Question about Automatic Consolidation

Hi Michael,
My understanding is that, if you configure automatic consolidation after 7 incrementals, the sequence is as follows:
- Create full backup
- create 7 incremental backups
- create incremental backup, realise maximum number of files has exceeded, consolidate oldest incremental with full backup. Leaving one full and 7 incremental backups.

Once the last step is reached this will happen every time an incremental backup is created.

I will warn you that consolidating large full backups takes a long time! Maybe not hours but a lot longer than an incremental (or even a full) backup. Also note that the consolidated full backup is created before the old files are removed - so you need disk space to do this.

I would very much like to know if anyone has a 'best practice' for backing up large partitions (with TIH2010). I have a few partitions where the full backup file is ~45GB. The incremental backups might only be a few hundred MBs but, once the file count is met, every backup takes ages! It would be nice if, supposing you had a file limit of ten, you could automatically consolidate the five oldest incremental backups every time the limit is exceeded. Is this possible?

Anyway, hope the above helps.

Rob

Hi Rob,

thanks for your answer, it helped me understanding the procedure ("consolidating" means merging the full backup with the incremental part, right?)
A possibility to consolidate mulitple incremental parts with the full backup at once would be better, that's right, however I couldn't find any option for that. Is there maybe a way to propose new features for future versions to the developers? An option as "minimum incremental backups, maximum incremental backups" would do, I think.
However, I think I'm going to use that consolidation option nevertheless. The system drive being backed up is ~30GB, but since it's located on an SSD, you hardly notice the background backup at all while working.

two things
1) Months ago I created a wish list item for min/max incr backups for consolidate.
At the time I called it "consolidate_leave_x#_when_y#_incr_files_are_present."
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/3118#comment-4887

as far as what is possible today, I do not think it is possible to automate the consolidation process as you desire. To workaround limitation this one can do GFS backups.

2) As for 'best" practice, I do GFS backups.
A full backup for me takes hours and results in a 185G .tib file.

I and many others use chain2gen for its GFS (grandfather/father/son generation) capabiilites..
There are many advantages to GFS, a minor one is it eliminates the need to deal with consolidation routines.

Here is typical example of a GFS backup:
its sunday so we perform a full backup, followed by 6 daily incremental files.
When the next sunday rolls around chain2gen takes the prior backup set of files and rotates them into a history folder(s)
This presents an empty target folder to acronis so when it performs the backup it has no choice but to perform the desired full backup.
Daily incrementas continue until we reach the next sunday and chain2gen again rotates the existing set of '.tib' files into the history folder(s) which again presents an empty target folder to acronis.

The above weekly cycle can repeat forever.
You can configure chain2gen to keep a max number of generations.
the oldest generation will automatically be deleted to make room for the new generation.
Besides eliminating the need for consolidation you gain the ability to have several weeks of history from which to restore. This obviously lets you go back in time several weeks if needed, it also gives multiple backups to perform a restore if one happens to be corrupt.

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/5940

Thanks oracledba. I found your wish list item about the same time you posted here. Your ideas are good except for one problem:
I currently backup two partitions to the same drive. My full backup files are 43GB and 32GB. The incrementals are typically 1 to 2GB. But I only have 54GB free. This is enough to consolidate both backups, since they are not done at the same time. However, it's only enough for one backup to have a 2nd generation.

Robad,
Time to get a new larger external drive. Look at item 7G inside my signature index below.

Hi oracledba,

I freed-up enough space and set up your gfs system last week. Everything seemed to go fine creating the necessary folders and initial backup files. Today (I run the backup weekly) I came back after 45 minutes to find ATIH stuck in 'Acronis_PreProcessing_task.bat' for the first scheduled task. I had to cancel it. Then the next task did the same. Any ideas what the problem might be? I'm pretty sure I followed all your instructions.

OK. Think I got it. I ran the above manually and unchecked the box suggesting I always wanted Win7 to ask whether to run the batch file. This is a bit of a pain, since I'd guess there are other files only run conditionally which I can't get at manually. Any ideas here?

Robad,
The solution to your Windows issue of file blocking is covered in Appendix C of the current version (2.5) of the readme.pdf file. Suggest you download the newest zip version (post #1) and implement the suggested changes.

You may want to wait until C2G version 2.6 is released which is due within the very near future so you can apply the windows fix to the latest release.

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/5940

Thanks GroverH,
I confess I only read the pdf as far as I thought necessary ;-)
I'm also still coming to terms with what Win7 will & won't let me do...

C2G version 2.6 has been posted to the link below

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/5940

post #1