Backup validation taking increasingly longer time
I am using Acronis True Image Home 11 (not 2011), and have configured my backup task as follows:
- Weekly FULL disk image backup with daily INCR backups (i.e. FULL backup after every 6 INCR backups), run nightly.
- Destination is an Acronis Backup Location stored on an external USB hard drive with a location size quota of 700 GB, and maximum storage period of 365 days. All FULL and INCR images are stored in this folder.
- I also have the task option set up to Validate the backup archive after the backup process.
As I have read in other forum threads, ATI validates the entire backup chain back though the last FULL backup. Therefore, each night the validation process takes longer and longer, with additional validation time required for each nightly TIB file that is created.
However, the logs (attached) show that ATI is validating 6 backup files each time (should be validating an additional backup file each day). In addition, the validation time should reset each week and go through the above cycle. What I am seeing though is that validation time continues to get longer and longer. So it seems that even the previous weeks' backup chains (1 FULL + 6 INCR) are being included in the validation process.
My questions are:
- Why is this happening?
- If I manually move the previous weeks' backup chains to a new subfolder within my current Backup Location, will the quota limits still be calculated correctly? i.e. is the size quota calculated based on the size of the Backup Location and all its subdirectories, or just the root directory of the Backup Location?
System specs:
- Windows XP SP3
- Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop Pentium M, 1.6 GHz, 2GB RAM
- Acronis True Image Home version 11.0, Build 8,101
- Source drive: Single partition (C:) containing both System files and User Data
- Backup drive: WD My Book, 2TB USB
Seekforever,
Is there any way to confirm this with official documentation? Since the validation times get longer and longer, it would seem to support your theory.
I can't see it in the TI11 User Guide but usually these things aren't mentioned and come to light when somebody has a problem. :)
See this thread which is about TI10.
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=161296
I found via a Google search a forum where somebody was asking about another TI 11 issue. Somebody posted that TI does validate all the backups in an official Backup Location. Not a statement from Acronis though but with my fuzzy recall, your observed behaviour and these other 2 comments it seems that's the way it works.
Thank you seekforever! That's a big help. Clearly your google mojo is stronger than mine, because after hours of searching and scouring I could not find any posts that described my situation as well as your links. Thank you for those pointers.
My workaround is to manually move the older TIB backup sets to another folder within the Backup Location. Hopefully this still allows ATI to calculate the available space in the Backup Location correctly to implement the retention policy.