Partion Backup and Recovery Failures - So much for " Reliable Image Backup and Recovery"
Hi,
I have been using Acronis True Image for sometime to create a partion backups. I thought everything was working fine until it was time to delete some previous backup versions... Now nothing seems to work.
MY PROCESS
I do scheduled, incremental backups that save the partion backups on my computer hard drive. I then periodically manually copy the backups to an external hard drive. This is convenient for me as I keep the external hard drive in a remote location for security reasons.
CLEANUP and RECOVERY FAILURE
In order to delete old versions I first selected "Recover" from the user interface. Before I can proceed, I need to select the destination drive. I then get an error message that saying I cannot restore a backup to the same drive that stores the backup (a.k.a my hard drive...). Note that when I create the backup sequence in the first place ATI recommends against storeing the backup on the same drive...but does not say it is impossible!
Ok...the problem is I am not able to select an alterate source drive (ie my external hardrive), because Recover fails immediately on the destination drive.
So, cleanup aside.. how do I actually recover if a disaster happens? I cannot recover from the internal or the external harddrive.
BACKUP FAILURE
I decided to create a new backup sequence that stores directly on the external harddrive, using all the same settings that I was using for storing on the internal drive except of course for the path itself. It seemed to work for a while.
Then I cloned the sequence to create a new sequence and renamed it. The backup fails on "unable to creat volume snapshot". I created a new sequence with the same settings. Also failed on "unable to create volume snapshot. I have no idea what this means.
I am becoming desperate. I would appreciate any help possible since
I do not seem to be protected.
The more I use this product, the more I feel the product is unreliable.
Thanks
R
The problem is that I must be able to move backups from the computer to the external hard drive or between hard drives. Offsite storage (ie at a location different than the computer) is an absolute security requirement in the event of system disaster.
But what really rankles and I find unacceptable is the error message that "cannot restore a backup to the same drive that stores the backup". What is the point of the application allowing you to do something (ie make the backup) and then telling you latter (during recovery) that it can't be done. I have the same point about editing settings. It is beyond my comprehension that the application allows you to do things (edit settings) that may corrupt the database and render the backup useless. What is even worse is that none of this is in the official documentation.
As far as the clone goes, I essentially followed the procedure in the user manual and on this site (click on the gear, select clone, rename,save and go). BTW it was "Grover" on this site that actually recommended using the clone facility. So who do I believe? As I said both the original backup sequence (which was working) and the clone started to fail on some obscure error.
The news (since I first posted) is that they stopped failing after I rebooted.
Welll..sort of...
I created (not cloned) two separate partition backup taks with different names, saved to different subfolders and backing up to different subfolders. Task A was set up to remove previous versions of A. Task B was set to create a new full backup everytime. What I found out is that the first Task A not only cleaned up previous versions of Task A, it also deleted Task B backup- which was in a complete different folder and had a completely differently named backup! This is reliable? This is predictable? I recreated the tasks, deleted folders, deleted backups... same problem. Kept on trying..now it seems to work. No idea what I did that finally clicked.
I have been using ATI for several years. I thought it was working. Fortunately I never needed to actually do a recovery. But what will happen when I do? The bottom line is that what works and what doesn't is not documented and depends on a lot of user experience and...dare I say it.. folklore... which is not reliable.
I completely sympathize with Bob B (https://forum.acronis.com/forum/63470) and no doubt a lot of other users. Quite frankly, I have wasted way too much time. I am going to start looking elsewhere.
R