Auto clean-up not working

James, does the auto cleanup work correctly if you only use one USB stick without rotating to a second one?

Even though your two USB sticks have been allocated the same drive letter, the devices themselves have a unique drive identifier from the hardware and this can cause problems because the drive UUID is recorded in the Acronis database for the initial target drive that was connected when the first backup was created.

What type of backup are you making here, i.e. are you using Incremental or Differential or only Full backups of your files?  

The type of backup scheme influences how auto cleanup works, i.e. cleanup works on version chains, where the minimal version chain size = 1 full backup when no incremental or differential images are created or configured in the backup task.

If you include differential or incremental backups in the chain, the your 7 days doesn't start counting until the version chain is complete and a new version chain has been started.  For example: a Full backup plus 5 incremental backups which are made on consequative days would only start aging when the next Full backup was created on day 7, so would not be cleaned until day 14.

AGree with Steve.  Acronis is not designed to use the same backup task with different drives.  You may only have hit half of your intended backups if swapping them every other week as they may both be at teh same count (for instance both at 2 instead of it recognizing that 4 have completed).  Also, 7 days doesn't kick in until the start of the next chain, which is the completiong of the first full in the next chain.  

I am doing a full backup of data files and folders daily, Mon thru Sat, then remove the USB stick and take if off site.  I have 4 or 5 sticks each of a weeks backups.  I bring the oldest in from off site and insert it into the same USB port each weekend so it comes in with 6 backups being approx. a month old already on it.  I have the custom scheduled full backup task option set to delete any backup older than 7 days.  The scheduled backup works and appends a new backup on the USB stick but does NOT delete any previous backups.  All backups are FULL backups.  Does this help to clarify the schem I am trying to do?  I appreciate your questions and comments.  Steve, I have not yet tried to see if deleting works on single stick since I want to keep a current weeks worth and do not have room for too many full ones but I will try it. --James

P.S.  I also, with the same task, do a Reserve backup to computer 2nd hard drive and do understand that Reserve backups will not be auto-deleted but the main full backups should but do not. I also am doing a validation when backup is created.

Also, every week on Sun I have a separate task that does a hard drive image backup to a 2nd hard drive and which does do the requested clean-up of any backups greater than total of two backups.  Works fine.

Ultimately, I still think it's the use of the same task for multiple USB drives that is the problem.  Perhaps not if you are doing the exact same setup to another drive once per week, but this is where I would tend to focus right now.

IF it were me, I'd set the backup drives you swap out each week with different letters in Windows (fairly far down the line so Windows doesn't ever try to assign another due to other drives being plugged in before).  I would create 2 different backup tasks that are identical, but one for each specific drive and it's specific drive letter.  For the cleanup, since you are doing these daily and all are full, I would set the cleanup from 7 days to  "store no more than 7 recent version chains".  Then, when the 8th full completes, the oldest one should get removed automatically right after that job is done.  Is there any benefit of having your drives with the exact same drive letter in this setup (robocopy scripts for file synching or something?  If not, I think using different letters will fair better with the 2 backp scripts).

One other thought...

If you ever go in and change the task in anyway, your cleanup time gets reset.  For instance, if you have it set to delete a backup after 7 days, but go in on day 6 and change an exclusion or some other item and hit save, you now have to wait 7 more days.  Every time you hit save on the task (instead of cancel) if you check the settings, this also resets that time.  Not sure if that's happening at all, but just want to point that out.

James Huffman wrote:

I am doing a full backup of data files and folders daily, Mon thru Sat, then remove the USB stick and take if off site.  I have 4 or 5 sticks each of a weeks backups.  I bring the oldest in from off site and insert it into the same USB port each weekend so it comes in with 6 backups being approx. a month old already on it.  I have the custom scheduled full backup task option set to delete any backup older than 7 days.  

James, your scenario is more complicated than both Bobbo and I first thought if you are using not just 2 different USB memory sticks, but 4 or 5 sticks as per your quote above.

The issue remains that each USB stick has a unique identifier (UUID) and each Acronis backup task can only record one UUID in the Acronis database, so by changing between 4 or 5 sticks over an extended period of time will only serve to confuse the database with regard to auto cleanup actions, this because Acronis works on the basis that each task writes to only one backup drive and therefore expects to see ALL backups on that one drive, not just one weeks worth of backups.

I personally do not trust USB memory sticks sufficiently to want to put my system backup images on them - I have had too many that have died unexpectedly with a total loss of all data content.  

I would recommend changing to 2 or 3 USB hard drives of a higher capacity than the USB sticks, and creating one task for each such USB hard drive, along with pre-allocating the drive letters from the end of the alphabet, one per drive (different for each).  You will still need to manage the scheduling of these separate tasks but you could adopt an approach as shown in the screen shot attached below, where for each task you select a specific set of days when that task will run, with the next task taking the next set of days etc.

Hi Steve & Bobbo, My use of USB sticks is for some business data only folders and files that change daily.  My rationale for what I was doing was wanting to get backups of frequently changing data off site in case of some kind of disaster.  Thumb drives are so convenient to transport and store.  I agree with some risk of failure but my method would still have a fairly recent backup available.  I previously was using Acronis 2010 and doing the same data backups but weekly on optical R/W discs of which occasonially one would fail.  I would manually erase a previously used disc and rewrite to it using multible discs but individually in rotation. I felt that doing the same thing but daily on USB-3 sticks would at least be equally reliable as optical discs and more transportable, convenient and stored safer.  It appears that my current method and backups are restorable except that the clean-up features do not work the way automatically as I thought they should being all FULL backups.  I can use Windows Explorer to delete the older backup files manually instead of using your proposal, can I not?  I am not arguing with you but explaining my purpose.  What other flaws do you see in what I am doing?

I do backup my system images of Drive C onto a second internal physical hard Drive D weekly.  Works fine with 2016 as far as I know.

This computer is a new custom built Windows 10 with lots of horsepower but I am not particularly computer savy.  Using SanDisk USB 3.0

Thanks for your time and patience in helping me.

James, if you are happy with managing the clean-up of old backs on your USB sticks and the system you have works for you, then there should be no reason why you can't continue with it.  As you are doing a separate system image weekly without any drive changes etc, then you already have a further fall back position for a worse case scenario.

Thank you, Steve.  I will continue at least for now. I am still relatively new with 2016 so may have questions in the future.  Thanks again.