Recover from "out of disk space" during cleanup
I have been using a 5 incrementals with a full backup scheme and a cleanup so that there is only one recent version chain. My backups are very large (circa 4TB) but I had a large disk dedicated to the backup. The scheme ensures that I have a safe copy of the backup at all times, but the downside is that cleanup generates a full copy of the backup for a short time. The base size of my backup is now a little too large and cleanup ran out disk space before completely creating the duplicate copy. My question is how do I recover from this?
I don't want to go outside of Acronis and start deleting files, but I may have to in this case. Right now, I have a nearly 4TB tibx file that is the base backup and a nearly 4TB tibx file that is the duplicate. Acronix itself is stalled in the backup with the out of disk space error. What is the proper way to get rid of the duplicate and get Acronix to stop attempting to finish the cleanup? Restore properly shows a single backup chain that reflects the base backup.
I intend to kill the current backup scheme and start doing a separate backup scheme for each hard drive (still in the 5 inc/1 full with cleanup method). If I schedule each hard drive cleanup for a different day, I think this will reduce the size of each cleanup and thus give me much more disk space margin. If anyone can suggest a better scheme that backs-up everything daily, always maintains one complete copy of the backup (even during cleanup), and further minimizes the extra disk space needed for cleanup, I'd love to hear about it.
Greatly appreciate any assistance.
Rick
Acronis have introduced a new 'Clean up versions' tool with ATI 2019 and later versions to help users better manage backups without the need to use Explorer and risk causing issues due to the linked information stored in the internal Acronis metadata database files. The new tool allows selected files to be deleted and updates the database information as part of the same action.
KB 61844: Acronis True Image 2019, 2020 and 2021: How to delete old backups - describes the new tool.
Thanks to both of you for your responses. Bruno, thanks for the clarification regarding multiple backup jobs. I wasn't sure that it only ran backups serially. Steve, I looked at the Clean up versions tool, but it only sees a single version chain while the directory contains a single version chain plus almost an entire duplicate. I don't see any way to tell it to delete the duplicate. Ideally, the tool should scan the directory for duplicates or incomplete Acronis files and flag them or something.
Right now, my backup directory contains
My disks.tibx
Mydisks-0041.tibx
Mydisks-0042.tibx
Clean up versions only shows a single chain of days and the size is right for one of these files. Can I just use Explorer to kill the 0042 file (which seems to be the duplicate, it was created on the day Acronis ran out of disk space)? Or should I try something else?
Thanks again for the assistance!
Rick
Right now, my backup directory contains
My disks.tibx
Mydisks-0041.tibx
Mydisks-0042.tibx
Rick, you should not be trying to delete any of the above files manually if the task that created them is still showing in the main ATI GUI backup list.
The first file should have a size of only 12KB and holds metadata that is required by the other files if they are to be used for any recovery.
Can you share some screen images of how the Clean up versions tool sees the contents of the above files?
Note: there is a known issue with the Clean up versions tool where it needs a minimum of around 250MB of free space on the storage drive in order to be able to work correctly!
Breaking your backup task into smaller tasks looks to be the way you need to be considering going forward (as suggested earlier by Bruno).
Hi Steve,
The current status of the backup job has changed since I wrote the first post above. On the day this started, I left the computer up overnight with the Acronis program on the screen and the job stalled. The next day I found it was no longer stalled and had (by itself) initiated the next run of the same backup job that had stalled. Since it was trying to backup large files into a few GB of disk space (per Acronis), I stopped the backup and took the job off the schedule completely. So, it is now stable but I can;t run any backups until I clear the 4TB duplicate.
The storage disk is showing 2.6GB free in Explorer, so it should be ok in Clean up. I have included screen shots of what Clean up shows for this backup job. It doesn't show much, but seems to only know about 4.1TB. Per the Open Location command in the job, 0041 and 0042 each show about 3.9 TB, with 0042 a little smaller. "My disks.tibx" is indeed 12MB.Explorer agrees that 0041 and 0042 together pretty much fill the 8TB disk.
So, where do I go from here?
Thanks!
Rick
Rick, thanks for the screen images, can you identify which of the two large .tibx files corresponds to the one shown in your images? Which one was created on Jan 29th and last updated on Feb 4th?
If that file is the 0042 one, then you should be safe to manually delete the 0041 file in Explorer (provided you have Acronis Active Protection turned off). I am saying this because it doesn't show at all in the tool view.
For cleanup to work with these file sizes you should be using the automatic cleanup option to 'Store no more than 1 recent version chain' which would allow for one chain of over 4 TB and then for a new chain to be started by a new Full backup of over 3 TB to be created before the older chain is then deleted. The alternative is to split the backup to make smaller chains.
Hi Steve,
The location view option shows 0041 last modified on Feb 4, and 0042 last modified on Feb 7. Since the 7th is the day it ran out of disk space and the 7th does not show up in a chain, I think 0042 must be the defective copy. Let me know if you agree, and I will delete 0042.
I'm going to change the back up strategy as Bruno and you suggest to a separate job for each hard drive.
Thanks!
Rick
Rick, I would suggest one further check here before deleting anything:
Double-click on each .tibx file and look at the contents and their backup timestamps to confirm which is correct to make sure that there isn't any cross-over here! (I have never seen that happening but guess there can always be a first time!).
The alternative would be to run a Validation of the 0042 file (right-click on the file in Explorer and take the validate option from the Acronis option) to see if this puts this back into the Clean up versions tool list as it should be!
Steve, I did a validate from the menu of 0042 and it eventually came back with "The backup is valid." Clean up versions has not changed, however. I'm not even convinced the software actually validated 0042, since I know 0042 stopped before it completed for lack of disk space, and it is slightly shorter than 0041 (which covers the same days). For a backup system, I think Acronis needs to provide much better visibility into what it is actually doing. How should I proceed?
Thanks and best regards,
Rick
Rick, thanks for doing the validation check!
At this point, given that your are not seeing the 0042 file(s), then deleting just that file via Explorer is really the only option left for you.
After deleting the file, repeat the validation to ensure it doesn't throw up any 'missing file / version' errors!
Steve, just to finish off this topic, I disabled the 0042 file and then ran a validation on the 0041. That worked, and restore was seeing the chain, so I deleted 0042 and validated 0041 again. With everything look good, I then deleted 0042, and am now running separate backups on each drive. So far, so good! Thanks for all the help and I hope I don't run into this again anytime soon!
Best, Rick
Rick, great to read of positive progress with this issue, thanks for the update!