Acronis stopped emtpying disk and can't continue backups
Since mid_january acronis has failed to remove old backups from my offline Toshiba disk and has not done any scheduled backups at all. This has happened before but I forget how to fix it. And I'd like to know how to keep it from happening again!
I have been having a similar issue w/ my old backups not being deleted and filling up my remote 4TB disk. I set up for differential backups and the advanced settings are in the attached file.
Am I missing something?
Thomas, how big are your backup files typically?
Your settings will create 10 version chains with 1 x Full plus 7 x Differential files in each chain, plus a further Full backup has to be created before any older chain of files gets deleted. So in essence you have configured settings that will create 81 backup files in total before the oldest 8 files get deleted.
Steve,
Thx for resending me our thread from 2015. It helped jog my memory. My recollection is that the pblm I’m having now also occurred about 6-12 months ago, after I started using ATI 2018. My vague recollection is that the pblm was generic in ATI, not mine. And I do recall that whatever I was told to do fixed the pblm and old backups got deleteted and I was back in business. But I don’t remember what I did to fix the pblm with ATI 2018! Sob....
My other pblm now is that I also can’t remember what I did to use Windows file manager to just click on and delete old backups from my Toshiba ext drive, but I can’t do that now either. Right now, when I use Windows file mgr and click on any file in the list in the folder and click delete, I get an error msg that looks like it’s from Windows, not Acronis, saying I need permission to delete, yada yada yada. Well, I’m signed to Windows as the administrator, so...
I know that’s not the right longterm fix but it would work in the short run, while I keep trying to fix the long term problem long term.
Any help at all will be gratefully appreciated!
Ok, let's take my C: drive back up. I currently have it set to 10 diffs before a full and to store no more than 10 recent version chains.
I now have a total of 60 files on the back up drive for C: and of those 7 are full backups.
The full backups for the C: drive about 60,000,000KB since my C: drive is a relatively small SSD, whereas my data drives full backup size is in the 879,000,000 kb range and 400,000,000 range.
I would have thought the older full backups and diffs, would have been removed from the C: drive back up. I have had to manually remove old files from my data drive backups due to the accrued size.
Both my data drives have created a new full backup but the previous full back up is still there. Is that normal and only the diffs go away? Is each full backup and it's diffs considered a "version chain" which would account for the extra files?
Tom (OP), you need to turn off Acronis Active Protection in order to manually delete backup image files or else AAP will stop you! After such manual deletes, you should run a validation for the backup task to clean up and reconcile the database that ATI uses to track all the files being created.
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Thomas, a version chain consists of all the files which have the same _b?_ number in the file name, so this will be such as A_full_b1_s1_v1.tib followed by A_diff_b1_s2_v1.tib and then further b1 files with s3, s4 through s11 (if you are making 10 diffs before a new full file).
This means that a single version chain for you = 11 files in total, so if you are storing 10 version chains, you will create 110 files before a further new full backup will trigger automatic cleanup to run and delete the oldest chain of 11 files.
Thanks Steve.
Is there any reason to keep more than two version chains? That would give me two full back ups and ten diffs for each. That seems like more than enough. Except for the C: drive 7 diffs per chain also seems to me to be sufficient.
Thoughts?
The definitions that one is presented with probably makes sense to an IT person but we semi-Luddites missed the class on that.
Thomas, I personally only keep 2 version chains for my own backups but I reinforce this by doing backups to multiple different destinations where possible, each using similar settings.
I have backups to a local / external drive, my Synology NAS and to the Acronis Cloud.
Thanks for the help.
Tom
Steve, thx for reminding this ol’ dawg to turn off AAP temporarily to remove old backup files manually. I’ve done this and I’m running a full backup “as we type”. I’ll do the verification next and see what happens.
But it leaves me with my OP question: if my backup settings WERE working, why would they stop working? I’m still stumped on that one.
Well, now I messed up something else! After turning off AAP I manually deleted many outdated backups, full and incremental. I then did a new full backup. It looked like it worked right, but when I tried to validate, ATI said it can’t find version 8, 7, 6, etc., down to version 1. And the dashboard only shows the last backup was the last one ATI did correctly back in January before it started NOT deleting older files and doing its job right.
How much of a mess have I made now!?
Should I just remove the entire backup! It’s the only one I’ve ever created? Then, empty the whole Toshiba ear drive manually, and just start all over new?
I'm certain I’m the culprit but I sure don’t know how to fix my screwup.,
Tom wrote:
After turning off AAP I manually deleted many outdated backups, full and incremental. I then did a new full backup. It looked like it worked right, but when I tried to validate, ATI said it can’t find version 8, 7, 6, etc., down to version 1. And the dashboard only shows the last backup was the last one ATI did correctly back in January before it started NOT deleting older files and doing its job right.
Tom, when you do the validate it will pop-up an error message for each missing / deleted backup file (that you manually removed via Explorer), this is because the internal database used by ATI keeps a record of those files. Validation will help to reconcile the database with the status of the remaining files.
The only other method is to force a rebuild of the database as per the steps given in KB 60915: Acronis True Image: repairing program settings - but if you took the Ignore or Cancel option for the errors from validation, this may not be needed now.
The dashboard is something I don't really use or rely upon, but I would expect it will only show options for the backups that still exist, not those that were deleted.
Well, dang! As Pogo said once, “We have met the enemy and he is us!” (You have to be “of a certain age” to remember Pogo.) IOW, I found my problem when I looked in a mirror! Or more precisely when I reviewed my settings in ATI. I honestly thought that when my problem of ATI not removing old backups first occurred months ago that I HAD turned on the “automatically remove ... “ option. But I hadn’t! Bad move, Tom! So apparently I haven’t been removing them all this time after all, and it only took till now for the Toshiba to fill up and show me the problem all over again.
i feel so stupid! Thanks for all your help!
Tom, those moments of clarity are more common as age advances and follow on from the other common events called 'senior moments'....!
Steve Smith wrote:Tom, those moments of clarity are more common as age advances and follow on from the other common events called 'senior moments'....!
+1
Ian