Urgent, non-tech coworker has screwed up the archive! Is there a fix?

My associate really blew it I think. He had incremental mybackup.tib, & mybackup2-6.tib and then overwrote mybackup.tib with some other full backup of something else. Then he came to me cause he knows that I have used Acronis since day 1, and in fact have spread the word to everyone that I know that it's the best. BUT, now what? I can see the archive set by trying to recover mybackup2 (and it was files&folders backup, not partition), but I get archive not valid or corrupt error when I run the job. Is there any hope for this poor soul. He says it's months of work, and his drive crashed so he needs to recover from this corrupt backup set. I told him to always rename mybackup.tib to something else a year ago, but do they ever listen? I also think this is a really big user interface flaw in ATI. ATI should never allow this to happen. It could be prevented by forcing unique archive names. But what do I know. Well, thanks for any advice, I would really like to help my friend as it was I who recommended this product. Thanks!
Jigs

 

I think your better bet is to try to revive the crashed drive. Exactly what happened to it? If it just will not boot into Windows, then a Repair Install of windows might bring it back.
Did you try using something like a BartPE cd to copy the files in the My Documents folder or wherever his months of work is stored?

 

Thanks Dwn, I just found out that those files he needs were not on the drive at the time of crash, he was archiving the files till he needs them. now he needs them. So the only files he has are inside the mybackup2.tib to mybackup6.tib. I can see the folder structure, and the files are large, so something is there! There must be a way to get them out, or some of it. What say you all? thx.

ps. get this, he says that what happened to the drive was that he was doing a recover using ATI, partition type, and overlaid C onto D, so after his recovery of partitions he had two C drives! Is that even possible?!? So he blames me and ATI. What to do?

 

ATI is dynamite in the hands of a novice. I remember reading a long time ago, one user says that you have to be part geek to use it correctly.

I don't know how you will get out of the situation, but for future two things I would recommend for that user:
1. Do only full backups.
2. If it is only data you're backing up, use Windows Explorer or Xcopy with suitable switches to do so. Some here have recommended Karen's Replicator. Both XCopy and KR will backup only changed files after the first full backup.

Without the first backup file, I don't see how you can access the incrementals.

 

Another idea, since that user seems to be such a klutz, is to install two or three hard drives (including the one in the computer now) in what are called mobile racks. Lets call them D1, D2 and D3 for easy reference. The one in the drive now will of course be the Primary Master, D1, and a second one should be installed as the Secondary Master, D2.

Use True Image to Clone the Primary to the Secondary. Remove D1 and put D2 in its place and use that as the system drive for two or three days, putting aside D1 in a safe place. At the end of another two days, clone D2 to D3, put D3 as the Primary master and use that for two or three days, putting aside D2 in a safe place.

This way you will always have two drives "ready to go" and only out of date by two or three days if the drive in the computer goes bad. And you will always know if that user has done the clone correctly before too many days pass.

 

herojig,
1. Why not protect your backups via the Acronis password option!

2. You should have some redundant copies stored elsewhere. One copy is not adequate protection. Learn from your experience.

 

Thanks all for all the valid and grand suggestions. Hell, i am such a backupfreak i have one buried in the yard. But since ATI targeted home users, I really do see my friends point. As pointed out, ATI (as interfaced) can be dynamite in the hands of child. It's blown up for him, and now his hand is gone.

Ur suggestion 1 above is a good one, but the interface should have never have allowed this without more warning. "You are about to overwrite the first part of an incremental backup with a new one containing different files - are you sure you want to do that?" (I am not a help writer, but some warning like would be in order).

Then, perhaps users should never be allowed to put the same backup partition on two different partitions during the same job. I mean when would you ever want to put a windows partition on both the C & D Drive of drive 0? Again, some warning message: "You are about to put the same partition on two parttions of this drive, and both will contain the same operating sytem, that may cause instablitity, are you sure you want to do this?"

Oh well, so it's definate then. you can't extract ANYTHING from an incremental someway somehow? At least if that could be done my expal would get off my back.

 

herojig,

Have you tried to explore the incrementals?

I have just made a small test Files & Folders backup. I then made two incrementals so I ended up with FF_full.tib, FF_full2.tib, FF_full3.tib

I then deleted the FF_full.tib file leaving only the 2nd and 3rd incremental files. I can explore these from TI and copy out all of the files that were in either the 2nd or 3rd backup. Nothing from the original full backup will copy out because that file is missing. I also ran a new full backup that replaced the original full and could still explore the incrementals.

If this would work for you, you could at least recover all the files in the incrementals. Try and explore the last incremental and see if you can get anything out.

When you say in post #3 that "you can see the folder structure" are you already exploring the incrementals?

 

If the hard drive hasn't been overwritten yet are repartitioned, maybe it can be fixed. From what I see all you would have to do is changed the drive letter on the other partition to something else. Download the demo of "paragon justboot corrector", bootup with it and look at your friends hard drive and see if the drive letters are indeed the same on both partitions. Changing drive letters is an easy fix.

 

Mudcrab, u are right on...I had thought of this and I am dragging an external harddrive over there now to get his backups. I saw the structure on his machine during the recover process, you can click the date of an incremental and see the structure that way when trying to recover. So that's how I know something is there.

I can't explore on his rig cause he is using an older version of Home that did not have that option like V10 does. I have V10 so I think if I get his files I will be able to see. I'll let ya all know!

 

You should be able to just explore the last incremental (I think it was 6). That will give you access to the most files. If you explore #4, for example, you won't be able to copy out any files from #5 or #6.

 

Mudcrab, u are right on...I had thought of this and I am dragging an external harddrive over there now to get his backups. I saw the structure on his machine during the recover process, you can click the date of an incremental and see the structure that way when trying to recover. So that's how I know something is there.

I can't explore on his rig cause he is using an older version of Home that did not have that option like V10 does. I have V10 so I think if I get his files I will be able to see. I'll let ya all know!

 

Another option would be to send the drive to a data-recovery service. Stop using the drive immediately, of course, since portions of the overwritten tib file may still be available somewhere on the drive. However, I would check with Acronis technical support first to see if this approach would be at all useful. (The question is, can they extract useful data from .tib fragments?)