Acronis is not recognizing existing Backups
Hello everybody,
I use TIH 2011 Pluspack build 6942 on Win7 64bit machine. Every night a cmd file starts an acronis Backupjob and backs up a partition of my computer (where the windows profile lays) via incremental backup on an external harddrive. The settings for this job ist after 6 icremental Backups a new one and only to keep the last 10 versionchains of this job. I have now several problems with this job:
1.) If i look in Acronis for the available Backups for this job it shows me in the graphical interface much less Backups than the ones that are available in the corresponding directory. How come?
2.) If i dobuleclick in the directory where the backups are on one Backup, the next time i start acronis it shows me then the Backup under its own name in the "My Backups List". For Example i created the backup job "Image D" But when I doubleclick on one of the incremental backups in the directory where they are saved to it shows the next time i start acronis a "new" Backup with the name for example: Image_D2012-11-092041
3.) I deleted some old BAckups manually - now it schows me no backups at all under "Image D". But many many files are in the directory. Why does this happen and how can i link the existing files back to the Job "Image D"? I think this problem leads to the fact that images are not deleted as the settings would dictate since its now not "belonging" to the job anymore.
I really have some confusing trouble with this - and the last thing i want is that the jobs are not working right or that old files do not get deleted right.
Greetings
Regardless of their showing or not showing, the *.tib files can be restored by your manual selection.
I can not fully confirm this. If i click on one of the incremental Backups between the full versions (every 6 incr. there is a new full one) a LOT OF STRANGE things happen. Maybe i'm not smart enough but it confuses me a lot what happens then. I made step-by-step pictures of what happens next:
1. Overview: the Backup from 10 of November (the smaller one) is the one i chose for righ click and recovery. It is the easiest possible scenario: day1 incremental Backup. Yesterday the last full one was done.
2. Choose_Volume_2: Now Acronis shows me this user dialogue where it wants me to pick Volume 2 (yellow marking i use german version so its german). What is quite odd, since this Backup is Backup Nr. 2. Yesterday was the first Backup (full one). No matter at what archive i click Acronis is not satisfied with my answer (i clicked on the last full Backup and then on the backup itself (since its number 2) - nothing worked).
3. acronissearchbar: while acronis wants me to pick volume nr. 2 it has something which i callled the "acronissearchbar" because it looks like the Windows Search when it searches for something. I don't know for what Acronis is searching right now.
4. "EndOFSearch": Since no volume i picked under 2. works, i click I click on cancel in 2. ("Abbrechen" in German). Now Acronis immediatly shows the same window - so i click cancel again. After i REPEAT THIS 4-5 times it shows me in the window which showed the acronissearchbar what i called "EndOfSearch". Several things are noteworthy about this. First of all since it now shows three Backups how come it schows them now but first asked several times for one missing archive? Second noteworthy thing: One "lost" Backup (red circle) is shown which is not shown in the directory where the backups are. Where is this lost Backup coming from? Interesting: When i click on it it is empty Third noteworthy thing: The Names of the Backups are interestingly different (yellow lining) how come that the empty one (red circle) has The Date in its Name written in Word (Nov) and not in digits?
5. Here i show you in Acronis what happens in the Graphic inteface in Windows. After i finish 4. Now there is a "new" Backup in the My Backup List. If i click on it it now shows the Backup as it was a standalone Backup and not belonging to the Job.
I have tons of questions about this as you can see. Please comment anything that illuminates me a bit more. 2 Things i'm especially interested in are:
1. Since I'm now having trouble with this "homeless" Backups for about 6 months. Why does this happen so often? Same machine, same harddrive, very simple setup: 1 Pc at home. Where does ACronis save the information which Backupfile belongs to which job. From maybe 50 Backup-files 35-40 he does not recognize appropriate.
2.Where does Acronis itsefl stores its settings? With symlinks i managed that my Windows userprofile is saved on a different partition (D) I Backup D also. Does Acronis save its settings to the userprofile or C?
Thanks man..
Acronis stores the database in
C:\programdata\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Database
You can have a peek at the xml and see what ATI tracks.
In your case, ATI finds (right or wrong) that one file is orphaned and doesn't belong to the task.
Here are a couple of steps you can take:
- validate your last incremental, if the chain validates, consider it valid, if not...
- starting from the full of the chain that doesn't validate, validate each incremental that you think follows. Any backup that doesn't validate won't be useful to you.
- After you have validated all your chains, consider which backup files seem orphaned or useless, move these files to another directory, manually, or delete them,
- Move the remaining validated chains to yet another directory for safekeeping,
- Delete the backup task (ATI will complain it couldn't find all the files - normal, since you moved them)
- Recreate a new backup task.
Note: if you don't want the moved backup files to show up in the list, you can hide the folders you stored them into, and remove the listing within the ATI interface.
GroverH wrote:Regardless of their showing or not showing, the *.tib files can be restored by your manual selection.
What I meant by that statement was that
If you could find the files in Windows Explorer, then these files were accessible to you regardless whether they appear within the task or not. As you can imagine, there is no way of me knowing which files are good or restorable. In order to find that out which are good, the files would need to be validated.
In examining your attachments, it appears to me that
Chain 1=November 9-18 and 5 files
Chain 2= November 21-22 and 2 files
Chain 3 begins Nov 23 but picture does not provide enough.
I would execute the validation procedure. Select the last file in each chain and have the validation performed. This will help to identify which are still usable.
Regarding the item circled in red, right click on this and check the properties and trace to the actual storage folder. Is it stored with all the rest or ?
The problem of corrupt tasks was a problem with 2011. Acronis has indicated they put much effort into the basic functions in the 2013 release and it the results seem to indicate it it much improved in the management of backups. Maybe you should consider upgrading to 2013 but for the moment, I would suggest you stop using your task and create a new task pointing to a new folder. Maybe you would want to validate each of your chains to confirm their usability.
Attached is an example of how 2013 incremental backup scheme might appear. This is my current folder. Note how 2013 identifies the type of backup and identifies each chain with the "b" indicator. Task name was
F2013-5551--Dec--@exec@
and the program adds the remaining file identification.
Hi Grover,
just a quick question for TIH 2013:
to make sure IndexNumber of b would be version chain Number - right?
and Index of s would Number of backup WITHIN the cain - right?
thx all didn't have the time to analyze all of what you have written so far. I'll come back to this..
Greetings...
Acronis stores the database in
C:\programdata\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Database
1. If i restore an Image of C how does acronis manage to not reset itself to old for the Acronis Software itself (i. e. deleted Backup-Jobs)
2. Under the path you told me, i found a file called archives.xml. Since i'm not really able to read xml. Is this really the settings for the jobs, or is it more a log file?
3. If Acronis runs a backup Job and Windows gets shut down, so the image can not be finished but windows shuts down in an orderly manner, what would happen with the following incremental backups? Corrupted or would Acronis realize that its just trash delete it and continue the chain with the next proper one?
4. Is there a way in the 2011 version to find out which Backup belongs to which Job and the number of the backup in the chain?
So far what i did what you recommended: Created new Jobs pointing to new folders. The Evaluate each and every old backup is to much of hazzle and luckily i don't need the backups - so i just moved them to a different folder...
Acronis stores the database in
C:\programdata\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Database1. If i restore an Image of C how does acronis manage to not reset itself to old for the Acronis Software itself (i. e. deleted Backup-Jobs)
It doesn't do this well, from what I recall (I always start new backups after I restore). In particular, after you restore, ATI wouldn't see the backups done after the date at which the system was restored.
2. Under the path you told me, i found a file called archives.xml. Since i'm not really able to read xml. Is this really the settings for the jobs, or is it more a log file?
This is the data that ATI uses to find where which file is, within backup tasks and which the chains of each abckup task.
3. If Acronis runs a backup Job and Windows gets shut down, so the image can not be finished but windows shuts down in an orderly manner, what would happen with the following incremental backups? Corrupted or would Acronis realize that its just trash delete it and continue the chain with the next proper one?
ATI is resilient to this. It would just see that the backup didn't happen, and the following backup would run just as if the previous task schedule was missed.
4. Is there a way in the 2011 version to find out which Backup belongs to which Job and the number of the backup in the chain?
This is what the database is used for. In absence of the database, ATI uses metadata in the archive file to identify files belonging to the same chain (full&partials).
What is important is to avoid touching the TIB files manually (rename, delete, move them).
1. If i restore an Image of C how does acronis manage to not reset itself to old for the Acronis Software itself (i. e. deleted Backup-Jobs)
It doesn't do this well, from what I recall (I always start new backups after I restore). In particular, after you restore, ATI wouldn't see the backups done after the date at which the system was restored.
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Would it be useful/smart to backup the archives.xml and to replace it after an image of c put on the machine?