What do I need to do, that old depricated backups will be automatically deleted?

Christian, all backup archive are read-only containers that do not allow any changes to be made, i.e. you cannot add or delete any of the contents of these archives.

For your ATI 2018 version the options for removing unwanted backup files are limited to just a few options:

1. To configure automatic cleanup settings on the Backup Scheme page for each backup task, which is the recommended option!
    
2. To remove the backup task from the ATI GUI either including deleting all associated backup files, or else, leaving the files then deleting any unwanted files outside of ATI using Explorer.
    
3. To delete files belonging to tasks shown in the ATI GUI using Explorer.  NOT recommended as this leaves behind information about the deleted files in the internal database used by ATI which will cause errors later!
   Note: if using this option, then the backup task owning the deleted files should be Validated in order to try to reconcile the internal database with the new status of available files.  An error pop-up message will be given for each missing / deleted file!

For ATI 2019 & later versions, Acronis introduced a new 'Clean up versions' tool as an extra option on the Backup task menu (click on the caret 'v' to the right of the task name) to allow unwanted files or whole backup chains to be deleted safely while managing the database entries correctly!

Personally, automatic cleanup has worked for my own backup tasks to all destinations for as long as I have been using scheduled backup tasks across all versions of ATI, including those to my own Synology NAS storage.

My preference for automatic cleanup is to use the option to:

'Store no more than 2 recent backup versions / version chains'

where the value used is set to how many files or chains I want to keep, allowing the 2 + 1 further full backup to be stored in that destination location.  The +1 is necessary because automatic cleanup does not run (and delete anything) until after a new full backup has been created successfully.

Dear Steve,

thanks for the info about with the new tool, which I was not aware of. It seems to be similar to the one they already had in ATI2013 ("consolidate"). With this you could delete old files in a backup chain.

But lets go back for a moment to ATI2018 here you can see I have a incremental back with to constrain not to exceed the size of the backup over 1TB (see ATI2018_C_ftp.jpg).

On my NAS you can see that it creates backups with 1.99GB files and it has 1254 files (NAS_C_ftp.jpg). Therefore the backup chain has a complete size of about roughly 1254 x 2GB = 2508GB or 2.5TB!

So the limit of 1TB is ignored by the ATI2018 at all or where do you see my error in the setting?

Kind regards,
Christian  

Christian, the option to 'Consolidate' in ATI 2013 and earlier versions is not the same as the new 'Clean up versions' tool introduced with ATI 2019.  The option to consolidate actually created a further .tib file to reflect the changes being made to previous .tib files.

Returning to your ATI 2018 version, I would speculate that the root issue is in the use of FTP and known issues with how Acronis handles the number of open connections when FTP is used which can then prevent the correct operation of the automatic cleanup rules, including those intended to restrict the maximum size of backup file data!

Is there a specific reason why you are using FTP to your NAS box and thus are restricted to maximum 2GB file segments, instead of using SMB without such restrictions?  I ask because FTP seems less efficient if the NAS is on your local network.  I have done minimal testing of using FTP with my own NAS and decided to stay with using SMB 2 or 3 connections for my own backups.

My test showed better performance with ftp, so I opted for that instead of SMB.
Even though SMB backup files were more manageable.

You speculate that ATI2018 can create files on the ftp NAS but no longer deletes them.
Is this correct?

How can I check which files are in the current backup chain and which are not, so that I can at least delete them manually?

Unfortunately, ATI2018 is allowed with a new GUI that offers less information than ATI2013.
Or is there an expert mode instead of this simple mode?

As far as seen from screenshots the GUI between ATI2018 and newest one seem to be the same.

frustratedUser wrote:

You speculate that ATI2018 can create files on the ftp NAS but no longer deletes them.
Is this correct?

How can I check which files are in the current backup chain and which are not, so that I can at least delete them manually?

For the first point above, what I said was that there have been known issues with the number of connections opened by ATI when FTP is used, which can lead to the type of issue you are reporting with doing automatic cleanup (used to delete unwanted files).

If you open Explorer to the destination location on your NAS, you should be able to easily identify the files that belong to the current backup chain by virtue of the naming convention being used, i.e. they will all share the same _Bxx_ number, and the type of file will be shown by the preceding _full_ or _inc_ notation.

Because you are using FTP, then each new backup will be split into 2GB sized files, so there will be potentially multiple new files sharing the same date / timestamp values or close to each other in time.

If you do delete unwanted files from the NAS manually, then you should also run a validation for the backup task in the ATI GUI. This is needed because ATI tracks all files created by each task in an internal database, and deleting files outside of ATI leaves those references to the deleted files in the database which will then cause further errors due to 'Cannot find version X'.  Validation will attempt to reconcile the database information with the actual status of remaining files, and will pop-up a message for each deleted / missing file found.  You should take the Ignore option for each pop-up (if offered) else the Cancel option.

As far as I can tell from the file names, they all belong to the same backup chain.

But I can confirm that ATI2018 does not work with ftp for me, because deleting the backup setting in ATI leads to a failure dialogue that it cannot delete all (rather none) of  the files on the ftp server.

I have now changed my two backups (image & file) from two different drives from ftp to smb.

One is successfull (300GB) and the other always aborts without a qualified message.
The backup file created on the drive has a size of 99GB (Data (D) smb_full_b2_s1_v1.tib).

Is there any way to find the problem, some kind of qualified logging?

There is a new MVP Assistant log viewer tool that has now been made available by Acronis via the Community Tools page.. 

If you have Disks & Partitions backups created on ATI 2020 or later using .tibx files, then look in the Backup Worker logs.

If you have Files & Folders backups using .tib files (or Disk backup using same) then look in the Demon logs.

Other logs are shown by the MVP Assistant under the 'Active Logs' heading of the Log Viewer page of the Assistant.

The log files should be zipped to preserve their original file names if sharing in the forums and would need to be less than 3MB in size, otherwise you would need to share the zip file via a Cloud share service such as OneDrive, Dropbox etc.