No support for perpetual license?

Mike, there are no more perpetual licensed products from Acronis as below.

See KB 68375: Licensing change FAQ: Acronis products switch to subscription-only licenses - where this unwelcome change was announced recently!

For your issue with the backup to your external HDD that has stopped working, then the logs are the best place to start investigating.

Download a copy of the MVP Assistant log viewer tool and use this to look at the logs to see if they show any issues during the operation process?

The latest version of the new log viewer tool is at the link below. 
MVP Assistant update for Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office (Version 1.1.6.0)

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 backups from earlier versions using .tib files) or using Cloning 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.

Downloaded it, running a backup now & will report back.

Thanks!

Deleted previous source & destination, started the backup & came back to this message,

I've uploaded lofile, if this isn't the right place, let me know.

Thanks!

Mike, I only see the image above but no logfile - the latter should be zipped so that the log keeps its original name or else zip the folder that it is coming from.

Sorry, let's try that again!

Mike, thanks for the zipped log file, this shows that all looked to be progressing well but then hit a series of errors when trying to write out the backup archive file to the destination.

The output file is shown as D:\MikeWin10\MIKE-WIN10-2.tibx which looks to be a local / external drive destination, however in the log it alludes to encountering a network issue!

02/03/2022 02:59:39:097 PM type=log; level=inf; message=pcs_co_file_writev(\\?\D:\MikeWin10\MIKE-WIN10-2.tibx) failed: 121 (pcs_err=4);
02/03/2022 02:59:39:097 PM type=log; level=err; message=io#1: write 4194304 err -5017, offs 97656553472;

02/03/2022 02:59:40:244 PM type=log; level=err; message=ar#1: archive close (commit=19/19, file_size=97690574848, uuid=6cd1eb3e6215d8732fa1b975a7e5d4b5, user read=0MB write=135595MB) rc=-5017 (Network operation failed);
02/03/2022 02:59:40:245 PM type=log; level=err; message=image backup: failed to close archive: 0x40015;

Some thoughts on the above.

First check that there is plenty of free space on the destination drive D: and if needed, run a CHKDSK on that drive.

Second, are there any network components actually involved in this backup task, i.e. anything in the source data selection, or is the destination drive actually connected via the network?

There's nothing network related in my backups.

I've enclosed pics of what's currently on my destination drive, as well as properties of my source & destination drives.

My destination drive is a brand new 5 TB WD My Passport drive, connected via USB-C, directly to my laptop, bu hub, etc., between them.

I previously had a 2 TB external & upgraded to the 5, thinking space was an issue.

Mike, one other check to make here is whether your power options have got USB selective suspend enabled that could cause the WD My Passport drive to go to 'sleep' while Acronis is preparing data to be written?

I guess Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, decided they knew what's best for me & had reset my power settings!

Changed the selective suspend setting to disabled when plugged in & HD to never turn off when plugged in.

Will try again & let you know.

Thanks!

Ok, here's the latest.

I started a backup yesterday afternoon. It said it would take a couple of hours, so I turned the monitor off (laptop is connected to external M,M&K) & when I returned last night, same error!

Deleted previous backup, started over again at about 12:30 am & left as is, wondering if monitor being shut off may have played a part in it, but again, I woke up to the same damn message!

Running the MVP assistant, I see that there were 6 log files created, from one attempted backup? Is that right?

I've enclosed them below, hoping that I can get to the bottom of this & not have to look for a new backup solution!

Almost forgot to add, I am being left with a tibx file that is 90.9 GB, but considering my drive has 1.17 TB of data on it, I'm wondering if something happens, at the same pooint? All of the backup files have been this big.

Also, I did check the disk for errors (even though initial message was that I didn't need to) & it showed none.

Also, I run Vipre Advanced Security, but see no instances where it blocked anything, wondering if this might be an issue, but am going to disable it & try again.

Again, this has been working fine for years...

Mike, thanks for the further zipped logs - the bad news is they are all still saying the same thing, that a Network connection error is causing this backup failure!

At this point I would suggest creating an Acronis System Report zip file and because this will most likely be larger than the 3MB file upload limit for the forum, share this via a cloud share link in a private message to me so that I can check other aspects.

One further suggestion would be to create a whole new backup task with a new / unique task name using the same Source and Destination selections, then see if that new task is able to run to completion or not?

Mike Post wrote:

My destination drive is a brand new 5 TB WD My Passport drive, connected via USB-C, directly to my laptop, bu hub, etc., between them.

This caught my eye: "bu hub, etc., between them". I'm guessing you meant "by hub',  If you connect the backup drive to a hub, that could be the issue. Connect the backup drive directly to a port on your computer, not to the monitor or any other intermediary, and try the backup again.

Mike, thanks for the PM link to the system report zip file.

The logs only show the same as advised above with the strange reference to a Network error in each one and no logs to show any previous / earlier successful backup operation.

The disks.txt report in the zip file does show an error indicator for your main OS C: partition via the 'e' character shown in the right column (where the other partitions all show 'c').

This is later shown as below in the report detail (at the end of the file).

Partition 1-3: file system
  FS:                NTFS
  File System Error 0x70003: Read error.

| error 0x10c45a: Failed to read the snapshot.

The above would suggest a Microsoft VSS snapshot error at play for which the normal recommendation is to download / run the Acronis VSS Doctor tool (link below).

The System & Application event logs captured both show no significant events at the time that Acronis is reporting the errors for the backup task but the system event log is showing a large volume of Event ID 17 Warning errors from WHEA-Logger with the following text on March 9th later in the day from the Acronis error.

A corrected hardware error has occurred.

Component: PCI Express Root Port
Error Source: Advanced Error Reporting (PCI Express)

Primary Bus:Device:Function: 0x0:0x1C:0x1
Secondary Bus:Device:Function: 0x0:0x0:0x0
Primary Device Name:PCI\VEN_8086&DEV_A111&SUBSYS_07BE1028&REV_F1
Secondary Device Name:

The above errors correspond to the Intel 100 Series/C230 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #2 - A111 shown in the System Information report (from msinfo32).

Assuming that your previous comment picked up by Tuttle was intended to say that there is no hub in-between the WD My Passport drive and the laptop USB port, i.e. a direct connection then the possible causes of issues here could be:

Hardware fault related to the laptop / USB port or WD drive.

Power related, i.e. overloading the USB port by the demand from the WD drive.

Overclocking of hardware.

VSS snapshot issue related to the source drive as indicated in the disks.txt report.

Device driver issue(s)

The options for trying to isolate or eliminate the above possibilities are:

Try reverting to the older smaller external drive with a new backup task for the same source selection.

Remove any overclocking if any is present.

Try using an externally powered hub or dock with the WD passport drive connected. 
If an external hub is currently being used, then try a direct connection instead.

Run the Windows System File Checker tool SFC /SCANNOW

Here's the VSS report. Looking at it, I'm curious why it seems to think there are network locations to back up? Its never been a part of a domain & the only thing I could think of is the locations in the pic attached?

Mike, the VSS report only really shows an issue with disk load for your source C: drive and some low space on the smaller hidden / system partitions - the latter of which is common in the report.

Looking again at the Backup Worker log for the problem backup task, one more thing now stands out for your source selection.

--action=backup --action=cleanup --action=metainfo --disk-backup --agent="ATI 25.10.1.39287 Win" --archive="D:\\MIKE-WIN10.tibx" --source="\\local"

The above source suggests that you have 'Entire PC' as the source selection rather than clicking through on the Source panel and then clicking on Disks & Partitions to select only the internal OS disk C:

If I look at one of my own disk backup tasks, the difference that I see is shown below:

--source="\\local\\hd_gpt(44A553AF4A4112B3C8CFADBCFCADBF75)"

I am using Disks & Partitions to select my internal 1TB NVMe SSD and all its partitions for my backup source, not using 'Entire PC'.

This difference may be involved in the issue here!

Steve, that's a good catch.

Mike, many of us here hate the "Entire PC" backup option. It's a trap for new users. While it seems desirable, that it would capture everything that you want, it will try to backup stuff that you don't want included in the backup since it attempts to include everything that is connected to the PC. That can include network drives.

Trying that now, will get back to you with the results.

Thanks, again!

At this point, if this was a physical piece of equipment I could put my hands on, I'd be posting a pic of it smashed into a thousand pieces...

And I've gotta ask, has there ever been a solution to this issue?

Searching on Google reveals a lot of people with this issue, but I don't recall seeing any posts that aren't marked with 'thread needs a solution' & the one that was (protected folders settings in Defender), I've kind of tried by disabling any AV protection when trying a backup, plus it has worked fine for years, in the past.

Thanks for letting me vent!

Mike,

I have read through this post and see you are having seemingly unsolvable issues.  I notice in your post that contains JPG 600690-320539 a network location named zTransfer.  You say that there are no network locations being backed up but this image shows there is.

Do you have any idea what zTransfer is?

I also see you have another network location named Users, do you know what this location is?

The application here is obviously including these as it believes they are valid backup sources for an Entire PC backup I presume?

Using File Explorer have you tried to open these network locations?  If you try to open them what is the result? 

I note that you use Vipre Advanced Security.  This application has a firewall feature that allows configuration options.  This makes me wonder if these network locations are defined in this feature of the app?  If they are it is logical that this is a possible cause for your issue here as any attempt to access these locations would be blocked by the firewall thus causing an error or failure.

Mike,

As I look at the pictures it appears you have two PCs networked... MIKE-WIN10 and MIKE-WIN10-2. It appears you were initially backing up MIKE-WIN10-2 as an Entire PC backup. I may be wrong.

Your backup folder on D: contains backups named Mike-Win10.tibx. If I am correct about there being 2 PCs, were there attempts to backup from each PC to the same backup folder on D:

Regardless, when trying to set up a new Disk/Partition backup of your C: drive, give it not only a different name, but also target it to a new destination folder. It appears that all your attempts have been going to the same destination folder.

Create a new folder on the destination (backup) drive. Create a brand new backup task, backing up the disk and not "Entire PC", with backups to be saved to that new folder.

Thanks for all the replies, I was wondering if my 'smashed to pieces...' line might have brought on some eye rolls & no further responses, haha!

Enchantec - those network shares are folders on this computer that I set up as shares so I could work between this computer & VMs I have set up to run Windows 7 Embedded & other instances of Windows 10 that I use for point of sale system work I do. I am not currently doing any work with them & can turn the sharing of, if you think it will help.I can open them & see all of what's there & if it helps sort things out, I do have several VMs stored on this machine (hence the need for a 2 TB drive), but can move them off to that 5 TB drive, if needed. Also,m in regards to Vipre being part of the problem, wouldn't turning it off & still having the issue mean it's not part of the problem?

BrunoC - No other PCs, I may have named the backups differently over time, thinking there was something corrupt in the current settings. I have tried backing up to that folder, as well as to the root of that drive & all ended the same way.

tuttle - I will try that now & get back to everyone later.

All the backup attempts seem to crap out at about the same size, the 91 GB mark. Any reason for that?

Is there any kind of a cleanup utility or should I completely remove & reinstall Acronis?

As for whether you should disable shares, Vipre, size of failed backups, etc.: don't waste time diagnosing an obviously failed backup situation until you try what I suggested.

We know that the current backup routine doesn't work, so rather than investigate each possible cause it would be better to start from scratch with proper setup to see if that works. If the new backup task for disk backup to new target folder doesn't work, then we can dig into more specifics.

Mike,

From my perspective I believe you have eluded to the cause of your problem, that being VM's.  Having said that I do agree that MVP tuttle has a valid point in that any user having any configuration beyond a simple single disk system is well advised to configure backup tasks on a per disk to per folder location for any disk/partition backups they perform.  Likewise, File/Folder backups should have their own target folder locations as well.  Rule of thumb independent folders for each configured backup task.

The application should not have any issue backing up VM files such as VHD(X), VMDK, etc.  These network links to VM's however are a problem because they essentially point to of course virtual machines and I suspect this is problematic because network backup is based on SMB shares and not virtual machine connections.  This is likely an oversight by the developers to deal with this sort of thing and I will say this is the first time I have ever seen this sort of issue raised in my 9+ years of being an MVP here.

So as tuttle suggests, create a new task and select only the disk you wish to backup and aim that task at a new folder.  I think things will work for you doing that.

I did create a new task & set a new destination for it.
Not surprisingly, the latest backup failed, again, at that 91 GB point. I've got 7 log files for today showing in the Backup Worker location, dunno if that's any indicator of anything specific. The VM related stuff are all VHDX files in a directory called C:\Users\Mike\Documents\My Virtual Machines
There aren't really any network links to the VMs - that zTransfer folder is there to basically copy files. mostly text docs & .bak files (backups created by the program I do Point of Sale work in) from this laptop to any given VM I would be working on. Should I turn the sharing off on those folders & try again?

Mike, from a personal perspective, I would exclude all VM files from your Acronis backups and deal with these separately using a sync type program!

I have a number of both VMware and Hyper-V VM's that I used to backup with Acronis but found to be simply too slow for the purpose due to the volume of data involved.

I now omit all VM folders from all my Acronis backups and have setup a free sync tool (SyncFolders) which is much more efficient and more flexible for this purpose.  One key benefit of this approach is that files are copied 'as is' without any compression or being put in any type of container file, and can be copied back from my external storage drive in the event of needing to revert back.  I have separate sync tasks setup for this purpose and which I used recently with one of my VM's which I used for recreating an issue raised by one of the other users in these forums, then reset back after doing so.

One further suggestion, install a copy of Macrium Reflect 8 Free and setup the same backup source & destination in that application (using a different target folder) and test whether that also fails around the same 91GB point or not?  That will help show whether the issue is common to any backup application or is specific to the source data etc.  I have always used more than one backup application on my systems for some years so as to have more than one string on my bow!

Added C:\Users\Mike\Documents\My Virtual Machines\* to the list of exclusions & am trying again.

I thought it was looking good, but it didn't make it all the way through, although this time the backup file it created was about 200 GB, rather than the usual 90 GB mark it usually stops at.

I see there are 6 log files created (does it try 6 times & then give up?), did you need the latest or all of them?

On a side note, any reason why, when I misspell a word & right-click, expecting it to show options for correcting it, all I get is the 'paste' option?

Mike, if you look at the advanced error handling, it defaults to 5 retries. But, I have found under some circumstance that even with the retries turned off I still get 5 retries.

On the spell correct thing, I have been frustrated by that same thing. Obviously the handler for the context menu in the editing box is doing its own thing.

So, would the last of the log files created have all the info you guys would need or did I need to submit all of them?

Mike, if you take a look at the logs in the MVP Assistant tool, do you still see the same error as found multiple times previously?  If so, then you need to move on with isolating where the error is arising from rather than uploading more logs.

Regarding spell checking in the forums, this depends on the browser in my experience.

With Mozilla Firefox (that I use), I have to select the underlined misspelt word then press the Ctrl key while right-clicking to see a list of alternative words.

Thanks for that tip, there, it works great!

And here's the latest log file.

Mike, sorry but the log just shows the same errors as before, i.e. Network Operation failed when trying to write out the updated TIBX file to the destination.

The log shows that you have moved from doing an Entire PC backup to just a single disk drive: source="\\local\\hd_gpt(8932027B4E47B8C87F28648B4D2191CC)" and to a sub-folder on your destination drive: archive="D:\\Backups\\Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 2TB 2B2QEXM7.tibx" along with excluding your virtual machines folder etc.

It also shows that the backup runs without issue from 03:19 until 03:48 with multiple writes of data to the destination drive until Acronis tried to close out the archive when it hit the errors.

22/03/2022 03:48:12:768 AM -05:00 33044 I00000000: Pid: 33540 type=log; level=inf; message=pcs_co_file_writev(\\?\D:\Backups\Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 2TB 2B2QEXM7.tibx) failed: 121 (pcs_err=4);
22/03/2022 03:48:12:768 AM -05:00 33044 I00000000: Pid: 33540 type=log; level=err; message=io#1: write 4194304 err -5017, offs 216706473984;
22/03/2022 03:48:12:768 AM -05:00 33044 I00000000: Pid: 33540 type=log; level=err; message=lsm#1: dedup_map failed to flush merged state (err=-5017);
22/03/2022 03:48:12:768 AM -05:00 33044 I00000000: Pid: 33540 type=log; level=err; message=ar#1: autocommit failed (err: -5017, Network operation failed);
22/03/2022 03:48:13:147 AM -05:00 33044 I00000000: Pid: 33540 type=log; level=inf; message=ar#1: archive closing;

22/03/2022 03:48:13:843 AM -05:00 33044 I00000000: Pid: 33540 type=log; level=err; message=ar#1: archive close (commit=36/36, file_size=216743956480, uuid=0f7aaf6beab07282a71fa95093ce7afb, user read=0MB write=296051MB) rc=-5017 (Network operation failed);
22/03/2022 03:48:13:858 AM -05:00 33044 I00000000: Pid: 33540 type=log; level=err; message=image backup: failed to close archive: 0x40015;

If you have a different / spare storage drive you can use with the same backup task, that would help confirm whether the issue is arising from the current destination drive or not. Note: you will need to reselect the destination again after changing the drive for the task.

If the error occurs with more than one storage drive, then it suggests the issue is with either the source selection or else is potentially hardware related i.e. USB port, cables, power demand etc.

I found another directory that had a couple of vhdx files in it, so I added that directory & *,VHDX (is that case sensitive?) to the exclusions list.

I went to another external drive & am trying another backup now.

Sorry, I've been really busy & couldn't get back to this, but here's the latest.

Went back to old external & backup completed, again. I'm guessing that backup file is compressed, as my used space on C is 1.2 TB (but excluding 385 GB of vhdx files) & my backup is 463 GB. That 5 TB drive works in every other way I've tried & running chkdsk shows nothing wrong.

Just an update to this one, I recently went back to this & after formatting the 5TB drive & assigning it a drive letter in computer management, it works as expected.