How to remove date from archive filenames

Hello Laurence,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Backup & Recovery 10.

Unfortunately, this feature cannot be turned off, but you can configure your shared folder as Managed Vault, and set retention rules for it in order to make the archive rewritten with next one.

Please check 3.7. chapter of this User's Guide.

Thank you.

Well this makes it very hard for those of us that have other scripts setup to duplicate particular filenames like (full1_backup.tib) to another network location for additional protection in case the primary backup location has a failure. Is Acronis going to allow people to use the standard naming convention they have been use to using for years and years in the future?
We need the ability to keep the filename consistent so that other scripts can identify and clone these backup files to other locations.

Hello Brian,

Thank you for your notes. I understand the matter.

But if the only reason of using the script is to transfer the archive to another location, I can suggest you to use our built-in feature Dual destination.

This option is effective for both Windows and Linux operating systems, when the primary backup destination is a local folder or Acronis Secure Zone and the secondary destination is another local folder or network share.

When dual destination is enabled, the agent will automatically copy each backup being created locally to the secondary destination such as a network share. Once the backup to the primary destination is completed, the agent compares the updated archive contents to the secondary archive contents, and copies to the secondary destination all backups that are missing there along with the new backup.

This option enables quick machine backup to the internal drive as an intermediate step before saving the ready backup on the network. This comes in handy in cases of slow or busy networks and time-consuming backup procedures. Disconnection during the copy transfer will not affect the backup operation as opposed to backing up directly to the remote location.

Please see chapter 3.4.1.17 of User guide for Acronis Backup & Recovery 10.0 Advanced Server available on our web site here.

If this feature is unacceptable for you, please let us know about it, we will take into consideration your opinion.

Thank you.

Back in April 2009 I noticed that with Acronis True Image Echo Workstation the manual told us we could append the date and time to the backup file using "[date]" in the file name. This did not work - only the date was put in and not the time. In addition the date format was not the format described in the manual. I was told that this would be fixed in an upcoming version of Acronis True Image Echo Workstation.

On May 5, 2009 I received an email from the Lead Support Engineer who said:

"I am writing to follow-up regarding an open case we have with you here, about the tag [date] displaying only the date, not time.

I have received the information from the QA Team that they have reproduced the problem and submitted a bug ticket for the developers.

At this point the situation is that the next version of the product is in Beta 2 stage and it does not seem to be technically realistic to include the fix for this problem into the current version and its updates. However it will be fixed in the next one. As far as the current version goes, we have submitted a request to add this information into the Knowledge Base as a known issue."

Now Acronis has issued Backup & recovery 10 Advanced Workstation and rather than resolving the issue it has been made worse - user control of filename has been completely eliminated!! I find that in addition to not fixing the problem Acronis has made the matter worse by automatically appending the date and time to the backup file name and AND WE CANNOT ALTER THIS.

No longer can we have a backup file called "filename.tib" as it will automatically be called "filename_2009_11_05_09_23_25_861F.TIB".

This is a serious degradation of the utility of the product.

• We cannot control this.
• We cannot STOP the date and time from being appended to the file.
• We can no longer use batch files as a post operation to rename and organize our backup files. 

Clearly there needs to be user control over the backup file name.

Ideally we should be able to select if we want the date/time appended to the file and if we do then we should be able to specify the date/time format.

To answer Oleg Lee's last sentence - what you say may be fine for some but we need a simple solution that puts file name control back into the hands of the user.

I would like some feedback from Acronis on this matter and I believe I'm not alone in my conviction that this must be addressed in short order as indeed we were told it would be.

After thought...

An addition and useful feature it would be ideal to have a "[date]" function to append the date/time to the file name where the format of the date/time is controlled by the user. For example, if the user could specify the order and separators of YYYY MM DD and HH MM SS and if time will even be included then I could format my files to be "filename-20091109-103000.tib" or if the user simply want to accept the Acronis default file name (filename_2009_11_05_09_23_25_861F.TIB) then they can have.

Thank you

Quote:
>If this feature is unacceptable for you, please let us know about it, we will take into consideration your opinion.

Actually, it is unacceptable.
I have a very complex backup scheme and scripts that move existing backups from folder to folder, depending on both the legal and business requirements.
Example, My accounting server needs full backups with full month ends preserved for 7 years on a rolling basis, whereas my engineering server only needs to have disaster recovery (combination of fulls and diffs) on a weekly rotating schedule.
I will be requesting a downgrade license until this is fixed, and if it's isn't fixed when True Echo comes to end of life, I will be shopping for a new solution.
On a side note, I feel like Acronis has really went the wrong direction with 10.
The user interface isn't nearly as user friendly, and forcing customers to use the "vault" feature is a really bad move. One of the reasons I liked Acronis is BECAUSE of the simplicity and flexibility and reliability. If I wanted vaults and media sets and a bunch of complex controls, I would have purchaced Symantec's product line in the first place.

Hello there Acronis

I do agree with the above comments on this issue. It is absolutely imperative to have full control of the backup-filename.
We also process the backup-files at a later stage, and could not change all the procedures in place.
I have, for the time being, installed a previous version of Acronis to make do. But this is not a satisfactory state in the long run.

Please add a function, to let the user decide what filename-format should be used!!!!!

Wow. Look at some of the other posts on the same issue. One is 5 months old, 80 some posts and thousands of views. I asked two simple questions. 1) Is Acronis aware of the naming convention issues and 2) are they going to fix it.

5 months, 80 posts and thousands of veiws later they refuse to answer those two simple questions. Their support is a joke and so is their product. You are wasting your time persuing this issue. They refuse to acknowledge it and/or address it.

Don't waste your time giving them your opinion either. Hundreds have. They just ignore it.

This additional information containing the date is also a MASSIVE issue for me. Managing backups is a daily pain for me too. I am now forced to run TI9 and BR 10 on different servers because the new system SUCKS!

If i want to create a simple backup that overwrites the previous one i should be able to. I have removable disks that i take offsite in rotation and this whole .meta folder and file naming system has caused me no end of problems, waste of space and corrupted backups because BR10 gets confused when the last volume is missing when disks are rotated. Acronis suggested making several complex backup tasks on a bi-weekly basis to work around the problems. That is no good.

I had to uninstall the agent to upgrade to another build, to fix another problem i had, and despite acronis support promising me that my tasks would not be affected, they were all lost when i installed the updated agent.

Hours of time setting up backup tasks that were not even neccesary in TI9 WASTED. I spend more time attending to backup problems now, than any other network issues. I cant progress on new projects because BR10 and the stupid file naming system is wasting my time!

Hello all!

First of all thank you for all your comments – we really value our customer’s feedback. It looks like this product feature is causing lots of inconveniences, and will try to shed some light to the situation and answer all your questions. Should I miss something - let me know.

I entirely understand your concern and how the backup naming is inconvenient at the moment. We in support are surely aware of that - we receive your direct feedback - and made aware the rest of the company. We have submitted the request to the development team about changing the style of working with the backup names. But the most difficult thing here - and the reason why we haven't changed the way of naming the backups yet -  is that the Product architecture and the style of working of the retention rules, manual backup options, managing the vaults, etc. are closely tied to the way of backup naming - the one we have at the moment. We will need to re-write the major part of the product to change the situation

Unfortunately I do not have any information concerning when it will be possible to do - that is the question to the Marketing, Product Management and Development team.

Since this is a major decision our Marketing team will be reviewing all the feedback to identify the priority for such product redesign. Meanwhile I'm going to contact the Acronis Backup and Recovery Product Manager and discuss all your comments and suggestions with him and the Management Team - this will allow me to update you with the latest news and - hopefully - speed up the process of changing product design or getting acceptable workarounds.

I would like to assure you that your opinion is important for us - we build our products for you. So all your feedback and concerns are reviewed and worked on.  I will personally take care of this topic and will keep you posted on the progress.

Should you have any additional concerns, suggestions or comments - feel free to share them with us.

Thank you for your cooperation and patience.

The file name problem has been plaguing me since TI9. Then the techs suggested that I upgrade to BR10. Which didn't resolve the issue. My issue is that sometimes the file name (policyname_servername_date_time.tib) will mysteriously turn into (date_time.tib) with no policename_servername. For example: FULL_SERVER_2009_12_14_13_55.TIB will become 2009_12_14_13_55.TIB.

The cleanup task doesn't work. Previously, with TI9. I only wanted to keep 2 days worth of backups and was able to do that automatically with the configuration. I haven't been able to do this since I upgraded to B&R10. It's very annoying because my disk space will fill up and I need to manually delete older backups.

If it helps your marketing team, i will be requesting a full refund for my BR10 Advanced server, universal restore, deduplication and maintenenance to pay for a competitor if it cannot be at least an option to remove the appended file name data. If it means i am left with similar functionality to ti9 when i select the option, thats fine (as long as the dreaded sector63 issue is still gone)

Darryl, sorry for the confusion.  Yana meant our development team is aware of the usability issue for our customers and is looking into the possibility of making changes.  However due to the heavy reliance our product has on the naming convention this is no small task.  We do understand in fact it is quite obvious that our customers want this functionality. 

We will follow up with more on this,

Thanks,

Rob

We're experiencing the same problems over here. We have a standard for backup/imaging with our customers which took a lot of time to implement. We also bought the new BR10 for a new implementation and tried everything without success. Then we saw this topic and gave up. We tried it the new way and it didn't give us the results we wanted and the time this took to implement. We decides to not use Acronis until this matter is resolved and will not advise it to our customers. If this takes too long to adjust, we'll be forced to look for an alternative product and will build a standard around that, leaving Acronis for what it is. We like Acronis very much (at least until version 9) and would regret making that decision.

Acronis ... have you ever thought of continuing development of the Echo series and making it rock solid (if you can do such a thing) so your customers have something to fall back on while you get this ABR 10 nightmare fixed?

Dear Jim,

Thank you for your question and for sharing your concern regarding the Acronis Backup and Recovery product, but could you please kindly be more specific? 

We will gladly help you with all your questions and work on resolving all your concerns, but we need to know exactly what's confusing you.

Thank you in advance!

Regards,

Sergey Kandaurov

I guess first I should address Yana's question about making Echo Server rock solid. There is one very nagging, show stopping issue with Echo Server. It has been in existance since Dec 2005. It is the dreaded Sector 63 error. Still un-resloved. Rather then mucking up this thread here is the link. http://forum.acronis.com/forum/7026

The reason I would like to see Echo Server made absolutely rock solid is because I too can not use B&R 10 because of the inability to specify the image name. I guess hind sight is always 20/20 but why in the would wouldn't Acronis leave the naming convention alone? If the user wanted to make the archive name unique all they would have had to do is use the [date][time] option or doesn't that work as advertised :) It just seems very, very short sighted on Acronis's part to eliminate the user's control of the archive name.

There are way too many problems with B&R 10 the biggest being the naming convention. It would have been nice to have one rock solid release of Echo Server to fall back on. I just don't see all the issues with B&R 10 being fixed anywhere in the near future. I can't start selling B&R 10 for one very simple reason. I can't quote a customer $800 for software and 2 hours installation and configuration then turn right around and have to start putting in countless hours of my time to keep in running right. It isn't fair to me and even more so it isn't fair to my customers...

Thanks Sergey. This thread is the accumulation of many, many other threads and posts over the last six months way too numerous to mention. I know several people have dropped out of the discussion simply because they were sick and tired of not getting an acknowledgement from Acronis about the problem. I for one will hold you to your word. Please post updates as to the progress Acronis making on this issue. Thanks.

Sergey
Thanks for the update. To have the option to name files how i wish, would put some of my faith back in Acronis too.

On this thread I asked:

Each time I create a new backup task, acronis suggests a location like:
Z:\My Backups\MyBackup__@date@.tib

@date@ translates into the backup date. I tried @time@ and that worked.
J:\My Backups\MyBackup__@date@_@time@.tib produced a file name like:
J:\My Backups\MyBackup__10_25_2009_9h11m.tib

• Where are these filename parameters documented?
• Are there more? If y, What are they?
• Can the format of the date and time be changed?

I am using version: Acronis True Image Home 2010.

Yana responded that the answer to my question could be found here and wrote: "I would appreciate if you could let me know whether something still sounds confusing or you have any additional concerns related to the above question - I will be glad to help you!"

The file name parameters are still confusing to me and I still don't know what additional parameter are available or where the are documented.  I have downloaded the manual and I cannot find the information that I need.

With all due respect, I feel that my question is fairly simply and deserves a fairly simple answer.   Please provide the file name documentation that includes the parameters that may be used in the file name definition. Also please provide the format and list any other details around backup file names.

Thanks PB

Thanks... Paul

Paul:

The parameters are listed in the help file under Archive Location

' You can also add useful information to a backup name. To do so, type after a file name one or several of the following text labels, separated by the underscore characters(_):

@date@ - the backup creation date will be added
@time@ - the backup creation time will be added
@user@ - the current user name will be added
@machine@ - the computer name will be added
@task@ - the name of the task that includes the backup will be added
@exec@ - the sequence number of the task run will be added
For example, if you want to name your backup My backup and add date, user name and task name, type the following file name:

My backup@date@_@user@_@task@.tib '

Hi Colin, This helps!!!! Cheers mate.

Sergey wrote:

All,

 

I am the product manager for ABR 10 and I know that not being able to assign file names has a severe impact on some of you.  Let me explain our position, goals and future plans relevant to this discussion.

 

In Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 we have added functionality of built-in archives’ management  based on feedback from many customers. Specifically, many customers complained that managing archives as .tib files was not easy, and often resulted in mistakes such as data loss (e.g. deleting full backup and keeping incremental backup). Additionally, implementing sophisticated retention policies required use of 3rd party tools or scripting.

 

To provide functionality such as ability to have more than one full backup in one archive, we introduced a new naming scheme, with timestamp attached to a file name in order to make them unique.

 

We admit, however, that this change produced severe problems for some of our advanced customers. We will  fix this issue in our future releases by allowing users to choose between controlling .tib file name and sophisticated archives’ management functionality. At the same time, we will be improving build-in functionality of archive management to remove a need to manage files manually.

 

Meanwhile, I would recommend looking at build-in retention policies, dual-destination and (new in Update 1) option to remove old backups when out of free space. In most cases, this will be sufficient, and will not require any scripting.

Regards,

Sergey Kandaurov

Hi Sergey. It has been well over a month since you promised a fix to this horrid file naming convention. No one has forgotten about it. We are all just waiting. Can you give us an update?

Hi Mark! As for today, we have designed the solution, and is considering possibility to implement it in one of further ABR10 updates or in the next version. We understand how important it is for some of our customers, that's why we're putting any effort to make it available as soon as we can.

bodgy wrote:

Paul:

The parameters are listed in the help file under Archive Location

' You can also add useful information to a backup name. To do so, type after a file name one or several of the following text labels, separated by the underscore characters(_):

@date@ - the backup creation date will be added
@time@ - the backup creation time will be added
@user@ - the current user name will be added
@machine@ - the computer name will be added
@task@ - the name of the task that includes the backup will be added
@exec@ - the sequence number of the task run will be added
For example, if you want to name your backup My backup and add date, user name and task name, type the following file name:

My backup@date@_@user@_@task@.tib '

bodgy wrote:

Paul:

The parameters are listed in the help file under Archive Location

' You can also add useful information to a backup name. To do so, type after a file name one or several of the following text labels, separated by the underscore characters(_):

@date@ - the backup creation date will be added
@time@ - the backup creation time will be added
@user@ - the current user name will be added
@machine@ - the computer name will be added
@task@ - the name of the task that includes the backup will be added
@exec@ - the sequence number of the task run will be added
For example, if you want to name your backup My backup and add date, user name and task name, type the following file name:

My backup@date@_@user@_@task@.tib '

bodgy wrote:

Paul:
You can also add useful information to a backup name. To do so, type after a file name one or several of the following text labels, separated by the underscore characters(_):

@date@ - the backup creation date will be added

When will the IT pro at Acronis who decided to use ddmmyyy as the format for @date@ in TI 2010 be taken out and shot?!

Backups no longer sort into a sensible sequence.

When will this be fixed, either by reverting to yyyymmdd (as in previous versions) or by allowing users to choose the format?

Probably never :) The file naming issue is as old as B&R 10 itself and they have yet to do anything about it.

How about it Sergey? Your post on 2/2/2010 seemed to state it is ready for the next release. How about an ETA?

Earth to Acronis. Come in Acronis where ever you are...

Thanks for the response Sergey. I see after all the heat Acronis has taken for their lack of support you have listened LOL! Was this promised update just a lie you told us to stop the million threads it generated or does this update really exist?

Jim,

We're working on the solution and will ship it as part of one of ongoing updates/releases.

What you can currently download from the web is ABR10 U1. Next update (ABR10 U2) will be available in a few weeks and will have many fixes and improvements, but it will not contain changes related to this issue. We need to carefully weight every fix/enhancement we ship in update based on timeframe, complexity, severity, number of users concerned, risk, etc.  The fix for this issue wouldn't be ready in time to be included in U2 with proper quality. It will be delivered later on, hopefully in U3, - but I cannot commit on specific date or update number though.

You lost me. Did Acronis run out of build numbers LOL. What is U1, U2, U3?

You say ABR10 U1. Do you mean Build 11345? ABR10 U2? Do you mean the next "build"?

Consider yourself found Jim! :) the 'U' might mean Upgrade or as you guessed build.

Exactly, Colin! ABR10 Update 1 is build #11345. We don't know yet which build will be a next update, that's why we call it "Update 2" or "U2".

Sergey wrote:

Jim,

We're working on the solution and will ship it as part of one of ongoing updates/releases. [...] It will be delivered later on, hopefully in U3, - but I cannot commit on specific date or update number though.

Hopefully? I do not think you will ever resolve this issue, because if several months of complaining by some big custromers doesn't help, what does? Is it realy that hard to change?!? If you had intentions to fix this, you'd know the roadmap of your own software.

I agree. Of all the problem there are with BR10 this file naming convention seems to be the biggest. Right from the initial release hundreds and hundreds of customers from across the globe were up in arms and complaining about it. It took months and thread after thread to get Acronis to even acknowledge the problem. Finally months ago they acknowledged it and said a fix was in the works.

It should have been one of the first things they addressed but now it has turned in to an empty promise with no definitive time line. It appears Acronis feels that if they make a promise and ignore that the problem will go away. There have not been a lot of posts about the issue for a long, long time.

Your customers haven't forgotten Acronis. They have given up. You can only run it to a brick wall so many times until you figure out the brick wall isn't moving. People have either found third party work arounds or have gone back to Echo Server. Neither is acceptable but what else can you do?

What can you do? Well, we decided to switch to Paragon for some new customers and older customers stay at version 9.1 or 9.5 of Acronis. Some customers still wanted Acronis with the work around. Since we are doing ESX and Hyper-V more and more, the need for imaging software is getting lower. BackupExec 2010 has some great features in that area. We are not taking Acronis as the standard imaging solution in our projects anymore. Time to move on. :)

This is directed to Sergey and others @ Acronis;

I wrote about the degredation of the filename issue (no control, etc) some 6 months ago (2009-11-09). It is quite obvious that this causes countless problems for users and, as evidenced in the post before this, promising but *failing* to fix the issues has resulted in Acronis to loosing customers.

Clearly you have acknowledged the requirement that users have the option control the filename and have promised to do so. On 2009-12-24 you promised a fix would be forthcoming. Again you indicated same on 2010-03-05.

Do we have that fix?

If not - when?

We need it.

Would the Acronis folks PLEASE reply to my post of 2010-04-30 ?

Ken Brown wrote:

This is directed to Sergey and others @ Acronis;

I wrote about the degredation of the filename issue (no control, etc) some 6 months ago (2009-11-09). It is quite obvious that this causes countless problems for users and, as evidenced in the post before this, promising but *failing* to fix the issues has resulted in Acronis to loosing customers.

Clearly you have acknowledged the requirement that users have the option control the filename and have promised to do so. On 2009-12-24 you promised a fix would be forthcoming. Again you indicated same on 2010-03-05.

Do we have that fix?

If not - when?

We need it.

Hi Ken,

This fix is planned for ABR10 Update 3 which is due this summer. If you like - drop me a personal message and I could send you some design documentation to discuss. We'd like to be sure that the change we're making will actually solve the problem.

Your comment to Ken "We'd like to be sure that the change we're making will actually solve the problem" is just a little scarey.

This thread started 2009-08-26 but there were many, many other threads started much earlier. Basically ever since BR10 was first released. After many, many different threads this one finally became the "Offical File Naming Thread".

It almost sounds like Acronis is still trying to figure out what the issues is... everyone please correct me if I miss speak but users need total, explict control over the archive image name. Appending the date and time to the archive image name should be an OPTION. Not mandatory. One of the primary reasons being that this will allow a pervious backup with the same archive image name to be over written.

I certainly hope that is what U3 is designed to do. Anything short of that ... OMG!

I agree that there MUST be an option for the user to have TOTAL control over the file name.

Personally I would like my backup sets to be named something like "Backup-Set-Name-2010-05-01".  So, I'd like to have the options of;

1) specifying the base file name ("Backup-Set-Name")

2) append text to that filename like the date AND to have control over the formatting of the date to result in YYYY-MM-DD ("2010-05-01" for a backup done on May 1, 2010) because, among other things, this will allow me to sort backup sets by date!

3) specify what the separator character is between base file name and any other appended text - that might be "no character" or some other character, and in my case the character is a hyphen "-", because that's what I like for readability.

There may be other text folks want to append other types of text so lets have options like [date], [time], [sequence], [separator] where the user can control the format of those options.  So in my example, after having specified the format of the options, I would say the file name would be:

      Full-Backup[separator][date] 

See the attached image for an example.

I got the idea of using [date] and other such variables from the page 66 Acronis True Image Workstation User's Guide (Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2009).

      Including [date] in the backup file name will add to the name the time and date of the backup creation formatted as <DD-Month-YYYY HH:MM:SS>. Example: C:\MyBackup[date].tib.

I say users must have this option.  What I mean is that if Acronis wants to use a certain scheme for file names then great, whatever they want will be fine. 

But regardless of what scheme Acronis might like to use - or even recommend that we use - give users the OPTION of using Acronis' scheme or of using one of our choosing - and maybe give us some tools (like those options in brackets) to help us out.

Well Sergey.. it has been a year. Are we getting any closer to fixing this problem? The summer is half over and no sign of the much anticipated U3 release.

I somehow have the feeling that Acronis's stance might be "if we ignore it.. it will probably go away". I don't think that is the case. It has to have crippled sales and I think most of your customer base has either gone elsewhere or is patiently waiting. I know one thing for sure... no one has forgotten about this major show-stopper.

Jim Becher wrote:

Well Sergey.. it has been a year. Are we getting any closer to fixing this problem? The summer is half over and no sign of the much anticipated U3 release.

I somehow have the feeling that Acronis's stance might be "if we ignore it.. it will probably go away". I don't think that is the case. It has to have crippled sales and I think most of your customer base has either gone elsewhere or is patiently waiting. I know one thing for sure... no one has forgotten about this major show-stopper.

Jim, this is still in U3, which is now being delayed due to another issue, not relevant to this discussion. I would expect U3 to go public pretty soon, likely in a month or two.

I also agree with above posters. Give us back the free naming convention and for my opinion the GUI of the Echo series - clean and simple. We also do have a lot of customers using Acronis Trueimage Server and with more upcomig Windows 20008R2 Server Installations the problme with BAR 10 is getting more present. Personally, I loved the Acronis Versions 8.x, 9.x and Echo (I also think the Universal REstore was better) and do not need all the stuff of BAR 10. As someone mentioned above - Backup Exec 2010 would then be the one...So, please do some changes - at least the naming convention thing...otherwise we will have to sell Backup Exec 2010 and Drive Snapshot for the imaging...

How about it Sergey? Where is U3? August has come and gone and it looks like Acronis is ignoring the file naming convention. I am getting really sick and tired of having to rename my backup archives after backing up simple to get them named the way I want them names. Is the genius that developed this naming convention still employed?

Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 U3 (build 12443) is released today. There's a checkbox now when you create a backup plan that sets Echo-like naming. Let me know your feedback.

Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 U3 (build 12443) is released today. There's a checkbox now when you create a backup plan that sets Echo-like naming. Let me know your feedback.

The German Version is still build #11639 so I have to wait until it is available in our language.

Hello all
I have had the same problems as named in the previous comments. I can tell, that it is possible (and very usefull) to name your backup files in this format:
2010_10_07_13_58_16_224D.TIB (which means yyyy.mm.dd and hour.minutes.seconds and sequence number)

It is the format several posters has asked for.

You just have to follow the following sequence when you set up your backup:

1. Create a backup location
2. Create a task. But notice, when you select the backup file location in the task wizard, DON'T SELECT THE DRIVE AND FOLDER FROM THE TREE, but select the Backup Location you just have created. You will find it in the top of the tree, just below the Acronis Secure Zone. Then you will se that the filename field at the bottom of the window saying "No file name is required in this area".
3. Each time that task is running the backup file will be named automaticly in the format shown first in my posting.

You can have several backup locations to which you can tie tasks. Just name the backup locations the name of your PC's or whatever you prefer.

I hope this will solve your problems. I am using "Acronis® True Image Home® version 11.0 (build 8.053)".

I wonder why Acronis hasn't focused more on this in the manual, the help function and in this thread.

Anyway the backup program is very good in my opinion.

Regards
Steffen
from Denmark

Serge, thank you...Echo file naming works well - a big improvement - in my opinion.

thx

Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 U3 (build 12443) is released today. There's a checkbox now when you create a backup plan that sets Echo-like naming. Let me know your feedback.