Understanding consolidation

Sorry for my ignorance but perhaps I do not understand consolidation. I had an original backup of my C: drive that I stored on my D: drive. After the original FULL backup I did a number of incrementals so I now had the original backup (let's call FILE) with a bunch of incrementals (FILE2, FILE3, FILE4, etc.)

I now want to convert/consolidate into a single file. So TI2009 asks me what archive to consolidate. Do I just pick the original FILE and will this automatically blend it with the incrementals to create a single new file?

I further complicated things by asking for the consolidated file to be written to a networked hard drive. So what I ended up with are still several files on my D: drive (file with today's date and several of the incremental files FILE4, FILE5, FILE6, and FILE7) and two files with today's date on the network drive.

Am I not understanding something?

Doug

 

Related to a problem I am having is an apparent mis-naming that occurred after the consolidation. I have 2 files now on the external drive G:\AcronisBackups\DougCDriveW2K.tib and G:\AcronisBackups\DougCDriveW2K3.tib.

When I go to the Manage and Restore screen of TI2009, under the Archive named DougCDriveW2K it shows both of those files EXCEPT the path to the second on is INCORRECT and shows G:\AcronicBackups\FullbackupDriveC7.tib

Consequently when trying to mount the drive or do anything with the archive, I get error messages. Is there a way to change the path to the correct name and/or purge the acronis database that contains this information and re-create?

Thanks,

Doug

 

Hello seismicguy,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

During the consolidation, chosen backup will contain all backups from the chain of incremental\differential backups.

Please check this article for the detailed information.

Detailed information about Acronis True Image Home product can be found in User's Guide.

Thank you.
--
Alexander Nikolsky

 

Alexander

Thank you for pointing us to the links describing the Consolidation steps, and the schematic diagram. However, you DO NOT explain the consolidated "file name" conventions. After Consolidation of Differential backups of my XP system drive, I was left with 3 files but no idea what they represented.

It was a month ago when I stopped using it but I recall the following:

I had in my backups folder:

1. The original Full Backup image file labeled like Drive_C_Set_A.tib
2. A Differential image file labeled like Drive_C_Set_A_2.tib
3. A Consolidated image file (I presume) labeled like Drive_C_Set_A_?.

I don't remember now the exact label and extension, but I recall it was confusing because of the remaining Differential file. When I tried finding an explanation for the file naming changes there was nothing in the User Guide. Afterwards I disabled Consolidation and reran my Backups.

 

Hello Andrew_Sea,

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

Generally, the program assigns a name for the consolidated image according to the first backup in chain. For example: your backups are MyBackup, MyBackup2, MyBackup3 and MyBackup4 and you are going to consolidate MyBackup2, MyBackup3 and MyBackup4. The resulted name will be MyBackup2.

The program displays a list of backups belonging to the selected archive with their
creation date and time. The upper backup is the full backup; the rest are incremental
backups. Select the backups you want to keep.

Choose the location and name for the archive copy. By default, the program suggests the
same location and the original backup archive will be overwritten. But you can choose a new
location and in such a case the source archive will stay as is, unless you choose to delete it
by selecting the Delete original archive box. This requires more disk space, but ensures
security of the archive in case the consolidation fails because of power failure or lack of disk
space.

The program displays the summary window. Click Proceed to start consolidation.
In our example, when consolidation is complete, disk G will contain two new archives MyBackup and MyBackup2.
MyBackup is a full backup containing data as of November 25, 2008, 9:40:23 AM.
MyBackup2 is an incremental backup containing data as of November 25, 2008, 10:21:12 AM. You can make sure of this by starting the consolidation wizard again, selecting the archive MyBackup and proceeding to the next window.

Thank you.
--
Alexander Nikolsky

 

The knowledge base article says "Deletes the older slices after the consolidation is complete." I'm not seeing that behavior. I've always got 15 backups lying around...

CHIN15.tib 1,705,501,184 01/26/2009 18:49 -a--
CHIN14.tib 2,294,678,528 01/26/2009 18:46 -a--
CHIN13.tib 1,366,412,288 01/26/2009 18:43 -a--
CHIN12.tib 1,623,985,152 01/26/2009 18:42 -a--
CHIN11.tib 1,520,365,056 01/26/2009 18:40 -a--
CHIN10.tib 1,191,072,768 01/26/2009 18:38 -a--
CHIN9.tib 998,298,624 01/26/2009 18:36 -a--
CHIN8.tib 1,660,072,448 01/26/2009 18:35 -a--
CHIN7.tib 1,281,638,912 01/26/2009 18:33 -a--
CHIN6.tib 1,065,339,392 01/26/2009 18:31 -a--
CHIN5.tib 2,780,193,280 01/26/2009 18:29 -a--
CHIN4.tib 967,883,264 01/26/2009 18:26 -a--
CHIN3.tib 698,880,512 01/26/2009 18:25 -a--
CHIN2.tib 1,202,757,120 01/26/2009 18:24 -a--
CHIN.tib 127,979,223,552 01/26/2009 18:22 -a--