disappearing .tib file

What is the destination of the backup image file? Are you saving the file to a partition on your system drive, or is it stored on an externally connected or spare drive in the system. Another poster reported an issue similar to this one when creating an image from the standard Linux Rescue Media to a data partition on the same physical disk and/or external drive on a Windows 8 system. I have a test system that I can use to duplicate your issue, if you can provide more information about the exact procedure and destination that you are using.

When booted to the rescue media, you may have to select "browse" when selecting files to recover, to locate the backup files. They may not populate in the Windows on their own. In the other post by a different user, the backup files could still be located while booted to the Rescue Media.

Also, when booted to the Rescue Media, the drive letters assigned by Linux (Acronis Rescue Media is Linux based) are sometimes different than in Windows, and hidden partitions on your drives could even be assigned drive letters. If you happened to store you backup file on a partition that is not normally visible in Widows, but is visible when booted to the Rescue Media, you would not be able to locate the files when booted into Windows.

A first place to start would be a Windows search and be sure all the drives are connected which might be involved.
Search for
*.TIB

Maybe Win 8 is different. Check to make sure all your system files are viewable, etc.

James,

I'm performing the backup to an external USB 3 drive. I've also tried it to a separate internal drive. Both attempts have been successful and verified. However, the .tib files were gone when I was back in W8.

When I went into browse from the bootable media, the images could not be found.

Finally, independent of assigned drive letter, I had done a W8 search for the .tib files (thanks GroverH) when this problem 1st revealed itself.

Thanks,
Steve

This could be a Windows ownership/permissions issue. Perhaps your Windows user account doesn't have read permissions on that directory.

Thanks tuttle, I'm the administrator on this particular machine.

Regards,
Steve

Stephen Baca wrote:

Thanks tuttle, I'm the administrator on this particular machine.

You still may not have permission on all directories. Strange, but true. The administrator account is not a true all-powerful-with-rights-to-everything account. It actually runs normally as just a standard user, until elevated. Just because you're administrator doesn't by definition mean you have rights to all files and folders.

Thanks tuttle. I'd appreciate any specific suggestions.

bootmedia Acronis was also not able to find the file for a restore.

Regards,
Stephen

Stephen Baca wrote:

bootmedia Acronis was also not able to find the file for a restore.

Ah, well, you hadn't told us that. That would seem to rule out a Windows ownership/permissions issue. Any other relevant information you've neglected?

That's curious indeed.

This is certainly a bug of some kind. Using 2013 build 5551 (current release). When booted to the Rescue Media, creating a folder while browsing to a destination drive (internal 2nd DATA only partition - volume was created and formatted in Windows 8 under my administrative user account), after creating a backup file into this folder, and rebooting into Windows 8, the folder was visible, but I did not have read access to the contents until I assigned permissions to the folder to allow me to do so. Also the .tib file could not be opened by Acronis. The .tib file also had to have permissions granted to it individually for me to view/change the security information on the file. Security settings of both the folder and the file showed "Unable to display Owner". I had to take ownership of the folder and the files, and to assign rights to my account to be able to use the folder and file correctly. Apparently, when booted to the Linux based Acronis Rescue Media, rights to the folders and files created during operations in the Rescue Environment, do not fully allow access when booted into Windows 8 without modifying the permissions.

JamesF,

Any developments?

Thanks for your help in this matter.

Regards,
Stephen

Stephen,

I am only a volunteer here.

Since this issue relates to your ability to restore/recover the .tib file that is "missing", you should open an official support case with Acronis. http://forum.acronis.com/forum/18623 There is no charge for restore/recovery issues, so be sure to approach this problem in that manner.

I routinely use my WinPE Acronis Rescue Media (Windows 7/8 based) that I created with the help of the 2013 Plus Pack (optional purchase). This issue does not seem to be present when using the WinPE Rescue Media.

I flagged this Forum topic so that the Forum moderators will take a look at this issue, but official Acronis support does not come from the Forums.

James

 Hello all,

Thank you for taking time to contact us.

Stephen,

It is not clear, how have you searched for the backup by means of True image? Have you used the option "Search for backups at startup"? Have you tried to add the archive to the database by means of Browse for backup option?

I assume that the issue can be different from the behavior described by James. I am sending a PM to him for details.  

Thank you.

I am using Acronis True Image Home 2011, Update 3 (build 6942) and running Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit.

Starting a month or so ago, the .tib files in My Backups folder would disappear and the backup would fail. The backups are on WD My Book 3.0 USB drives connected via USB 2. If the WD drive is powered off and then back on, the .tib files reappear. Then all is well for a day or two when they disappear again. This happens on all three of the WD drives.

Only the files in the My Backups folder disappear -- all other files on the drive are always there.

Ron

Ronald,

Did they disappear when viewing them from within TI or from Windows Explorer?

Do you have the WD imaging or filing software installed as well?

Did this start happening after a Widnows update?

tuttle wrote:

Stephen Baca wrote:

bootmedia Acronis was also not able to find the file for a restore.

Ah, well, you hadn't told us that. That would seem to rule out a Windows ownership/permissions issue. Any other relevant information you've neglected?

Well, no that isn't true. From StevenB's first post on this:
"I even go back to the Acronis Bootable media and it can't find any .tib files!!"

But that aside for a moment... and maybe this is not relevent but I wondered if this machine is setup for dual boot with more than one version of windows [or anything else] on it?

Sorry to revive an old topic, but a similar thing happened to me today and I wonder if any solution has been found.

I installed Win8.1 on my C partition and booted Acronis to create a backup. I chose the root of the D partition as the location for the .tib.

Having restarted the computer I opened the D root folder wanting to copy the .tib to my external drive. The .tib WAS there, and I dragged and dropped it to the ext. drive, only to get a popup message right away, saying that the copying failed because the file cannot be found at the source location, and right before my eyes the .tib disappeared from view.

I believe that the actual file is still there, but somehow hidden ("show hidden files and folders" is on). The reason why I believe so is that when I select all the existing folders on D and check the size in properties (cca 2GB), it is smaller than the displayed used space of D partition (cca 9GB), by cca 7GB, which was the size of the .tib.

Although no other messages were displayed, I also checked the antivirus quarantine to see if maybe for some reason it was considered a harmful file, but there was no sign of it.

Any help will be appreciated.

Sorry to revive an old topic but similar thing happened me this week. I struggled a lot and frustrated. Later I figured out the problem.

How does the problem occurs?
I have a laptop with W10 installed. I shut down my computer from start menu. Boot my PC from Acronis TI 2016. I back up partition C into empty NTFS partition E. The process finishes without any error. Before closing the application, I check the file from the restore tab. The file is there E:\C_full_b1_s1_v1.tib. However when I restart my computer I can't find tib file in E:\ drive. It is empty. Neither MSDOS dir command lists the file nor SpaceSniffer shows it but I can see from the drive options that 16GB is used. Where is the file then? It is not even inside the trash.

This is what actually happens:
W10 has fast start up feature. when I shut down Windows, it writes something to hiberfil.sys which is like hibernating, and shutdowns pc without unmounting drives. Acronis bootable media saves the .tib file on the unmounted drive. This file is not recognized by windows. You can see it again from the Acronis bootable media or any linux distro. However in Windows when you save something on E drive, W10 overwrites the .tib file and after that even Acronis bootable media can't recognize it. You have to format E drive to delete the file otherwise the useless file will occupy partition.

Solution:
You should shutdown PC, completely, before booting from CD. You can do it by start menu > restart button. Fast startup will be disabled when restarting. When PC is shutdown, and is starting back, boot from CD to backup. You can also disable fast startup from power options so that it will be disabled for all shutdowns.

Hope it helps someone.

Thanks for the tip  seven Kul.

This is crazy. Almost every computer now has windows 8 or up, and all of them have the special shutdown that acctualy hibernates to speed up.

If acronis can`t solve this, the tool is almost useless.

I`m having the same problem with windows 8 and acronis bootable media 2015

They should at least but a big warning somewere.

Lombas, 

The issue here is simply that the Windows Hybrid shutdown (aka hibernation shutdown) which allows for Fast Start does not fully shutdown the system, so that when you use any boot media (Acronis or otherwise), you are still operating outside of the hybrid environment and changes made will be lost because when you restart the system and the data stored in the hibernation file are restored, they have no record, reference or knowledge of the actions that were performed from boot media.

The simple workaround for this issue is to use the option to Restart Windows when you want to boot from DVD / CD or USB based rescue media.  Restart does what it says on the tin - it performs a normal shutdown before restarting without using the hibernation file as an intermediate step.

Acronis has been criticised in other forum posts because of disabling Windows Fast Start to perform some backup operations - so I would guess this is one of those no win areas.  If they don't disable it for rescue media, they are wrong, if they do disable it, they are wrong too!

As I said, there should be at least a warning about this. I lost an image of my system, beause i save it in my data partition, both on the same drive.

And I can`t even clear the space. I lost the space also. I `m still searching how to get the space back without formating the whole drive.

But I understand your point and thank you for the post.

seven kul wrote:

This is what actually happens:

W10 has fast start up feature. when I shut down Windows, it writes something to hiberfil.sys which is like hibernating, and shutdowns pc without unmounting drives. Acronis bootable media saves the .tib file on the unmounted drive. This file is not recognized by windows. You can see it again from the Acronis bootable media or any linux distro. However in Windows when you save something on E drive, W10 overwrites the .tib file and after that even Acronis bootable media can't recognize it. You have to format E drive to delete the file otherwise the useless file will occupy partition.

Steve Smith wrote:

The issue here is simply that the Windows Hybrid shutdown (aka hibernation shutdown) which allows for Fast Start does not fully shutdown the system, so that when you use any boot media (Acronis or otherwise), you are still operating outside of the hybrid environment and changes made will be lost because when you restart the system and the data stored in the hibernation file are restored, they have no record, reference or knowledge of the actions that were performed from boot media.

This makes sense, but then how did I see the .tib file in Windows Explorer for that brief moment? That was the part that pi$$ed me off.

"Having restarted the computer I opened the D root folder wanting to copy the .tib to my external drive. The .tib WAS there, and I dragged and dropped it to the ext. drive, only to get a popup message right away, saying that the copying failed because the file cannot be found at the source location, and right before my eyes the .tib disappeared from view."

Lombas wrote:

As I said, there should be at least a warning about this. I lost an image of my system, beause i save it in my data partition, both on the same drive.

And I can`t even clear the space. I lost the space also. I `m still searching how to get the space back without formating the whole drive.

But I understand your point and thank you for the post.

Lombas, not sure where you would expect a warning to be shown here?  Windows Fast Start is a user setting present on the latest Windows versions, where supported, and when you boot from Acronis Rescue Media, you are using a stand-alone OS environment (Linux or Windows PE) that has no awareness of the settings for the main Windows OS, or that you have started that media on a system that is essentially still in hibernation.  This is not as simple as looking to see if the hiberfil.sys hibernation store file is present, as that will be there even on a non-hibernating system.

With regard to your lost space - please could you expand on what you mean here?  My immediate thought is to advice you to run a CHKDSK /F against the drive and let Windows reconcile the Master File Table against the Free Space Index for the drive and correct any errors that may lead to your 'lost space'.

Dejan wrote:

"Having restarted the computer I opened the D root folder wanting to copy the .tib to my external drive. The .tib WAS there, and I dragged and dropped it to the ext. drive, only to get a popup message right away, saying that the copying failed because the file cannot be found at the source location, and right before my eyes the .tib disappeared from view."

Dejan, I suspect that what you saw in Windows Explorer was as a result of the MFT having a record of the TIB file but Windows seeing the same entries as free space and given that you tried to access that MFT entry, it being updated to show that it was actually free space.

Steve Smith, If Acronis software can`t be aware of the state windows, it should display the warning anyway everytime a backup is selected by the user, like a reminder. I don`t know if this is in the manual, but even if it is, I think it`s a big thing, and should be mentioned on the software it self.

About the missing space: I`m refering to the space the .tib file are occupying even after dissapearing, like seven kul mentioned. 

Look a the 40GB discrepancy in my computer (attached file). It seems too much. I belive it`s the result of the .tib file occupying the space.

Tried the CHKDSK /F, but no joy. :-(

Steve Smith wrote:

Dejan, I suspect that what you saw in Windows Explorer was as a result of the MFT having a record of the TIB file but Windows seeing the same entries as free space and given that you tried to access that MFT entry, it being updated to show that it was actually free space.

But that's just it, it wasn't free space - like in the examples before, and you can scroll up to my first post - the file occupies space but isn't shown in the explorer.

Lombas wrote:

If Acronis software can`t be aware of the state windows, it should display the warning anyway everytime a backup is selected by the user, like a reminder. I don`t know if this is in the manual, but even if it is, I think it`s a big thing, and should be mentioned on the software it self.

About the missing space: I`m refering to the space the .tib file are occupying even after dissapearing, like seven kul mentioned. 

Look a the 40GB discrepancy in my computer (attached file). It seems too much. I belive it`s the result of the .tib file occupying the space.

Tried the CHKDSK /F, but no joy. :-(

Lombas, as much as I agree with you about warnings etc, this is something that you need to feedback to Acronis Development by using the Feedback tool in the program or the feedback link on the web.  I am just another user in this user forum just like yourself.

I am not sure that I see any 40GB discrepancy from the screen shot you posted unless you are saying that your drive D: partition size should be shown as being larger than the image shows?

You may need to run CHKDSK /F /R to get it to check all sectors on the drive / partition, but if the actual partition table is showing an incorrect value for the partition size, that may need some other utility to resolve.

Dejan Milinovic wrote:

But that's just it, it wasn't free space - like in the examples before, and you can scroll up to my first post - the file occupies space but isn't shown in the explorer.

Dejan, I found the following webpage which may give more information here: 
Unable to mount Windows (NTFS) filesystem due to hibernation

This is from a Ubuntu Linux forum where the following explanation and warning is given:

Explanation: Why Linux can't open hibernated Windows partitions:

You are seeing this error because you hibernated Windows instead of turning it off the normal way (in newer versions of Windows, hibernate might be the default option).

• Hibernating saves the current state information to the hard disk and then powers down the computer.
• Shutting down the computer closes all programs and ends all running processes before powering down the computer.

When you turn off Windows by hibernating it, you are essentially pausing the system and saving all of that information (into a big file called hiberfil.sys) This way when you resume from hibernation all of your applications and files will be exactly how you left them. It also sets a flag in hiberfil.syshiberfil.sys to let other Operating Systems know that Windows is hibernated.

Making changes to your Windows (ntfsntfs) partition while it is hibernated could be dangerous--it could cause Windows to not resume from hibernation or to crash after resuming. Because of this, the tool (ntfs-3gntfs-3g) that mounts (opens) the partition will not mount it in read-write mode if it sees a hibernation flag. As such, Nautilus, the default file browser, will not be able to automatically open this partition--hence the error message that you see--because it is trying to open it in read-write mode.

If I assume that you are making backups using the standard Acronis rescue media, which is linux based, then because of the type of operation the rescue media is intended to be used for, it appears that it does allow read-write access to your other NTFS partitions even though the system is hibernated.

This would need to be progressed directly with Acronis Support as a potential code defect in the Acronis Boot Media as per document: 18623: How to get Technical Support: Tips, Tricks and Useful Information.

Please see the Note in the above document about the use of this Forum, where it states:

Notes and tips:

•    Forum is not a primary support channel
It’s designed mainly for sharing experience, collecting feedback and joint Community efforts for addressing technical issues
See Acronis Forum Terms of Use.
We’re still doing our best to address as many problems reported as possible. 
We still recommend contacting support directly in case of emergency.

•    How to contact support:

As I urged in my previous post, please post Feedback directly to Acronis Development using the feedback tool in the program or the web feedback page.

Are any of you using a Samsung SSD drive when the disappearing TIB file happens?

No, mine was wester digital.

I gave up on Acronis. Switched to Paragon. I'm serious. Don't have time to waste. I use for personal use, and Paragon has the 2014 free edition for personal use.

I fad to format a 1TB HD to clear the garbage left. It took me a while to transfer everything and back again. 

Thanks Lombas. I never had this happen before. The data is there but I can't see it in Windows or booting with ATI flash drive. Yes, I am viewing hidden files/folders and system files/folders.No search of *.tib will find it. This is very strange. My backup location is a partition of my primary drive. I'm using a Samsung V-NAND SSD 850 EVO drive.

I get the same exact thing happening  to Stephen Baca.

From windows 8 or newer, in most cases, the "Fast Startup" setting is enabled by default. We need to do a full shutdown before backing up. To do this, hold Shift key while clicking Shutdown.

This old post about a bug in ATI, as started by Stephan Baca and explained by Steve Smith, is still very relevant and unsolved:
Yesterday I had exactly the same problem when I tried to make an image of the Efi- and systemdrive (C) (containing Windows 10 version 1709) on the F: drive of the same harddisk (Kingston-SSD) with Acronis Bootable media ATI17.
The image worked fine and was visible with Acronis (12GB) but disappeared from the F: drive when Windows was on. It was still visible however with Linux from another USB-stick.
This happened shortly after the update of Windows 10 to version 1709, which did reset the Windows-settings, including sleep replacing real shutdown.
If ATI cannot detect and change this windows-setting, it should at least give a warning, given the consequences and the complexity of the problem for a normal user.

Huyo, welcome to these User Forums.

I am not sure how Acronis can determine whether your computer is in a Hybrid Sleep state when you have shutdown and booted from a USB Rescue Media stick?

This should be possible when launching a recovery starting from the Windows ATI application where a reboot is needed to perform the action, and doing a backup from that same environment within Windows can be done without the need to reboot.

The only advice here is to ensure that you are using the latest ATI 2017 build # 8058 (Standard) or #6209 (Premium New Generation) so that any changes to the rescue media is used.

Steve Smith wrote:

When you turn off Windows by hibernating it, you are essentially pausing the system and saving all of that information (into a big file called hiberfil.sys) This way when you resume from hibernation all of your applications and files will be exactly how you left them. It also sets a flag in hiberfil.syshiberfil.sys to let other Operating Systems know that Windows is hibernated.

Steve, could this flag be detected by ATI before writing to a system that's hibernated?                  Like in your citation:

Steve Smith wrote:

Making changes to your Windows (ntfs) partition while it is hibernated could be dangerous--it could cause Windows to not resume from hibernation or to crash after resuming. Because of this, the tool (ntfs-3g) that mounts (opens) the partition will not mount it in read-write mode if it sees a hibernation flag

Steve Smith wrote:

I am not sure how Acronis can determine whether your computer is in a Hybrid Sleep state when you have shutdown and booted from a USB Rescue Media stick?
This should be possible when launching a recovery starting from the Windows ATI application...
 

I agree. But I prefer using the rescue media stick because it is simple, light and clean: it does not overload your Windows installation with unrequested tools.
P.S. I am using True Image since 2004 as my main and reliable tool. But when I see an image disappears it makes me panic and question my strategy. Your previous post made me understand what happened. Thanks.

If you are seeing this behaviour when using the latest build of the ATI 2017 rescue media, then I would recommend opening a Support Case directly with Acronis for it.

I would hope that either during the boot process for the rescue media, or in the running of the offline ATI media, that Acronis could check for any hibernation flag that is set for the system though I have not tried testing this myself as I do not use the Windows Fast Start / Hybrid Sleep feature.

Seven Kul's solution is CORRECT: SEE BELOW

All, I decided to quote this entry because it's the one that sent me on the right path which resolved my issue.

Seven's explanation below is detailed and should be read even though I am going to summarize my experience and also add one additional step I did in my process. 

I was also using Acronis TI 2016 and encountering the same issue. I was backing up a Windows 10 v1909 computer.

Prior to discovering this post, I had tried creating images several times and they all disappeared. Turns out, although neither Windows or booting back into Acronis showed the "successful" images I had created. They also didn't acknowledge the space used. So I tried one last time to create an image and got an error that the disk was full. 

After finding this post, while in Windows, I popped in my recovery USB drive and RESTARTED the computer. Once inside Acronis, the disk full error prompted me to try and run the Acronis Drive Cleanser wipe tool under Tools and Utilities and I erased all the data on the drive I was trying to create my image on which was a secondary internal drive. When that wipe completed, I recreated the backup image and told Acronis to SHUTDOWN the computer when the image completed.

Finally, I went back into Windows and the image finally showed up! I even verified that the image was their by going back into Acronis once more. Thank you very much Seven!

seven kul wrote:

Sorry to revive an old topic but similar thing happened me this week. I struggled a lot and frustrated. Later I figured out the problem.

How does the problem occurs?
I have a laptop with W10 installed. I shut down my computer from start menu. Boot my PC from Acronis TI 2016. I back up partition C into empty NTFS partition E. The process finishes without any error. Before closing the application, I check the file from the restore tab. The file is there E:\C_full_b1_s1_v1.tib. However when I restart my computer I can't find tib file in E:\ drive. It is empty. Neither MSDOS dir command lists the file nor SpaceSniffer shows it but I can see from the drive options that 16GB is used. Where is the file then? It is not even inside the trash.

This is what actually happens:
W10 has fast start up feature. when I shut down Windows, it writes something to hiberfil.sys which is like hibernating, and shutdowns pc without unmounting drives. Acronis bootable media saves the .tib file on the unmounted drive. This file is not recognized by windows. You can see it again from the Acronis bootable media or any linux distro. However in Windows when you save something on E drive, W10 overwrites the .tib file and after that even Acronis bootable media can't recognize it. You have to format E drive to delete the file otherwise the useless file will occupy partition.

Solution:
You should shutdown PC, completely, before booting from CD. You can do it by start menu > restart button. Fast startup will be disabled when restarting. When PC is shutdown, and is starting back, boot from CD to backup. You can also disable fast startup from power options so that it will be disabled for all shutdowns.

Hope it helps someone.