True Image creates first full image fine and differential takes long time
I'm using True Image on my Dell Windows 7 Ultimate PC backing up the raid 0 configuration (two partitions) to a Readynas NV+. I have True Image set up for a differential back up with only 1 copy so it performs the full back up the first time and then updates the back up each night at 3:30 am with whatever changes took place during the day. The total back up is 401 Gig when the initial back up is completed. The initial back up goes fine and seems to take around 5 hours I think. When it goes to complete the first differential after the initial back up, it is taking around 12 hours to complete and I see the icon in the task bar saying it is 107%, 108%, etc complete. Each subsequent differential starting at 3:00 am takes around 12 hours. It also says "calculating..." in True Image for the entire time. The program seemed to work fine initially when I installed it a few months ago and the differentials would take under an hour after the initial backup. A few weeks ago, that changed and I initially thought it was locking up so I would delete the back up and start over, close it down, etc. I've tried deleting the back up config for this back up several times and finally uninstalled / reinstalled the whole program yesterday without success. I've even tried it on both of my Readynas NV+ thinking it was the NAS. I notice that during this time, in the backup folder there is the original back up 401 Gig named xxxx.tib (xxxx being the back up name), a second file named xxxx2.tib that is 2.5 Gig with a time stamp of when the differential started and then a third file named xxxx2_a bunch of letters and numbers.tib with a timestamp of one minute after the second file. The size of the third file grows as I refresh the window until it hits the size of the initial back up (approx 401 Gig). Then it is complete. It always takes about 12 hours. 3:30 am to 3:00 pm. Does anyone have any thoughts or maybe point me to another topic with a successful resolution? I've searched online but haven't found anything similar. There's nothing that I've added that should be interfering.
Thanks,
Mike
Hi Pat,
Thank you for the response. Under the Automatic Consolidation Settings, I have it set to a maximum of 1 back up version. No other boxes in that tab are checked off. I also just thought about it and my total Acronis image size is about 411 Gig right now. I have my videos, pictures, documents and Music set as exclusions because I use a different back up for them to a different NAS. These excluded items total 388 Gig and my total used space on my hard drive is 459 Gig. These would leave only about 71 Gig to image for Acronis and if I remember right, my original back up when I first loaded the program was under 50 Gig. I notice that when I select the exclusions in Acronis, I select the folder called "my documents" and acronis lists the excluded folder as only "documents". For some reason, it drops the "My" off all of my excluded folders. I just manually renamed the excluded folders to include the "My". After doing so, the little folder icon disappears from next to each folder and I just get a little white sheet of paper icon now. I don't know if windows just puts the "my" there but the real folder name doesn't include it? Either way, it appears that Acronis is disregarding my excluded folders for some reason since I started having the problem. Odd. Something definitely doesn't seem right and I don't have the warm and fuzzies about using the image for recovery at some point if necessary.
Thanks,
Mike
My Documents is a NTFS junction pointing to the logical "documents" folder, which can be placed anywhere on the computer. For Acronis sake, use the logical folder path for exclusions, not the junctions (through libraries or user folders) Therefore, it is normal for ATI to drop the "my". No need to add it back. Make sure you use the correct syntax in the exclusion list, it should work.
If I were you, I wouldn't use autoconsolidation. To "consolidate", ATI works a bit like a video editing tool: it creates a temporary file that mixes what needs to be consolidated. If that succeeds, it should then delete the original files, then rename the temporary file appropriately. This renaming part tends to be flaky for some reason on remote locations. The other point is that you need a lot of available space for autoconsolidation to work since a file as big as the biggest file being consolidated needs to be created.
Finally, the process of creating that temporary file is about the same time you need to create a new backup.
For all these reasons, you would be better off using auto-cleaning and an incremental chain. See Grover's suggestions in his excellent guide here: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/28705
Added note:
If you exclude content from your disk and partition backup, the existing content will be deleted upon restoring that backup. To be clear, if you exclude content from your backup and you need to restore because you have a virus infecting your registry, you will have to restore your image, and then restore all your content anyway.
To work around this issue, many users prefer to create a separate content partition for things like video, pictures and music. Because some software is not always well developed, I have personally noticed some minor annoyances when you move as well the documents folder to another location. This is because software often use that folder as a default folder and gets confused if it is not at the right spot (older versions of Adobe Acrobat/Read would create a new empty "documents" folder, for example.
With Win7, it is easy to move the default content folders to another location. The user experience is seamless when you open the User folder since the NTFS junctions act as smart aliases/shortcuts.
You can use some sync software to backup content that is in the form of compressed file format, and in files that don't change much (videos, pictures, music, PDF, ZIP files, etc).
Pat,
Thank you again very much for the information. I won't be around for the next couple of days, however, I will check out the guide you sent when I'm back and try some different ways. I hadn't tried the incremental becuase I read some concerns about having to restore several files to get back to a current configuration if a drive failed. Also, I've never tried a local drive, but I do have a 1 TB USB drive that has enough space to try it out if you think it will make a difference. Maintaining a 1 copy differential seemed like the way to go for me to keep thinks simple when I set it up originally. It's actually what Acronis support recommended to me for what I want to do (keep the image and all updates in 1 file). Is there any other way to keep just a 1 file image without additional incremental or differential files for simplicity? Any thoughts on the size of the image as compared to the total amount of data on the drive minus the exclusions?
Thanks,
Mike
When you have an incremental chain, you just restore "one" file: the one at the date you want to go back to. In fact, ATI will obviously restore all the information contained in the previous files as well, but this is transparent to you. From that perspective, it is the same user experience as differential backups.
The difference is about dependencies. When you restore an incremental, ATI needs the information from the last full and each incremental up to the one you restore to be valid and intact. For a differential, ATI needs only the information from the last full and the differential file you restore. In theory, the intermediate differentials are not needed. A long standing bug in ATI creates a problem though: if you delete an intermediary differential with ATI, the validation of the remaining differential will fail, although you would be able to restore. The problem is that you don't know whether the validation fails because of the bug or because of a real issue...
IMO, the fragility of incremental chains is largely overstated. Good practice is to avoid long chain of incrementals: never let your last full get so old that you would never restore it; make sure you have a redundant backup policy so that you don't rely only on one technology and backup location for irreplaceable content.
IMO also, you want to keep as long a backup history as you can, so trying to keep only one file is not helpful. It is better to keep a lot of short chains: that provides history depth while managing the risk of a corruption in the chain.
When you have an incremental chain, you just restore "one" file: the one at the date you want to go back to. In fact, ATI will obviously restore all the information contained in the previous files as well, but this is transparent to you. From that perspective, it is the same user experience as differential backups.
The difference is about dependencies. When you restore an incremental, ATI needs the information from the last full and each incremental up to the one you restore to be valid and intact. For a differential, ATI needs only the information from the last full and the differential file you restore. In theory, the intermediate differentials are not needed. A long standing bug in ATI creates a problem though: if you delete an intermediary differential with ATI, the validation of the remaining differential will fail, although you would be able to restore. The problem is that you don't know whether the validation fails because of the bug or because of a real issue...
IMO, the fragility of incremental chains is largely overstated. Good practice is to avoid long chain of incrementals: never let your last full get so old that you would never restore it; make sure you have a redundant backup policy so that you don't rely only on one technology and backup location for irreplaceable content.
IMO also, you want to keep as long a backup history as you can, so trying to keep only one file is not helpful. It is better to keep a lot of short chains: that provides history depth while managing the risk of a corruption in the chain.
Thank you for your assistance again Pat. I got back from vacation and had a chance to take a look at this a little more today. I was going to change the back up type to incremental as suggested and in the process, I started poking around the original differential 1 copy back up and the contents. The "exclusions" I have for the differential back up are definitely not working. Every folder I have added as an exclusion has been backed up anyway and the full back up seems to be getting created each time at 400 plus GB hence the 12 hour back up time to create the image each day. Any thoughts as to why the exclusions are not working even after a full deletion of the back up and ATI program. After reinstalling the program and recreating the back up, the problem still exists. Is there some update that had created a bug?
I am not sure. On this forum, we have seen several posts about issues with exclusions, but it is hard to say whether this is a bug that was introduced recently or some user or computer configuration issue...
You might want to consider partitioning your disk to separate your system from your content. It is a good practice anyway and free partitioning tools like AESUS make the whole thing easy (since you have a complete backup).
Thanks. I think I'll look to move in that direction soon. I set up an incremental today per your recommendation and will try it starting tonight. Grover's guide was also helpful in setting up the new back up. I keep all my pics, movies, documents, etc backed up via a synch program to one NAS and I'm going to do a full system incremental on the other NAS tonight with no exclusions. Can't hurt to have important data backed up twice to different NAS'. I'll let it run for a week and see how it behaves. I also looked on the forum today and saw some of the posts you mention about the exclusions. A little disappointing after purchasing ATI. The new Dell PC I'm backing up has two 500GB drives in Raid 0 which I really don't like but I just didn't have to time to build my own PC this year and I needed a replacement quickly. I'm going to pull the two 500's and pick up a better quality 2 TB 7200 rpm drive to replace them. I'll probably do everything in one shot and create seperate partitions on the new drive when I put it in and try restoring the image from ATI as a trial run with it. Thanks again for all the help on this.
MA,
You may also find this helpful as well.
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/29618
Other links are listed in item #3 of my signature index below.