Acronis TIH 2012 - exclusion list doesn't work
Hello,
just trying that software (I've a registered copy at Office but the problem I have is @ home).
This is my configuration:
C: drive 2x500GB (RAID 1)
D: drive 1x500 GB
L: drive 1x500 GB
M: drive 1x500GB
Windows 7 x64 Enterprise.
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I've made a full set of backup (tib format): one image on a different disk.
Here the problem:
the D: drive has been backupped on C: drive (file called multimulo.tib).
If I try to backup C: drive on L: or on M: the tib file resulting contains the multimulo.tib and the pagefile.sys.... the resulting file is really too big and seems that only for this drive (C:) the exclusion list is ignored. I've tried also to add manually multimulo.tib - c:\multimulo.tib - pagefile.sys - c:\pagefile.sys with no luck. Tried also partion backup and disk backup.
No problem in the other backup sets - like L: on D: - (tib files are correctly not backupped in the resulting tib file). Rules are absolutely identical between working and not working backups. Simply the C: drive backup includes the unwanted files.
Uninstalled and reinstalled the demo several times using also the cleaner. I've manually scrolled the .tis scripts and are virtually identical to the working backups.
Really no clue.....
Hi Colin,
thanks for your reply.
Latest build 7133 (downloaded demo about 15 days ago).
I don't think that the issue is raid related. I've used TIH without problems in such environments @ office (also that build).
I've merged (one month ago) the C: disk with the hidden boot win7 partition (using bcdedit to move boot/essential files to the merged volume). Maybe this operation affected something in TIH. Everything else in my system works like a charm.
.....
If you or somebody else need more infos I'm here... thanks!
I can confirm that the exclusion lists are completely broken in TIH 2012 (latest), and no, I am not using a RAID. I had to run the same backup a ridiculous 4 times because the exclusions just simply would not work. (Exclusions also failed on another different computer backup as well.) This is beyond frustrating and only one of several huge bugs I've found with this program. This wasted 2 entire days of my time. I am not happy with my purchase of this software.
I tried both using a boot disc (ungodly slow) and in Windows with the same results. I even used the browse picker just to make absolutely sure the folders were selected, but it still tried to back them up. This resulted in 2 excruciatingly long backups using the boot disc failing because the disk was full after it wrote 350GB+ when I only wanted to write a measly 60GB of data if the exclusions worked. Then I tried in Windows with the same issue. The 4th time I had to clear off 600 GB of space on a disk just for the backup. 8 hours later, I wasn't very surprised to see Acronis ignored my list entirely and made a 500GB tib file on the target drive. The ironic part is, going into the configuration file for the backup set, the exclusions are still listed.
Another bug: There was ONE time out of 7 backup attempts that exclusions actually worked (the first time). That time was using the boot disc, all other factors were the same. But even though that backup did exclude the folders I specified, I still was unable to restore the data to a smaller partition because TrueImage recorded the size of all files on the drive instead of the size of only the included files in the backup. So it backed up ~60GB of files (Windows mainly), excluded about 700GB of files, and yet the archive was reported to be 760GB in size so it would not allow me to restore to a smaller partition (SSD). The actual size of the .tib files was only ~40GB. The only solution was to extract using the files/folders method, which doesn't seem to copy all files perfectly because I had a number of errors with Silverlight license (Netflix), MS Office, and probably some other software I'm not aware of. (I doubt it would restore SecuRom files properly... haven't tested yet.)
How about another: Because the boot disc compressing/restoring is just abysmally slow (we're talking 10-20X slower than in Windows -- DAYS not hours), I ended up restoring my data to the SSD using Windows. Well, a number of files (a couple hundred) had errors and would not write for various reasons, but usually saying the files were in use, which of course was not possible because the disk was completely empty. So I discovered if I want to get all my files, I have to do a 2-pass recover, first in Windows to get most of the files, then another pass using the boot disc with "do not replace files" set. Because most of the files wrote in Windows, this pass only takes 10-20 minutes instead of 2 days.
It's just plain absurd the amount of working around the bugs I've had to do with this software. Ugh. I remember the good old days when imaging was a piece of cake.
Grover and I experimented with exclusions a while back. I recall that it was finnicky, and whether you included the trailing folder slash or not made a difference. I'll try to see if I have notes from our tests.
I can say that exclusions based on file extension work in the bootable Recovery Media, as I do this regularly.
Thanks for the reply.
>> Grover and I experimented with exclusions a while back. I recall that it was finnicky, and whether you included the trailing
>> folder slash or not made a difference.
I read about this going in and I always did include the trailing backslash. Even when using the browser picker it also included the trailing backslash. There was no possibility of error when entering the folders as I was very aware of this pickiness. The only difference I can find among my various systems including the one time that it did work is the number of drives/partitions in the systems. There has to be some outside factor like this at play here.
>> I can say that exclusions based on file extension work in the bootable Recovery Media, as I do this regularly.
It worked once for me that way, but never again, many times in the bootable media. I know the drive letters get mapped differently in the bootable media, but I was always conscious of that and excluded the right letter.
In the 2011 and 2012 bootable Recovery Media, do not include the trailing slash, at least based on our tests.
Exclusion by file extensions isn't based on drive letter. It excludes all files matching the extensions you enter. e.g.
*.flac
*.mp3
The above works reliably in the 2011 and 2012 bootable Recovery Media.
Testing exclusion by folder by pathname, there was mixed success.
Using the drive letter assigned by TI as the drive letter, this worked. These did not appear at all in the backup
L:\temp
L:\special
These below still appeared and had contents
L:\Grover\*.*
L:\Pico\*.*
Tested without the drive letter and none worked where the exclusion began with \
You have to type each path, as there's no ability to browse to the paths to exclude.
>> In the 2011 and 2012 bootable Recovery Media, do not include the trailing slash, at least based on our tests.
My first run was in boot recovery and it included trailing slashes and it worked. All my runs in windows included them as well and none worked. Windows browse button includes trailing slashes as well.
I did not try any without trailing slashes, but that would be very odd if that worked because TI adds the trailing slash. Before I ran any backups I looked up the format of the exclusion string and came across someone's post that broke down all the variations including trailing slash, no trailing, *.*, and a number of others. His tests showed trailing slash worked as did no trailing slash.
I am certain this is not syntax error.
>> Exclusion by file extensions isn't based on drive letter
My exclusions were directories only.