder if TI is screwed up enough to have let this overwriting happen?

 

Don't forget to run CHKDSK R on the drive before re-creating the secure zone. Examine the results carefully and see if any signifigant errors have been corrected and if any bad sectors have been replaced.

With only one base image present increments will just build up till you get a disk full error. Another increment will not run and your old backups are not overwritten.
The solution is to make a new full image which will overwrite the original image and orphan all the existing increments.
It is far better to schedule a full backup,say once a week and six increments followed by another full etc.

Another tip: you should plan to do your regular houskeeping chores and run a defrag just before the the next full backup is due to be run. At any other time a defrag can make the next incremental image nearly a big as a full image.

Xpilot

 

Ok I deleted the SZ, giving the space back to drive D. Restart. Run chkdsk on D with no errors. Restart. Create a new SZ , again using space from drive D. Restart and enter the recovery console using F11. Create a full backup in the SZ. Good to this point. But now, when I try to mount the SZ, the problem is even worse! At least I got an error message the first time around. Now it just freezes up and goes non responding. I`m sorry but I`ve paid money for this, and feel a right to vent here - what a Piece Of S**T garbage software this is. Good Lord. This thing is worse than the very problems I`m trying to guard myself against. I give up, I`d rather take the chance of re-installing my data than deal with half-baked programming and no usable support to boot.

Hey ACRONIS, how about you do the right thing for once by providing a refund Sure, checks in the mail.

 

I did not think to ask your earlier on if you have made a TI recovery CD. Had I also known that you were using the startup recovery manager I would have suggested you tried looking for and examining your backups when booted from the Recovery CD. In extremis the F11 feature is more trouble than it is worth.

I just hope you are not too far down the road of utter frustration to give this a shot.

Xpilot

 

Hello Mikej99,

Thank you for using Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for delayed response.

Could you please let us know your Acronis request number (e.g. [Acronis #123456]) which was sent to you in autoreply to your letter? We will find out how the investigation of your issue is going. If you have not received an autoreply then please send us a Private Message containing your e-mail address.

If you're still willing to let us investigate the problem, could you please collect some information?

Please download the latest version of Acronis drivers and install it with disabled logging.

If the issue persists, please do the following:

- Reinstall Acronis drivers with enabled logging;
- Reproduce the issue and collect the log file without closing any application windows (including the error message windows if there are any). The log file will be created at C:\ . The name of the log file will be snapapi [date-time].log

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

Then please send the collected files with a reply to the last e-mail you received. We will do our best to investigate the problem and provide you with a solution.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov