What advantages would I have by upgrading to ATI 2017?
I have one PC running ATI 2015 Build 6613 and one running ATI 2017. I backup both to a 2 TB Seagate Backup Plus external drive and to the Cloud. Backups are not scheduled. The local backups are full backup every 5 differentials. The Cloud backups back up Entire PC.
Both PCs are running Win 7 SP1 fully patched (except for Win 10 stuff).
I do not use Sync.
Would I gain anything by upgrading the PC running ATI 2015 to 2017?
Thank you for the info, Steve.
My experience today is that bootable ATI 2015 Build 6535, WinPE-based, does not see my external drive for recovery. Luckily I have some Cloud backup.
...chris
Chris, looks like your bootable media does not match your installed version of ATIH 2015 build 6613 when you say it is build 6535? These really should be the same to get the best benefits, plus with the WinPE media you may need to check that you have the latest supported version of Windows ADK or AIK that can be used by the 2015.
You may want to take a look at forum post: 71918: Guide to building a 64 bit UEFI Secure Boot WinPE 5.0 CD or USB Flash Drive running TI 2015 and Universal Restore with DD12 which can be more flexible that the ATIH media builder.
Also see post: 113692: What WinPE version / guide should I use? from the Best Practises Forum.
This is one area where having ATIH 2016 or 2017 does have a big advantage with being able to use the latest Windows 10 ADK to create WinPE Rescue Media.
Some of the past Acronis "upgrades" do not update the WinPE components and leave the existing version in place. You can fix that particular issue by deleting
C:\Program Files (x86)\Acronis\TrueImageHome\WinPE
and then running the installer (make sure to right click and run as admin though - always do this for installers) and then select the option to repair and it should put the correct version in there.
As for WinPE, you can also supply your own drivers, but it's not straight forward in the Acronis Media builder since it does not allow drivers to be installed in the WinPE build. You would need to build the rescue media on a modifiable media (USB flash drive). Then copy the boot.wim file out of the sources folder and put it somewhere accessible on the machine. You can then use DISM gui to inject drivers as needed.
Alternatively, since you have A system running ATI 2017 already, build the winpe from that one (using Windows 10 ADK) and our MVP media builder which should give you better driver support out of the box. The only reason I can think of a system not finding a USB hard drive is that it uses a special controller that uses non-standard USB drivers. I have an ASUS T200 2-in-1, USB works fine on it, but internally, it has a USB controller for the external keyboard hard drive bay and wifi and although the USB ports work fine, getting the internal components to work with winPE has been challenging.
Ultimately, try building the ADK with Windows 10 ADK (1511) and the MVP tool and boot that on your other machine to see if that helps with USB support for that one.
Thank you both for your very helpful posts.
I discovered that my external hard drive was dying. It has since definitely died.
I have used AcronisTrueImage2017_5554.iso to create rescue media. I have been able to test file recovery successfully on both my ATI 2015 and ATI 2017 PCs.
...chris
Chris,
Sorry to hear you lost a drive. However, I am glad that you had good backup and are able to recover in both 2015 and 2017!!!
I've had a few drives die on me over the years. As a result, I've gotten into the habit of taking a few different backups and storing them in different locations (just in case). I had a person at work who had some type of electrical short that took out their computer and the RAID array that housed their backups in one swoop - ouch. Hopefully, you never have to deal with something like that, but just FYI in case you're only doing one backup as well.
I am also doing Cloud backups.
As a consequence of recent events (a crashed external hard drive, finding that I could do backups to the new external hard drive formatted exFAT and then having testing show that I could not recover from it, etc.) I now have:
Directory of L:\Petra backups
2017-02-07 18:47 96,421,984,768 PartDiffSlim_full_b3_s1_v1.tib
2017-02-13 00:14 1,481,695,232 PartDiffSlim_diff_b3_s2_v1.tib
2017-02-15 19:27 <DIR> ..
2017-02-15 19:27 <DIR> .
2017-02-15 20:18 96,766,023,168 PartDiffSlim_full_b2_s1_v1.tib
You will see that b2 is later than b3 !
The backup scheme is a full backup every 5 differentials.
Now, I would be able to recover partitions and files OK, but after ATI has done 5 b2 differentials, it will try to do a b3 full backup.
But b3_s1_v1 already exists, so what will happen?
Can I simply rename the b3's to b1's, or will this cause havoc?
Footnotes:
- I have 2 PCs on my LAN: Molly and Petra. The external hard drive is attached, when needed, to Molly. Each of the PCs has a directory on this drive. To keep the external drive isolated from malware as much as possible, I usually only attach it to Molly when a backup is to be done. Because the backup tasks are the same except for the source and destination, they are both called PartDiffSlim.
- A contributing factor was that to reformat the new external hard drive I copied the b3 .tibs to one of the source drives on Petra. I then probably ran ATI to check on the Cloud backup. Perhaps ATI saw the .tib's on the source drive; I had expected that it would not.
- In creating the backup task on Petra (a week or so ago), I did not check Schedule > Advanced settings > Run when the current device is attached. Perhaps I didn't open Advanced settings, or perhaps I didn't check it because the caption was not clear to me. I now know, having read that section of the manual, that "current device" means "current destination device". I also read that this checkbox only shows when the backup is to a USB flash drive; I wonder whether ATI running on Petra recognises that the destination is a USB flash drive.
- I had checked Ask for first media while creating backup on removable media, hoping that ATI would prompt me to attach the USB drive to Molly.
- I had scheduled the backup but the drive was not attached at the scheduled time. I had expected ATI to prompt me to attach the drive, but it didn't; in fact, it continually errored out. (It probably didn't help that the default was, on error, to make 5 attempts at 30 seconds intervals.)
- I wish there were a way in ATI of displaying all of the settings in Notepad, so one can check them.
...chris
Chris, there are a lot of points in your last update to this topic.
Trying to deal with these one at a time - first the Petra backups with B2 and B3 backup files and B2 being dated later than B3..
This suggests that the older B1 and B2 backup version chains may have been deleted manually from the drive / folder and this has caused some confusion in the Acronis Database that is used to track files and versions.
At this point, my initial thought is to suggest removing the backup task that created these files (just the task settings) and then doing any file name changes to get these back into the correct order. Then use the option to 'Add existing backup' and select the latest dated backup file and let ATIH reconcile the other existing files in the Database information.
Having both of you backup tasks from the two different computers using the exact same task / file name is something I would recommend against doing, i.e. not using PartDiffSlim in two different tasks for different source / destination. We have seen database corruption from other users where this can result in incorrect backup files being deleted when using automatic cleanup due to such confusion in names.
Better to prefix the task name to make each one unique, i.e. M_PartDiffSlim and P_PartDiffSlim at a minimum.
If you continue with the current backup task with the B3 then B2 situation, then ATIH will create a new B3 backup but with _v1-2.tib naming to show that it encountered another file in the folder with the same name(s).
The Advanced settings you mention do not apply to USB HDD drives, so if the drive is not connected when the backup is attempted, the Error Handling settings are employed. You can setup a Pre-Command to test for the USB HDD and abort the task if it is not found.
If you want to look at your task settings in Notepad, then open the C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Scripts folder where you will see files with the .TIS extension - these are where your task configuration settings are stored in XML format, so you could open these - the task name is near the top of the file.
Thank you for your prompt answer.
You wrote: This suggests that the older B1 and B2 backup version chains may have been deleted manually
The B1 and B2 backup version chains were lost in the HDD crash.
You wrote: doing any file name changes to get these back into the correct order
In Windows Explorer or somehow in ATIH?
I have been able to read a .tis file. Perhaps a useful contribution would be an AutoIt script that would display the settings per the ATIH UI checkbox captions. I might write such a script when I have time (and get beyond my present problem).
...chris
Chris, sorry didn't pick up that the B1 & B2 chains were lost in the HDD crash.
For the file name changes, this would be via Explorer as doing this from with ATIH would only affect new files created after the name change, and the object is to get the chains back into sequence again.
You are welcome to create an AutoIt script to display the .TIS file task settings, this could be useful to others if you were willing to share it.
Steve,
Thanks. When I get round to writing the AutoIt script, I will happily share it.
...chris
I have Removed the PartDiffSlim task from ATIH.
In Windows Explorer, I have renamed PartDiffSlim_full_b2_s1_v1.tib to PartDiffSlim_full_b4_s1_v1.tib
Should I rename all 3 .tib files from PartDiffSlim ... to P_PartDiffSlim ... before creating a P_PartDiffSlim task?
...chris
Chris, you can rename the files as you prefer, but I would recommend starting the files at B1 for the oldest sequence, then B2 for the next sequence etc.
You don't need to create a task with the same name, just use the Add existing backup option at the bottom (to the right of Add new backup) and it should pickup the name from the file you choose. Choose the most recent file and this should pick up the other files in the same chain using the same name stem.
Once you see the task added in the main GUI, you will still need to reconfigure the Source selections, plus confirm that all other settings are as you want them.
Steve, I was able to follow your instructions. When I renamed the task, I called it P_PartDiffSlim. I then did a backup. This created PartDiffSlim_diff_b2_s2_v1.tlb 746 MB.
There was one oddity: after the backup, the UI showed the task name as PartDiffSlim_full_b2_s1_v1 .
Should I just rename it again?
...chris
Chris, you should be able to just rename the task in the main GUI (to remove the extra _full_ etc chars).
I am happy that the automatic renaming was not more trouble!
I renamed the task P_PartDiffSlim.
Thanks for all the help.
...chris
Glad it all worked for you Chris.