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"Perform the backup only when drive is attached" gets unchecked by changing space notification threshold

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One of my clients is running ATIH 2018 (latest build as of Friday May 4). The target is an external USB drive. She actually has two drives that she swaps now and then and store one drive outside the house per my recommendation. There are 2 backup tasks, one for each drive, with each task having the "Perform the backup when the drive is attached" setting checked, in order to not get a failure and an error mail message concerning the drive that is not present. This has been working fine for many months.

A couple of days ago, she gets a failure email due to lack of space. That is misleading because the target drive has 1.2TB free and the notification threshold is set at 750MB. But the backup was due for a full backup (it runs 6 incrementals after each full), and a full backup takes about 500MB. So it's only AFTER the full backup that the free space left would have come under the 750MB threshold. I can live with this weird behavior but it's really misleading for the average user (I have seen it at different clients, it is not the first time, so I am used to it by now).

Now here comes the real problem. I lower the threshold to 650MB on BOTH tasks. The next day, my client gets two emails, one successful for the currently connected drive (as expected), but also a failure email for the drive that is currently not connected. Remember, I have set both tasks to NOT run if the drive is not attached. So changing the space notification threshold has unchecked the setting. Why? Apparently a bug.

There is no chance that I would have done it by mistake since this setting is NOT visible for a drive that is not currently connected (another design flaw in my book).

Has anyone else encountered this, or can you reproduce this bug? Why is this setting hidden in the first place for a non-connected drive?

Thanks for your feedback on this.

Pierre

 

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Pierre, I am not able to recreate this issue where changing the notification for free space causes the Schedule option to run when the drive is connected to be deselected.  I have tried a variety of different settings but the option remains firmly selected.

I suspect that the run when drive connected option can only be determined whether it is applicable by having the drive physically connected, so that ATI knows that this is a removable drive, hence it is not shown if there is no drive present.

In reply to by truwrikodrorow…

Thanks Steve, I'll classify it as a fluke for now. It's not like I change those settings often. But the coincidence is just odd. Oh well.