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Nonstop Backup is an appalling example of modern software design.

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I have tried very hard to settle down with NSB. However, I have some major problems.

First, the only indication that it is doing anything is the icon in the notification area, hovering says it is started and sometimes says the completion - note, sometimes, as it is not consistent.

Second, I suddenly find in Explorer that the target (destination) disk is high-lighted in red and the available space is very small. Hovering over the icon in notification area now yields no information at all. In addition, on the actual disk being used as target, Explorer show no files or folders, it simply says 'This folder is Empty', although the disk available space is tiny.

QUESTION: what is supposed to be the behaviour of NSB when the target disk is full, does it not start wiping older data off to make room for the new. Why does it not post/show some sort of error message. There used to be logs (IIRR) where one could get a glimmer of info as to what is going on, those have disappeared.

Third, now that I have decided that NSB has stopped due to disk being full, I find (Explorer says that there ar no files on the disk) that I can do nothing to alleviate the situation. So I can only try to restart, throwing away any backup that I have right up to this time!!!

Fourth, I go into Acronis control panel, stop the NSB and delete it from the LH panel... only, I don't, it insists on being there until I restart Acronis. As I restart, I format the target drive to make space and find that Acronis still thinks it is the same full-up drive.  I finally did manage to remove the old NSB and recreate it, but I am not entirely sure how I did it !!

This is the latest in a long line of Acronis True Image Home that I have bought and paid for, and I find it depressing that this NSB remains a real KLUDGE. They must have received so much money from their products but do not seem to actually keep their end of the bargain, which is that they should do their best to make sure that their stuff works. OK a bug or two will happen, but fundamental behaviour should be top of the priority list -- long before worrying about income from clouds.

I am retired but was a professional. By professional, I mean that I was a maths graduate, then masters and worked in computers and their applications from the days of punched tape and cards. I have had to do with masses of complex system, generally in real-time control situations - I am constantly appalled at the lack of any sort of responsibility of softwar providers, and Acronis are certainly no exception. 

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SeptimusFry,

You are not alone with these thoughts.  I have never had the need for NSB so have not used it.  However, the forum comments about it speak to the shortcomings of this particular feature and I do do hope this gets polished up in future releases.  For those of you who bought the application specifically for this purpose, this would indeed be frustrating.  I would strongly encourage you to submit feedback about this through the application and submit it often so that the Acronis developers make this a priority.  We have addressed this in the MVP program with Acronis as well and so we hope it is already getting more traction for upcoming releases, but we'll have to wait for that to happen to see if improvements have been made.

That said, there are several tutorials and informatioin about the limitations of NSB in the user manual.  One of the items you mention though is not addressed and I would like to see that included as well because this is a major issue that is not mentioned (as far as I can tell).  Unfortunately, from what I've read in other forum posts about NSB, the disk will eventually fill up and there is no way to groom this out within Acronis or manually.  This is not a good design (in my opinion) and I'm not sure why grooming is not incorporated or whether or not it will be introduced (fixed) in future releases.  As it is now though, it will fill up the disk at some point and stop when that happens.

As a work-a-round, you may be able to swap in a new disk (maintaining your old backups on the original disk), start a new nonstop task and continue filling up the new drive.  Whether or not you could ever insert the old disk and retrieve data from it though, I'm not sure.  With all other backup schemes, this is possible, but as I have not tried NSB myself, I can't say it that would work or not.  I will try to test this scenario on my spare time and report back if there is success with this work-a-round, but it may be awhile before I can. Perhaps someone else who has already gone through this process can provide more inputs in the mean time. 

Although this does not address the shortfalls of NSB issues like not grooming automatically, I can suggest that you consider using a different backup scheme which will most likely provide you with better results, easier recovery, and automated cleanup if you configure that to occur in your backup task.  I don't know how critical your data is and whether or not it is truly necessary to have NSB.  As NSB does have limitations though, perhaps setting up a backup with frequent incrementals would still meet your needs?  

Currently, incrementals can be taken as often as every 2 hours and the job can use incrementals for life, of be configured to add a full inbetween and continue with incrementals for a period of time.   Again, I know this is not the same as NSB, but I think that you would be much happier with the process, recovery, cleanup and results in the log run, or until NSB is tweaked to make it more functional.  If you need more frequent jobs, you could even setup a second or third backup with the same scheme, but at offset times which would create incrementals even more frequently (One job could run at 12:00PM and incrementals occur every 2 hours after that.  The same exact type of job could be configured as a second task and scheduled to start at 12:30PM and incrementals occur every 2 hours after that.  The same exact type of job could be configured as a third task and scheduled to start at 1:00PM and incrementals occur every 2 hours after that). This would result in incrementals running every 30 minutes - still not quite the same as NSB, but would have nearly the same results, but with none of the limitation of NSB.

I completely understand that your post is to address the problems with NSB, and I don't think there is a debate on that.  I'm just hoping we can help you out until NSB becomes more functional.  

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Using Acronis Nonstop Backup

Acronis Nonstop Backup provides easy protection of your disks and files. It allows you to recover entire disks, individual files and their different versions.

The main purpose of Acronis Nonstop Backup is continuous protection of your data (files, folders, contacts, etc.), though you can use it to protect partitions as well. If you choose to protect an entire partition, you will be able to recover the partition as a whole using the image recovery procedure.

Limitations

  • You can create only one nonstop backup.
  • With Acronis Nonstop Backup you cannot protect:
    • Windows libraries (Documents, Music, etc.)
    • Data stored on external hard drives
  • Nonstop Backup and Try&Decide cannot work simultaneously.

How it works

Once you start Acronis Nonstop Backup, the program will perform an initial full backup of the data selected for protection. Acronis Nonstop Backup will then continually monitor the protected files (including open ones). Once a modification is detected, the changed data is backed up. The shortest interval between the incremental backup operations is five minutes. This allows you to recover your system to an exact point in time.

Acronis Nonstop Backup checks file changes on the disk, not in the memory. If, for instance, you are working in Word and do not use the "Save" operation for a long time, your current changes in the Word document will not be backed up.

You may think that at these backup rates the storage will fill in no time. Do not worry as Acronis True Image 2016 will back up only so called "deltas". This means that only differences between old and new versions will be backed up and not whole changed files. For example, if you use Microsoft Outlook or Windows Mail, your pst file may be very large. Furthermore, it changes with each received or sent E-mail message. Backing up the entire pst file after each change would be an unacceptable waste of your storage space, so Acronis True Image 2016 backs up only its changed parts in addition to the initially backed up file.

Retention rules

Acronis Nonstop Backup keeps all backups for the last 24 hours. The older backups will be consolidated in such a way that Nonstop Backup will keep daily backups for the last 30 days and weekly backups until all Nonstop Backup data destination space is used.

The consolidation will be performed every day between midnight and 01:00 AM. The first consolidation will take place after the Nonstop Backup has been working for at least 24 hours. For example, you have turned on the Nonstop Backup at 10:00 AM on July 12. In this case the first consolidation will be performed between 00:00 and 01:00 AM on July 14. Then the program will consolidate the data every day at the same time. If your computer is turned off between 00:00 and 01:00 AM, the consolidation will start when you turn the computer on. If you turn off Nonstop Backup for some time, the consolidation will start after you turn it on again.

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Acronis Nonstop Backup data storage

Acronis Nonstop Backup data storage can be created on local hard disk drives (both internal and external).

In many cases an external hard disk will be the best choice for Nonstop Backup data storage. You can use an external disk with any of the following interfaces: USB (including USB 3.0), eSATA, FireWire, and SCSI.

You can also use an NAS as the storage, but with one limitation - it must be accessible with the SMB protocol. It does not matter whether an NAS share you want to use for the storage is mapped as a local disk or not. If the share requires login, you will need to provide the correct user name and password. For more information see Authentication settings. Acronis True Image 2016 remembers the credentials and the subsequent connections to the share do not require login.

When an external hard disk or NAS is unavailable, the Nonstop Backup destination can be an internal disk, including a dynamic one. Please note that you cannot use a partition to be protected as a Nonstop Backup storage. If your computer has a single hard disk drive with a single partition, but you want to use Acronis Nonstop Backup anyway, you can create Acronis Secure Zone and use it as the Nonstop Backup data storage.

Before creating Acronis Nonstop Backup data storage, Acronis True Image 2016 checks whether the selected destination has enough free space. It multiplies the volume of data to be protected by 1.2 and compares the calculated value with the available space. If the free space on the destination satisfies this minimum storage size criterion, the destination can be used for storing Nonstop Backup data.

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Nonstop Backup - Frequently asked questions

Why does Acronis Nonstop Backup pause on its own? - This is the designed behavior of Acronis Nonstop Backup. When the system load rises to a critical level, Acronis Nonstop Backup receives the overload alarm from Windows and pauses itself. This is done to aid Windows relieve the load caused by other applications. The overload can be caused by running resource-intensive applications (for example, performing a deep system scan with your antivirus software).

In such a case Nonstop Backup automatically pauses and you cannot restart it. After pausing, Acronis Nonstop Backup gives the system one hour to relieve the load and then attempts to restart.

The automatic restart count for Acronis Nonstop Backup is 6. This means that after the first automatic restart Acronis Nonstop Backup will attempt to restart five more times with intervals of exactly one hour between attempts.

After the sixth unsuccessful attempt, Acronis Nonstop Backup will wait for the next calendar day. On the next day the automatic restart count will automatically reset. When not interfered with, Acronis Nonstop Backup performs six restart attempts per day.

The restart attempt count can be reset by doing any of the following:

  • Restarting Acronis Nonstop Backup service;
  • Rebooting the computer.

Restarting Acronis Nonstop Backup service will only reset the restart count to 0. If the system is still overloaded, Acronis Nonstop Backup will pause again. An Acronis Support Knowledge Base article at http://kb.acronis.com/content/14708 describes the procedure for restarting the Acronis Nonstop Backup service.

Rebooting the computer will reset the load and the restart count. If the system overloads again, Acronis Nonstop Backup will pause.

Why does Acronis Nonstop Backup sometimes cause a high CPU load? - This is the expected behavior of Acronis Nonstop Backup. This may happen on restart of a paused Acronis Nonstop Backup if a considerable amount of protected data has been modified during the pause.

For example, if you manually pause the Acronis Nonstop Backup that you use for protecting your system partition and then install a new application. When you restart Acronis Nonstop Backup, it loads the CPU for some time. However, the process (afcdpsrv.exe) then goes back to normal.

This happens because Acronis Nonstop Backup needs to check the backed up data against the data that have been modified during the pause to ensure protection continuity. If there was a considerable amount of data modified, the process may load CPU for some time. After the check is done and all the modified data is backed up, Acronis Nonstop Backup goes back to normal.

Can I have Acronis Nonstop Backup storage on an FAT32 partition of a local hard disk? - Yes, FAT32 and NTFS partitions can be used as the storage.

Can I set up Acronis Nonstop Backup storage on a network share or NAS? - Yes, Acronis Nonstop Backup supports network shares, mapped drives, NAS and other network attached devices with one limitation - they must use the SMB protocol.

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Basic concepts

Acronis Nonstop Backup uses a special hidden storage for data and metadata. The backed up data is compressed and split into files of about 1 GB. These files also have a proprietary format and the data they contain can be recovered only with the help of Acronis True Image.

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Hello Septimus, 

Thank you for your post and question, please see the following information in the ATIH 2016 with regard to how NonStop Backup works in this product:

http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/ATI2016/index.html#13720.html

The above reference states: 

Acronis Nonstop Backup keeps all backups for the last 24 hours. The older backups will be consolidated in such a way that Nonstop Backup will keep daily backups for the last 30 days and weekly backups until all Nonstop Backup data destination space is used.

There is further information following the above statement that speaks to how consolidation is performed to clean up older data that is removed to allow space for newest data.

See http://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/ATI2016/index.html#9264.html for information on the space requirements needed for NonStop Backup.

On the subject of Logs, these can be found in C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Logs which may be hidden on some systems - the logs are held in XML text document format and can be read with a standard text editor.

With regard to your comments regarding the design, quality, usability etc of this product, please remember that this is a User Forum and not a direct path to Acronis Product Support or Development - please use the Feedback option provided within the Help section of the Acronis main program window to send your concerns and comments directly to Acronis - the feedback tool allows for attachments if needed.

I too am a retired IT professional following a career in both hardware and software technical support for over 30 years at IBM - I offer my time on this forum as a volunteer, as do the majority of others responding to posts here.  We are glad to try to help other users of these Acronis products but cannot directly influence application design.