File Deletion

Tim, welcome to these User Forums.

When you say that the files are in the #recycle folder of the backup, am I correct in assuming that you mean that these are inside an Acronis .TIB archive file?

If so, then all .TIB archive files are Read-Only files - you cannot delete content from such files.

You would need to delete the .TIB and perform another backup to replace it with the recycle folder files excluded.

Note: the default ATI settings would already exclude such files unless you have changed these settings, or the backup .TIB file was created by the offline, bootable Rescue Media where exclusions have to be set manually. 
See the ATI 2018 User Guide: Excluding items from backup

Just to be clear, the files in question are located on your NAS and not on your computer. As Steve points out, if the files are contained within an *.tib file they cannot be removed as there is no way of editing an *.tib file.

Ian

Tim, the good news here is that ATI 2018 Active Protection does not protect .tib files that are located on remote / network devices like your Synology NAS, so you can delete any of these without any real issues other than dealing with pop-up messages about such deleted files when you continue to run the backup task that created them.

You can avoid the pop-up messages by performing a Validation for the backup task and then selecting the Ignore option for each message that is shown, this will update / reconcile the information held in the Acronis Database for the task.

The presence of the #recycle folder on your NAS suggests that you have been mapping a Windows drive letter to your NAS and deleting files from within Windows, therefore if you do the same again and simply 'Empty' the Recycle Bin, those files should be removed.

Thank's for the last comment Steve. I still have the issue though of having insufficient diskspace on my NAS to complete a further backup. I need to delete some of the older files but I don't know which or how. I have altered the backup routine to a weekly backup and enabled cleanup, which should run on my next backup I think but that fails due to the lack of space. The alternative is as I see it is to delete the lot and start with a fresh backup with a different routine to the original. I am attaching an image of the current backup files on my NAS.

Tim, assuming that you have other backups besides those stored on your NAS, such as on local external USB drive(s), then you could delete all the files showing _b1_ in your file listing, as you have already created a new _b2_ Full backup which is showing on the NAS.

You should run a validation for the backup task after doing any deletions.

Automatic cleanup always runs after a new full backup is created, so your settings should allow for sufficient free space to hold the number of complete version chains you wish to keep plus a further full backup file.

I have successfully managed to delete older backups of my documents but I am struggling with the full disc backup. I have booted from recovery media but struggle to be actually able to browse to the .tib's. I have tried 3 times up to know and each time I have either not found the files or when I try the actual delete it comes back with a permissions error. I cannot currently access the log that was created in order to attach to this comment.

Tim, for files on your NAS, then you should be able to delete these from Windows rather than needing to use the rescue media.  The alternative would be to use the web interface provided by the NAS itself and delete them in that way.

Could you just clarify, I have read in the manual about the metadata database and advising against deleting from windows because of potential corruption. How important is this? I am happy to give it a go. What would be the difference in deleting from file explorer or via the NAS web interface?

Tim, the Acronis database will still have information about any deleted or missing backup .tib files regardless of how you get to delete them.  The only way to reconcile that database information is to either perform a validation of the task that created the files, or else to use the option to Clone settings for the task, remove the task settings and then either rename the cloned task to have a unique name or point it to use a different backup destination folder.

Tim,

Since you wish to change the task to include cleanup rules and the number of backups retained you might consider deleting the backup task only and retaining the actual backup files.  Your screenshots show that the task is or was set to perform a full backup, retain the original full backup, create another full backup and incremental backups after that.

If you delete the backup task only, then remove the original full backup you will regain the space of that full backup.  In your last screen shot the first full backup is the first one shown in the screenshot of 21/01/2018.  You can then setup a new task to your liking, run that task to create a new full backup, then remove the rest of the old backups as needed.  You could also get another disk and move the these old backups to that medium to save for later use if needed.

Thanks for the comments guys. I will work my way through and revise my backup plan and pay more attention to the options when creating a backup.

I agree with Enchantech: "You could also get another disk and move the these old backups to that medium to save for later use if needed." In particular if you are backing-up mission critical files. I backup to a local HDD, to my NAS and the cloud. I also have an old PC which I power up periodically and copy the most critical backup files to it. From my perspective, HDDs are so cheap these days that it is opportunity not to be missed.

Ian