Full plus non fixed Incremental backups

Sorry, but there is no Backup scheme that would allow you to do as you are asking here.  You can either choose to create Incremental backups forever (higher risk if any incremental in the chain comes damaged, lost etc), or else you have to choose a specific number of incremental files to create before making a new Full backup.

If you want to create a Full backup on a particular day of the week then make incremental backups on all the other days, then repeat with a new Full, the next week on that same day, then you would need to create a backup task that does just this.

To make an ad-hoc incremental backup, you would need to use a second backup task (which could be based on a renamed copy of the other task full backup file) and set this to make incremental files forever and just run this on demand.  Both backup tasks would need to have unique names.

I tried the incremental forever option but that fails because there is no full backup in the folder if the folder is new aka empty.

I also created a copy of the incremental task, renamed it so that its task name reflected that it was the full version. Then I ran it with the destination folder empty. When it ran the TIB file that it created in the empty folder was the same name as the backup task. The scheduled incremental backup task whose name reflected the incremental failed to run because it expected to see a full backup in the destination whose TIB was the same name as the incremental task. There was a full TIB file but its name was different.

A full backup every Saturday after I rotate the destination so that it begins with an empty directory.

Rotating the destination drive is not handled well by ATI because it tracks the destination drive by the partition GUID as well as the names of files created for the task on that drive.

The recommendation here is to always have a separate backup task for each destination drive being used, and not to mix and match the tasks and drives.

If you do the above, then your backup task will not encounter a blank drive with no files and you can use the automatic cleanup rules for your backup task to manage when older version chains should be deleted.  For example, use 'Store no more than 2 recent version chains' so that your destination drive contains a maximum of 3 x Full backup image files plus 2 sets of Incremental files at the point where automatic cleanup would delete the oldest version chain (1 x Full plus associated incremental files).  Cleanup only runs when a new version chain has been created successfully with a new Full backup file.

Backup task names should always be unique as far as is possible otherwise unpredictable results can occur.

Yup, use 2 different backup tasks, one for each destination drive.  Essentially, you still get the same results as you are wanting since:

01) Each backup task will only run when the correct external is connected.  The backup tasks will be independent of each other, but you will have a version on drive 1 and another version on drive 2 and it will only update when connected. 

02) As all backup schemes require a full to be located on the drive, and incremental backup schemes require all versions in the chain to be present to be usable, you're not saving or losing any type of space or efficiency in the plan to rotate drives.  If you were planning to rotate drives and have Monday's incremental on drive 1 and Tuesday's incremental on drive 2, it wouldn't work this way anyway.

The destination folder was always the same folder. This is what I had tried.

I tried creating two tasks  one called Drive_C_D_E_L Full Saturday Only and the other was called Drive_C_D_E_L Incremental Only. Both of these were using the same destination folder on a different hard drive used only to store backup TIB files. 

The Drive_C_D_E_L Full Saturday Only job was scheduled only on Saturday. The destination folder was empty. It created a TIB file in that folder called Drive_C_D_E_L Full Saturday Only_full_b1_s1_v1.tib.

The Drive_C_D_E_L Incremental Only was scheduled only to run M-F. When it attempted to run on Monday it failed because it was expecting to see a file in the desitination folder called Drive_C_D_E_L Incremental Only_...tib where of course there isn't. The full backup that was created on Saturday was called  Drive_C_D_E_L Full Saturday Only_full_b1_s1_v1.tib

It appears that Acronis has taken the rotation of the backup sets away from the control of the end user and instead prefers to put all of the backups into one folder and only one folder. If I prerform ad-hoc incremental backups during the week to the same destination folder then will this not throw out when the full backup will occur as the number of incremental backups will be reached before Saturday when the computer is used less.

My computer is used the least on Saturday. That is why I always want my full backup to occur on that day.

If you store your incremental backup files in a different place (folder / drive) than the full backup that the incremental is based upon, and then compound this by using different names, then I am not at all surprised that you are not getting this to work.

Acronis wants to keep these files together for a good reason, as in the event of needing to do a recovery it will need to be able to find all these files and walk the linkages between them or else it will not be able to recover from the backup.

I am NOT storing the full and incremental backups in different folders. They are being backed up in the same folder ie BACKUP on another hard drive. Only before the full back up is run on Saturday is this folder called BACKUP renamed to BACKUP1 and an empty folder called BACKUP created so that the full back up is created in the empy foilder BACKUP..

This process ensures that the full backup is a done on Saturday when the computer is used the least and the incrementals are done on other days of the week. I would prefer NOT to have the full backup run on another day yet still allow me to do ad-hoc incremental backups on Sunday-Fri should the need arise for whatever reason.

Ok, thank you for clarifying your process here, but the core issue is that you are altering the destination folder and possibly involving a second hard drive if I understand what you are saying about "They are being backed up in the same folder ie BACKUP on another hard drive."

At a minimum, you need to change the default Options > Advanced > Error handling settings for your backup task and turn off all error handling given the changes you are making.

As stated before, having unique, separate backup tasks for each hard drive is the recommended method of handling this type of operation.

Having 2 suitably named tasks in Acronis 2019 to handle the full backup and incremental backups is not working since there is no way in the backup task to specify the name of the TIB file unlike older versions of Acronis allowed you to do. If there is I am overlooking that option some how. What Acronis 2019 does is it uses the name of the task itself for the name of the TIB file.

This process ensures that the full backup is a done on Saturday when the computer is used the least and the incrementals are done on other days of the week. I would prefer NOT to have the full backup run on another day yet still allow me to do ad-hoc incremental backups on Sunday-Fri should the need arise for whatever reason.

Assuming that you are using two separate backup drives, then the approach I would recommend is:

Backup task 1 with destination of Backup drive 1.

Create a Full backup on Saturday, then 6 scheduled daily Incremental backup on the other days.

Backup task 2 with destination of Backup drive 2.

Create a Full backup also on Saturday (or copy the Full backup from Backup task 1 and give it the name of Backup task 2.  You could use the option to 'Add existing backup' to 'import' the file into the ATI GUI then reconfigure the second backup task).

Do not schedule this task to run, and set it to a Custom, Incremental backup scheme, then just run the task ad-hoc as needed, keeping this totally separate from Backup task 1.

Steve Smith wrote:

Ok, thank you for clarifying your process here, but the core issue is that you are altering the destination folder and possibly involving a second hard drive if I understand what you are saying about "They are being backed up in the same folder ie BACKUP on another hard drive."

At a minimum, you need to change the default Options > Advanced > Error handling settings for your backup task and turn off all error handling given the changes you are making.

As stated before, having unique, separate backup tasks for each hard drive is the recommended method of handling this type of operation.

 

I have two hard drives. Hard drive 1 is where the data is. The second hard drive is where the Acronis Backup files are written to. On the second hard drive I have a folder called Backup. For years now with older version of Acronis there was no issue with renaming this folder on saturday (prior to when the Acronis job was scheduled to run), creating a new Backup folder and telling Acronis to create incremental backup. When the Acronis job ran it discovered that there was no full backup file in there so it created a full backup. Susequent runs of that same single Acronis task discovered the full backup TIB file and simply created incremental backups. This job could be run ad-hoc with the result that another incremental backup was the result.

Come Saturday the rotation process was done and the full backup was automatically created.

Now I have upgraded to Acronis 2019 and this type of control appears to have been removed from the end user. If you want do do ad-hoc incremental backups then that will affect what day of the week your full backups will occur. It appears that a single back up task is not capable in Acornis 2019 of performing a full backup should it find the destination folder empty or perform an incremental backup should it discover a full backup already exist.

If I resort to two suitably named Backup task say Full_Backup  for Saturday and Incremental_Backup for other days with both jobs backing up to the same folder, "Backup" then those two jobs expect to see TIB files with Full_Backup and Incremental_Backup in the folder called "Backup" respectively when they are run. This is because there is no way in Acronis 2019 to indicate what the TIB file name is called. Acornis2019 automatically uses the name of the Backup task for the tib name.

The name of the Backup task is always used as the name of the backup files, but you can change the task name and cause the file name to follow suit as shown in the images below.

As shown above, each time the task name is renamed, the subsequent file name reflects the same while keeping the previous name(s) for previous file(s).

If you do rename the task / files in this way, then it best to keep all the files in their own folder to make it easy to identify that they all are related to each other, especially if not keeping the same stem part of the name.

Ok so for example in your example say "Rename Test" is a full backup job backing up to L:\test on every Saturday only and that "Rename Test 22-39" is set to backup to L:\Test Sun-Fri with Create Incremental versions only after inital  Full backup.

So if L:\test folder is empty PRIOR to the scheduled time for "Rename Test" then once this job is run you will have a full backup called Rename_Test_full_b1_s1_v1.tib in L:\Test. That I can see.

But come Sunday when the appointed time is reached for  "Rename Test 22-39"  to run to create incremental backups it will fail since it wll look for an existing Full backup file with the "Rename Test 22-39"  name and find no such file in L:\Test and this job is not capable of creating a Full backup on its own. The result is subsequent runs of "Rename Test 22-39"  will fail Monday, Tues etc. At least this is my experience with Acronis 2019 and two separately name Backup tasks backing up to the same folder.

Ok so for example in your example say "Rename Test" is a full backup job backing up to L:\test on every Saturday only and that "Rename Test 22-39" is set to backup to L:\Test Sun-Fri with Create Incremental versions only after inital  Full backup.

Sorry, you are missing my point here or I haven't expressed myself clearly enough.

Rename Test / Rename Test 22-38 / Rename Test 22-39 is the same backup task and going to the same destination folder.  I was demonstrating that you can rename the task and the next backup will produce a file using the new name.

You cannot create a Full backup in one folder and then continue that backup by an Incremental in a different folder.

I totally understand that and that never was my intention.

I will have to do some further research on other backup software that offer the flexibility and rigid scheduling of full backups always occurring on a particular day followed by a variable number of incremental backups during the rest of the week.

Is this a new issue with ATI 2019?

I'm running ATI 2018 and ran this test. I created a simple incremental file and folders backup (to keep it quick). Before reaching the limit of increments, did as PC Guy wants of moving the files to another folder. This generated and error to which I ignored and then it created a new full backup. After an incremental on that backup, I just changed the names of the latest full and incremental. It then created a new full backup. The new full backup went to a b2 version.

It seems this was a recent issue here as well.

I had been using incrementals after the first full backup for months. This process when it was run on Saturday after the current backup folder was renamed and a new empty destination folder created threw an error something to the effect of file not found. I had to be there to tell it to ignore and it went ahead and created a full backup. Subsequent runs of the Task during the rest of the week created incremental back ups as it should. Then the next Saturday the error again popped up after the backup rotation was initated and the Acronis had to backup yet again to an empty folder.

Just to clarify, you're saying it worked in ATI 2018 but not in ATI 2019? I don't have ATI 2019 so I can't test there.

No it was working fine in an older build/release of Acronis 2019 which is currently at 17750, Going to do further testing this weekend. I do not want to screw up the daily incrementals.

In that case, you might want to file a report with Acronis.

I'm still confused by this entire thread...

Drive_C_D_E_L Incremental Only would still require an initial full, regardless of the backup scheme.  Every backup task / script, always starts with a full.  And, every backup task /script is independent of every other backup task /script.  You should never be able to combine a full from one task with incrementals or differentials from a different task.  The only way this might have worked, is for some strange database issue where the two tasks were named exactly the same at one point and mixing things up - I could see that being a problem with recovery down the road at some point if that was happening though and would not expect this to work - not reliably anyway.  It's not meant to work that way.

So, since there are 2 tasks:

1) Drive_C_D_E_L Full Saturday Only

would only ever create a full on Saturday (if scheduled to only run on Saturday.

2) Drive_C_D_E_L Incremental Only

would still have to have it's own original full since it is a separate task from the Saturday only job, and then would create only incrementals after that until the version chain limit was met. If this is incrementals forever chain or a chain with many incrementals, then it would basically always create incrementals.

----------------------------------------

The key here is that the full from the task called Drive_C_D_E_L Full Saturday Only has no interaction with the incrementals from the task called Drive_C_D_E_L Incremental Only.  

You may want to check out Marcium Reflect for what you're wanting to accomplish.  In that one, you can manually run just a full (which will be separate) anytime you want from the same backup script.  It still creates a different full as the initial backup though, which the incrementals rely on.  When you create a new manual full, then it starts making new incrementals that tie to that new full.   

Personally, I feel Acronis is more reliable when it comes to recovery and so it remains my go-to, but if this flexibility in the scheme is needed, I think Macrium has the feature you're looking for - and it's a pretty decent backup program in its own right.. 

Like I said older Acronis from say 2010 when one selected Incrementals would automatically create the inital full backup  if the destination was empty. Subsequent runs of the job would create incrementals. All this would happen without user interaction. 

With Acronis 2019 if one selects Incremental only after inital full backup required end user interaction when the destination folder was empty. I had to approve the creation of the full backup. The documentation is lacking regarding this option in that I could not find anything either in the help flle not in the online FAQ where it is clearly stated how the full backup is suppose to be created. This lack of documentation and the requirement lately of having to interact with the software caused me to believe that the full backup had to be done via a secondary task. Hence why I had the Saturday Only task, to create the full backup

This  user interaction never happened with Acronis 2019 for about 3 months when I used Incremental Only after Initial Full backup. The task created a full backup like I wanted foillowed by incrementals. For some reason the last couple of runs threw File not found errors on Saturday and required me to tell Acronis to ignore errors. That was when I started doubting that this single task was no longer going to fit the build and I created the Saturday only task to create a full backup.

Re Macrium yes that may fit the build I have used Macrium on other systems as well and did not have problems. I may have to resort to it if I can not get Acronis to work properly.

Ok, I have done some testing with ATI 2019 and can get your backup scenario working but the first thing that you need to do is to set the correct Error handling option to stop the error message being given when an empty destination folder is encountered.  See image below for the setting needed.

To replicate your backup scenario I created a small Files & Folder backup and used a small batch script in a Pre Command to handle the moving of old .tib files to a new backup folder.  With ATI 2019 you also need to turn off Acronis Active Protection if this is active or else it will try to stop any files being moved or deleted.

The script file is as follows, if you want to adapt this for your own needs.

@echo off
for /f %%i in ('powershell ^(get-date^).DayOfWeek') do set dow=%%i
echo %dow%
if %dow% == Saturday goto rotate
goto quit

:rotate
sc stop "AcronisActiveProtectionService" > NUL 2>&1
if exist L:\Backup1 del L:\Backup1 /Q >NUL 2>&1
mkdir L:\Backup1 > NUL 2>&1
move L:\Backup\*.tib L:\Backup1 > NUL 2>&1
sc start "AcronisActiveProtectionService" > NUL 2>&1

:quit
exit /b 0

With Acronis 2019 if one selects Incremental only after inital full backup required end user interaction when the destination folder was empty. I had to approve the creation of the full backup. 

Just trying to understand how this is reproducible and what is unique in your case.  When I create any new backup task, using the incremental scheme, I am not prompted to enter any credentials and a full is automatically created on the first run.  This is the intended behavior and design and has always been that way for me from 2014 to 2019.

The only time I have to enter any credentials or approve the backup to run, is when I create a new backup task to a network share.  Anytime you create a new backup job to a NAS or network share that has different credentials than the logged on user, this is to be expected.

Where are you being prompted to "approve the creation of the full backup" and where is your destination of the backups?

OK, so is he manually moving the backup in Windows?  If so, well, that's the issue.  

I did the same as you, Steve...

- made a new small test backup of my downloads folder using the "full" option and ran it. 

- I then manually moved it in Windows file explorer.

- I then changed the backup scheme / method to "incremental - create only incremental versions after the initial full version" and ran the backup.

I WAS prompted to locate the original full because the database still thinks it should exist there since moving it was a manual option I had done outside of Acronis.  This is NORMAL behavior with the default settings as it wants to update the database if it was moved, or know that it was deleted.

However, as Steve points out in his post above, using the advanced tab >>> error handling >>>  and enabling the check box for "Do not show messages and dialogs while processing (silent mode)

Then you will not be prompted to validate (fix) the manually moved or deleted files in the database and a new full will automatically be created if the destination folder is empty.

This appears to be what the OP is wanting and should suit purposes here.  Unfortunately, if there are other issues such as sector problems on the disk, or actual missing/bad files in the incremental chain, there will also be no warnings about those and could result in an inability to successfully recover as a result.

Bobbo_3C0X1 wrote:

I WAS prompted to locate the original full because the database still thinks it should exist there since moving it was a manual option I had done outside of Acronis.  This is NORMAL behavior with the default settings as it wants to update the database if it was moved, or know that it was deleted.

However, as Steve points out in his post above, using the advanced tab >>> error handling >>>  and enabling the check box for "Do not show messages and dialogs while processing (silent mode)

Then you will not be prompted to validate (fix) the manually moved or deleted files in the database and a new full will automatically be created if the destination folder is empty.

This appears to be what the OP is wanting and should suit purposes here.  Unfortunately, if there are other issues such as sector problems on the disk, or actual missing/bad files in the incremental chain, there will also be no warnings about those and could result in an inability to successfully recover as a result.

 

That sounds like what I had been seeing here. It is strange though that that this prompting behavoir only recently started to occur when I was running a single Incremental only backup and had not changed anything in the Task at hand. If it ain't broke don't fix it in other words.

I will revert back to a single Incremental only backup job but will enable the silent mode option and see how that goes.

If I still have issues perhaps lumping all these backups into one folder and having Acronis age off old backups may be what I will have to do should I want to stay with Acronis.

I still feel that the documentation should clearly indicate that for Incremental only task that the initial Full backup is automatically created by the incremental Task and that no additional task is needed to create the initial Full Backup.

.

PC Guy wrote:

I still feel that the documentation should clearly indicate that for Incremental only task that the initial Full backup is automatically created by the incremental Task and that no additional task is needed to create the initial Full Backup.

I think this is how it's always been. The definition on an incremental backup is that there is a full backup to start the chain and then increments off that. There would never be more than one backup task for a single chain.