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Incremental backups not deleting

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I noticed this problem a few months ago, and I’m clueless whether I’m doing something wrong – though I haven’t changed anything – or if it’s a glitch.

I have my daily backup scheme set for Incremental.  It’s set to create a new full version after every 5 incremental versions.  And the Cleanup Rule is to delete version chains older than 6 days.

It always worked fine, as best as I can recall.  But lately, the old versions are not getting deleted.

Does anyone have an idea what (if anything) I can do to fix this?  I’ve included screenshots of my Settings and my File Explorer files of the folder with my daily backups.  Thanks very much.

RJE

Attachment Size
Acronis backup setting.jpg 55.72 KB
Acronis full chains.jpg 223.49 KB
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Robert,

I can see that back in November you had a backup chain that went to 11 increments and since then there have been no chain deletions. I suspect the reason is that there was a known problem that originated with Acronis servers and affected many users in that it reset lots of settings. If you've got some time and curiosity, you can read about it.

https://forum.acronis.com/forum/acronis-true-image-2020-forum/true-image-2020-backup-option-settings-loss

Meanwhile, I suggest you go into the settings, change something and get it resaved. WIth ATI 2018, you should be able to use Windows Explorer to delete the old chains (be sure to turn of Active Protection first). Then you should run a Validate on the backup task to get the internal database in sync. When it says it cannot find one of the deleted files, just Ignore it. It may ask for every deleted file.

 

BrunoC,

Thanks much for your answer.  To clarify the graphic I posted, the reason the backup chains stopped is because I manually deleted them (indeed, using Windows Explorer.  And ran Validate.  However, I didn't know about turning off Active Protection first, and so didn't).  As such, the issue has continued to happen since then.  I would have posted a more recent example of the backup chains being automatically deleted, but when I thought of sending this inquiry I'd already deleted the recent batch of chains -- but realized that I still had the graphic I'd made back in November.

I've read a little about this issue, from a link on another similar question here, but just read your link above.  I wish I could say that the long discussion didn't make my head spin, but alas it did...  However, I'll take your suggestion to change a setting, change it back and re-save it.

A related question.  When reading the aforementioned suggestion to that similar question, this was part of the answer that was sent --

"The reason why you have not been able to delete unwanted backups is down to Acronis Active Protection being enabled.  This is intended to prevent malware from attacking the files but also prevents them from being deleted by the user too.

"You can turn off AAP by using the option in the ATI GUI to do so, then you will be able to delete files to make space on your backup drive."

(It also suggested doing a Validation.)

My question is that if one turns off AAP, and you're doing a backup on a daily basis, this would seem to defeat the purpose of having AAP and leave your system at risk.  Or am I missing something?

Thanks much for your time.  I appreciate it.

 

Robert

I may gave got the wrong end of the stick, but once you have deleted the files you should turn active protection on again!

Ian

IanL-S,

 

Belatedly, thanks for your note.

What has had me a bit confused about the process is that since the backups are daily but the chains weren't being automatically deleted according to my Settings, when I'd read that Active Protection was part of the problem and should be turned off before deleting -- I'd thought that meant it would have to be turned off all the time (hence my question about that being self-defeating).

If I'm reading this correctly (which may not be the case), it's not that Active Protection is causing the problem -- that's because of something else related to the Settings, which is why the suggestion was made to re-set the Settings -- and the suggestion to turn off Active Protection (and then on again...) was only made for cleaning out the old chains that hadn't been previously deleted.  Am I close with that??

Thanks again for your time.

 

Robert

Yes, turning off active protection just when deleting the incremental backups you do not want.

It is a long time since I used ATI 2018 so I have forgotten how automatic cleanup works in that version. However, there does seem to be something not working as it should.

The best solution (assuming going in and checking the settings then exiting - which should change them; you could change the cleanup rule, exit go in again, and change it back to make sure the change sticks), would be to create a new backup task, and schedule the old on not to run.

Ian

IanL-S,

Thanks much for your time and thoughts.  At the moment, I'm testing the first suggestion about changing the chain settings.  It it turns out that the chain is not deleted properly, I'll try changing the delete option next.

Again, thanks.  We'll see...

Robert