"There is not enough disk space to recover file xyz" ad nauseam when recovering a volume
Next unsolved problem in desaster city....
Since the rescue media could not rescue my volume i.e. could not recover a differential backup after having deleted some earlier ones I am still reluctant to recover the half year old full backup which should work with the rescue media I am trying to do a recovery from within ATI in Windows.
2 TB HDD with a 200 GB volume C: to be recovered from a backup and 1800 GB volume D: to be left unchanged. I wiped everything unnecessary from the 2 partitions to have as much space as possible there since there was the 5% warning in the manual. After about 2/3 recovering according to the progress bar I started to get error messages:
"There is not enough disk space to recover file xyz. Please free some disk space ......"
I pressed Ignore several times. Then I looked with Explorer at the 200 GB volume - 0 space available but plenty of room on the 1800 GB volume. Now the error message comes immediately with a new file name after ignoring the previous message. 1 h 12 m still to go.
Where will I end ?
What should I delete to create disk space?
What have I done wrong that recovery is not running without these eternal error messages?
Am I in Recovery mode at all? On top the Backup tab is undelined dark blue and not the Recovery tab. Over the progress bar there is "Recovery is performed" in my language.
Do I remember correctly that in quite old versions after starting recovery this was done after a reboot of the computer without any input of the user any more? No space problem in these times as much as I remember.
I would need to see some screen shots to be sure of the recovery settings.
If you are recovering data to permission locked folders (user profile > documents, photos, etc), then yeah, I would recover to a different location first and then copy them in. Windows may be preventing the recovery of files where permissions are inadequate to write to your user profile while it is active.
Alternatively, if you still want to try this, make sure to recover without the default permissions enabled.
Thanks for your patience.
I will try to explain what I am doing and supply screenshots.
Desktop IntelI5 with a 2 TB HDD with a 200 GB volume C: (containing Windows and software) and a 1800 GB volume D: containing data only.
I have a series of whole disk backups on a NAS on my home LAN at \\w.x.y.z\Backups\etc......A full backup and differential backups, I have deleted differentials 1-8 and kept differentials 9-18.
Windows and software on C: has become corrupted after a Windows Update. So I want to restore volume C: from differential backup # 15 which seems from a suitably running state. The installation is in German language but I think that should not be a problem. Could not find a switch to change to English. And what i see in ATI is practically quite different from what I see on your screenshots.?????
Nowhere am I asked whether I want to do a volume recovery or file recovery.
And the program does not find the backup files on the NAS which it has created itself.
Then I start it and it works and works until space on the partition ends. Am I really using the backup file or am I trying to recover C: from C:??
Make sure to switch to "recover disk" and since you only want to recover the C: partition here, that you select the partition tab. Then select the C: drive in the Source and in the destination, pick the C: drive for the same drive again (or whatever drive you want to replace the OS partition with.
!!!!!! HOWEVER !!!!!!
If you are doing this on the same PC, I would recommend that you stop, and ext and then use your rescue media to do the recovery.
Anytime you attempt to restore the OS drive or a partition on that drive, Acronis will want to reboot the machine, replace your Windows bootloader with a temporary rescue media environment, and that environment will be the Linux version. This may not be supported if your computer is using Bitlocker, if you have safeboot enabled in the bios, or if the Linux environment does not have drivers to support your installed hard drive(s) (for instance if using PCIe NVME hard drives and/or any type of RAID controller or RAID mode).
To avoid boot issues, use the rescue media instead. Create a WinRE version in the rescue media builder on a small USB flash drive and boot from that. Once booted, then attempt to restore.
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Also, I believe that Acronis has a bug if you cleanup previous differential versions. Especially if you delete them manually and outside of the True Image application in Windows. But even if you do it the correct way, I have been finding that the rescue media still warns me that the backup is corrupted because it does not have all of the files there! However, I have been ignoring the warning and the recovery has worked fine (as it should since you only need the original full and a current differential that is part of the same version chain).
And... if you do have any issues getting the backup files off the NAS, a quick solution may be to just copy the original full and the differential you want to use to an external USB drive. Then restore from it. And if you do get the "corrupt backup" warning with the rescue media - ignore it and go for it anyway.
Thanks for the detailed explanation.
Doing the recovery with the rescue media was my first attempt like I have done previously and I expected a swift backup as I have done before, luckily rarely necessary. But i ran into the bug that you described, i.e. that after having deleted differential backups 1-8 from within True Image, I could not access the desired backup version 15. It was never offered to me even after long waiting or clicking away the error messages concerning missing versions 1-8. That is more than a bug, it is a big predatory spider killing the use of the backup program completely which is already active in version 2016 as I have checked with an old rescue media kept in my collection..
The program interface is quite counterintuitive in my opinion.
1. A workflow from the right top corner to the left lower corner is quite unusual.
2. Also the translation in German in the left lower corner is "Recover my PC". I was deterred by it because I never wanted to have my whole PC recovered, only one volume. So I never guessed it might be a desirable choice for my purpose.
In any case I will try your suggestion with the external USB disk containing onl the 2 necessary backup files and using a rescue media to decide whether I will stop deleting unnecessary differential versions.
BTW I have noticed that in some remote part of my brain the words "Linux" and "Apple" have started to appear with increasing frequency.........
BINGO - recovery worked now as usual and I have the August 10 2019 version of my operating system and software working.
Thanks again to Steve and Bobbo for their help. Maybe You have a channel to Acronis to suggest improvement of the user interface ?
Franz, great to read that you have got your backup recovered after using the rescue media - this is always the recommended method when the OS is involved.
Please submit Feedback about the issues encountered due to dependencies on deleted differential files - this has been reported multiple times, including by the MVP's and during beta testing programs etc, but the more feedback the better!
Hi Steve and Bobbo,
Maybe I haven't given enough details. I did succeed from within Windows and the program installed there and not from the rescue media. After following your instructions and a reboot the usual process started and at the end the c: partition was working again in the version of August 10 i.e. differential backup #15 as intended and not from the full backup half a year old as suggested by support. I turned off Windows Updates immediately to get room to breathe......
I thought testing via an external USB-harddisk with just the 2 relevant files in one dir, the full and the one differential backup, but transfer of about 1000 GB from my NAS to the USB disk and freeing space before that between USB disks would have lasted too long. I did it another way. I moved the two files (full and diff 15) on the NAS into a separate directory, which is probably the same situation as the two files in a dir in a USB-disk. Then I booted with the rescue DVD and navigated to this dir. The only difference was that I could click away the whining for diff backup 2 etc (with 6 clicks every time) up to 14 (vs up to 8 in the original dir where 1-8 was deleted and 9+ was still there). Then the program went back to where it had started and soon asked for backup 2 again as it happened earlier. So this method unfortunately will not solve the problem.
I hope that this critical malfunction will soon be repaired so nobody any more ends up with a backup program which cannot access its own backups. Before seeing the solution working on my computer no more of my €s will go into any Acronis software.
Thanks for Your support! I appreciate your deep insight into the software and your patience with users' problems.
Franz, thank you again for the clarification of the process you followed. We all agree that this issue of ATI asking for missing versions when dealing with Differential backups is an unwanted 'feature' and needs to be resolved.
The only real work-around at this time is to keep all backup version chains fairly small, i.e. use the default of creating a new Full backup after only 5 or 6 differential or incremental backups, then to keep the full chain of files.
Franz, thanks for the update and clarification too! I will go back and test this as well when I get a chance. In my situation(s), where I had this issue with differentials, the rescue media did allow me to continue after clicking away the warnings that the backup was corrupted and ignoring the "missing" files. I want to see if that is still the case, or not, in a new test too.
Just curious, but maybe the behavior is different in the type of rescue media used? I use the 2019 rescue media created with the manual ADK (although I'm sure WinRE would be the same), using ADK 1903. I haven't used the Linux rescue media in quite some time, so not sure how it may handle this compared to the WinPE / WinRE version.
Thanks for the comment. I used a Linux rescue DVD. After a few days I will be back home to check with another version like You.
I tested with ATI 2019 Rescue Media WinPE again - it worked. You have to just keep hitting "cancel" when it says the files are missing. It took me 8 times just for 1 missing file! Finally though, it got past that and let me continue.
And just for reference - I get this "nice" warning in ATI 2020 now for the same process.
****UPDATE**** And, unlike 2019, I cannot continue with the backup at all in ATI 2020 if I pick a differential file that came after the cleaned up one! In the Beta testing, I got this warning, but could cancel it and then go through the process of cancelling the "missing" files and proceed with the backup.
Sorry to add one more time for 2020 (since I know this is a 2019 thread), but I wanted to keep it all in one place.
I was able to get the backup to run. I had to first select the current full. Then cancel that. After that, I could then pick one of the differential files and i seems to be allowing me to recover.
There is still an issue though as it is not allowing me to recover the entire disk, but forcing me to pick individual partitions to recover!
