Making standalone partition backups
I need to make intermittent standalone backups - that is, a tibx file that can be moved, stored elsewhere, etc, and used to recover or restore in the future. I've done this on previous versions of TI, going way back, but need to use TI2020 on this system.
The problem: I create a backup, select "do not schedule", custom scheme - full, and tweak my options. This makes a good backup.
When I need to create another backup, if I use the same backup entry without the first backup in place, it creates a (presumably) full backup with a -0001 filename, but won't mount or verify it, and says it's corrupted, apparently due to the tibx limitations of having all the backups there, even for multiple full backups.
Do I need to create a new backup for every standalone backup? I don't want a bunch of dependent files/chains for this system.
I'm familiar with the tibx limitations. Here's what the situation looks like.
- I create a full backup in Win7, using the custom-full setting, unscheduled. This makes a single tibx file about 12GB in size.
- I move this, as I've done with older versions of TI (I have about 35 licenses up to 2019)
- I create another full backup, using the same custom-full task. This makes a single tibx file, same as before, with a slightly different size and a -0001 filename.
- The new -0001 file won't mount or verify, saying it's corrupt. I haven't tried restoring it, but am assuming it won't work due to TI thinking it's corrupt.
- In order to use this second backup for restore, I'd need to include both 12GB backups. I'm assuming, based on the new rules, that if I made 10 backups over time using the same backup task (custom-full), I'd need to include all 10 12GB backups in order to restore the last one.
Interestingly, if I double-click the "corrupt" -0001 file, I can browse it. Everything appears to be there, and a random check of files shows they're OK. I could recover individual files, but not perform a partition restore.
There are no small metadata files, unless they're located somewhere else. It's not clear to me why they don't tack this metadata onto every backup, given the small size, but that's another discussion.
So, it appears if I want a standalone backup file that can be moved/archived, I can't use a previously created task to create it more than once, but will need to create a new backup task every time I need to create a relocatable backup.
Neil, if you are seeing a .tibx file using a numeric suffice, i.e. 0001, then this indicates that ATI believes that this is a continuation of the backup task rather than being a new backup being created.
It is possible to get ATI 2021 to create new Full backups that are non-dependent but you need to move or rename the first .tibx file each time before any further files are created, and also ensure that you do not create any Incremental or Differential backups for the task.
I have tested this with one of my own tasks to check it still works (where the backup file is being renamed in a Post Command to change the extension from .tibx to .~tibx).
Neil,
You can accomplish your desire by setting the Backup scheme to "Single version scheme".
Single version will create a Full backup each and every time it runs and will overwrite the previous Full backup if one exists. As long as you move each backup the task will just create a new Full with no dependency.
Ok, that's worth a try. In this case, I moved the first backup into a different directory on the same drive before creating the second with the -0001 extension, so it's possible TI found the original in its new location. I'll try removing it completely to see how it acts.
I historically don't use the "single version scheme" due to overwriting the previous backup, as I have other systems where I do this but leave the original backups in place, but it will work for this particular system. Again, the desire is to have (sometimes multiple) standalone full backups that aren't dependent on other files.
I'm not too happy with the tibx scheme. I'm sure there are benefits, but the dependence on the file chain worries me, and the older versions have been working for me so far. I don't use TI2020 for scheduled backups due to this.
I've ended up stockpiling TI2017 licenses, as 2018 and 2019 licenses are not very available. I'll keep checking on the annual updates to see if they change how these are handled.
Thanks for the help!
UPDATE: Apologies to Steve, you're correct. I had moved the first backup for each test to a subdirectory of the target directory, rather than deleting it, and TI apparently found it and created the second backup as a -0001 file, though the second file wouldn't verify. When I deleted the first file, running the same task created a new independent backup that works correctly.
Enchantech, your answer is correct too, of course. I tried to mark both as an answer, but I'm not sure it let me.
Thanks again for the help!
I am hopeful that Acronis will add the ability to create a true stand alone full backup in the next release. Many have ask for it including myself so maybe that message will get through.
The Single version scheme is not perfect but if you move the backup once created it will do what you want.