How can I disable automatic consolidation in ATI Home 2010?
According to section 9.3.7 of the ATI User's Guide, "by default there are no limits set (for automatic consoldation) and automatic consolidation is not performed".
On my "Windows 7 (64 Bit) Ultimate" PC with ATI Home 2010 (Build 6053) that is not true.
In the "Setting automatic consolidation" window of the Backup Wizzard, I can see that the "Number of backup exceeds" field has been preset to 2. I can change it to 100 ..... but not to a higher value. The limit of 100 is not sufficient for me; neither for the "number of backups" nor for the "storage Period" (which is also limited to 100 (days)).
The solution seemed to be to uncheck the checkboxes of the "Setting automatic consolidation" window. If on the "Setting Automatic Consolidation" screen of the Backup Wizzard, I uncheck the "Number of backups exceed" checkbox, superficially all looks fine. .... But next time that I look at the Automatic Consolidation Window of the same Backup Job, I can see that ATI has reset this limit to 2.
Am I the only one who sees all these odd things?
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My question: how can I disable the automatic consolidation?
Therefore, if I define for a backup task (in the "Backup Method" Window of the Backup Wizzard) that ATI shall create 10 incremental backups before creating a new Full-Backup, I can select for the automatic consolidation a "maximum number of backups" (e.g. a value of 15) that will effectively disable for that task an automatic consolidation, that is based on the maximum number of backups. I am happy with that.
Even if the above description corresponds to what i have seen in my tests, it does not correspond to what the User's Guide state. The beginning of section 9.3.7 of the User'S Guide state "Automatic consolidation of a backup archive is enabled by setting the overall limitations for the archive". Hence, according to the user's Guide, the limitation is the overall limitation for the whole archive -- it is not (as the results of my tests suggest) a limitation for "the group of backups consisting of one Full Backup and its associated Incremental/Differential Backups".
Who can I rely on: on the User's Guide? Or on the results of my Tests? Even if currently I could rely on the results of my tests: who tells me, that the next build or next version of ATI will not be "fixed" in order to comply to the statements of the User's Guide?
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For my File Backups, I need a ***reliable*** method to deactivate the "automatic consolidation". I am the one, who knows which are the Backups that are important for me and that should not be deleted; automatisms bsased on the 3 limits described in section 9.3.7 can not know that.
Section 9.3.7 of the User's Guide states that by default there are no limits set and automatic consolidation is not performed". This would be fine. But unfortunately this is not true (at least, this is not true on my Windows 7 Ultimate PC with ATI Home 2010, Build 6053).
Even if I uncheck the three checkboxes associated with the 3 limits, ATI will set limits.
Also, the maximum number of days (100) that i can set for the "storage Period" is ridiculously low. How could Acronis development believe, that no user wants to keep some of its backup for longer than 100 days?
I need a fix, that allows me disable automatic consolidation for incremental file backups. What can I do to get it?
A good news!After making more tests, I realized that the limit for the "number of backups" is not the limit of all backups done for a specific task. Instead it is the limit of all backups done for a specific Backup-Archive.
Therefore, if I define for a backup task (in the "Backup Method" Window of the Backup Wizzard) that ATI shall create 10 incremental backups before creating a new Full-Backup, I can select for the automatic consolidation a "maximum number of backups" (e.g. a value of 15) that will effectively disable for that task an automatic consolidation, that is based on the maximum number of backups. I am happy with that.
I made new additional tests. In these new tests, the automatic consolidation of Acronis did not behave as described in the above quoted description. In these new tests, the automatic consolidation applied the limit to the whole task/archive ...not to the combination of one individual full backup and its associated incremental backups.
I am wondering why the automatic consolidation behaved differently in my previous tests and in my newest tests. Is it because in my previous tests, I started the task manually (by going within ATI to "Tasks and Logs", then right clicking on my backup task and then by clicking on "start") while on my newest tests, i just let ATI start automatically my backup every hour? I do not know the answer.
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I really do not understand, why ATI Home 2010 (Build 6053) does not allow me to disable the Automatic Consolidation. There are surely a lot of cases where automatic Consolidation makes sense. But there are also cases, where an automatic consolidation is unacceptable.
I will try to contact Acronis Support and ask them why on my PC I can not disable automatic consolidation (according to the user's Guide, it is even by default, that Automatic Consolidation is "not performed"/disabled).
Meanwhile, I will appreciate very much to learn from other ATI Home 2010 users if on their PC too, automatic consolidation can not be disabled. I am particularly interested to learn it from Users of Build 6053.
Thank You very much in advance for your Feedback.
Hi Robert,
I'm running TI2010 b6053 on a clean install of Win7 32bit Professional.
Consolidation is not functioning correctly for many of us as widely reported on this board and people are crying out for a fix. There are a few work-arounds published on here by some of the more experienced users but ultimately it's up to Acronis to provide guidance and a solution.
In my case, I only run Full Backups (weekly) with the Consolidation option turned off (un-checked) but each run overwrites the previous backup .tib in-spite of that setting.
Funny thing is that originally, all was working correctly until I ran the 5th Backup and then it overwrote the previous. I think I originally had it set to Consolidate at max of 4 full backups but it now overwrites the previous backup each time rather than dropping off the oldest.
Like you I've done some testing but appear to be working with a moving target - I'm at a loss as to exactly what is happening.
Acronis must fix this.
With this Post, I would like to describe that in my newest tests, I have no problems anymore to disable/shut-off the automatic consolidation of ATI.
In this new tests, if I leave all the three check-boxes of the "Setting Automatic consolidation" Window (see section 9.3.7 of the User's Guide) unchecked: ATI does not perform an automatic consolidation. This is as described in the User's Manual. And this is what I want.
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Of course, I ask myself the question, why this was different in previous tests. ...I have unfortunately no answer to that. Was it perhaps because, in my previous tests I initially specified that automatic consolidation be performed and changed these specifications afterwards? This could perhaps be the explanation, because i read, that ATI had/has bugs when the user changes the automatic consolidation specifications.
Or was it because, in my first tests, I created my Backup Tasks through a "task-cloning" process (while the original task was initially set-up for an automatic consolidation)?
Or is it because of another reason? I really do not know and decided to stop my investigations of this earlier problem.
Meanwhile, I can reproduce on my PC the problems that I hqave described previously in this Thread (or, at least, very similar problems) with a simple test Scenario involving Task-cloning.
See http://forum.acronis.com/forum/7826 for a description of that test scenario.
It is quite likely, that the problems that I have described in this thread were caused by ATI bugs that manifest tremself in scenarios involving Task-Cloning.
But if I remember well, other users reported similar problems in scenarios that do not involve Task-cloning.
Hi,
Have you found a way to firmly turn off consolidation?