.meta folder
For years now, I have been copying acronis backups from one server to another thinking I was protecting my backups by storing them in two locations. And sometimes, I would delete the original backup folders on one server, thinking I was protected because I had copies on other servers.
But I never realized there was a hidden, permissions-protected folder named .meta that wasn't being copied, making my copied backups almost useless. Acronis has done a pretty evil thing to it users with this thoughtless bit of deception.
Why hide something as important as .meta, and then fail to mention it to IT people who are only trying to protect their users with backups? This is nothing but a stab in the back...
Hello all,
Thank you very much for your posts. I will certainly assist you with this.
Andrew Regenscheid,
Thank you very much for your help and you are absolutely right. There is nothing major if the .meta folder gets deleted. Once the .meta folder is gone, in the restore wizard you will no longer be able to view archives. If you switch to .tib files, you will see a list of all the backup files. You can then restore them without any issues, even incremental and differential ones.
Lynn Wilborn,
The only inconvenience that will be created by deleting the .meta folder, is as this article mentions, will be the inability to append incremental or differential backups, a new one full backup will created instead. However, a full restore from incremental/differential backups is possible.
Also, if you check our user guide on page 155, it mentions that this folder contains additional information about archives and backups stored in the vault, such as archive owners or the machine name. If you accidentally delete the .meta folder, it will be automatically recreated next time you access the vault. But some information like owner names and machine names may be lost.
Please let me know if you have additional questions.
Thank you.
Hi, I have gone through this pain just this weekend spending almost 2 solid days to fix a vault and - to no surprise its still broken. And in addition can not get any of the backups - as far as I can see I have lost all backups!
firstly - lets talk about browsing to the Tib folder structure and recovering from TIB's. Has anyone actually done this - did you know that the folder structure in itself is over 255 characters and makes widows file system spit the dummy.
1. I browse to the TIB files using windows explorer and double click the Tib here is my TIB path
"W:\Backups\September-2010\BackupVault1\computers\0F75489D-329E-447C-B
7A5-8E6C7D8A0086.3E6C6CC7-408B-4FB9-A842-71DF66
B02804\users\S-1-5-21-711161869-2399093339-387985
6307-1232\archives\C2182272-78F4-4975-AC19-BAB0BD
1248B2\1__2010_09_22_00_05_15_352U2.TIB"
When I double click the master TIB I get the error: An error has occurred opening the archive - it is either corrupted or being used by another program file. No it is not used by another program. And I have tried this from other servers.
1.1 I have mapped a drive letter to that path, and still I can not open a single TIB, I have 5 servers here and not one TIB opens, surely they didn't corrupt all at at the same time? Remember 5 servers with about 40 incremental's each yet not 1 opens with the direct TIB access procedure!
2. In my opinion Acronis made a mistake creating too many dependencies to the Sql database and .meta and who knows what else. Why not go back to fundamentals and make the backup as robust as possible by including this information *IN* the backup files themselves.
Older Acronis v9 software was far more flexible and robust, you could simply start adding backups to the backup set no matter where the files were.
Can someone please suggest a way to access the TIB's - I have uninstalled every single Acronis product and installed it from scratch once more only to find that TIB's are not accessible.
I agree with point 2 having the .meta backed up with the images.