TH11: Nonstop backup: Operations -> Clean up... button/option not available
I installed a new HD and turned on Nonstop Backup. Two days later, to my surprise, it filed the drive. I don't know why, as I know that the drive had a lot of free space after the initial full backup and I wasn't changing 100s of GB of data per day. Nonetheless, I went to try to clean up some of the backups and consolidate, to see what effect that would have, but my Nonstop Backup task no longer has the Operations -> Clean up... button. I do recall seeing it yesterday, but now it's gone. I do notice that Nonstop Backup is paused, but when I hit the go button, it just pauses again after thinking for a while. How can I get this working again and get the consolidation to happen, or whatever the cause of filling the drive is? Thanks.
>> On the problem of a NSB that becomes too big, check out the size of the hidden time explorer storage. Is the size of that folder consistent with not having space on the disk?
Yes, it's the full size off the drive.
>> Make sure you don't have system protection/shadow copies enabled for that disk, btw...
I didn't turn it on specifically, so unless it's on be default then it's off.
>> If the size is the problem, it boils down to what you are backing up. The size of NSB shouldn't exceed the size of the data being backed up, with expectations that compression of the main archive file can be offset by the slice of the slices waiting for consolidation.
The size of the data being backed up is around 50% to 70% of the backup destination disk size.
>> Consolidation happens during the night by default, so make sure you leave your computer on and see if the consolidation happens.
Right, but it's also supposed to happen when you start up your computer the next time. Now, when I start up my computer in the morning, the NSB job is always paused in the Acronis main screen. I hit the play/go button, and it thinks for a while and then stops/pauses again. (Before you ask, I'm not also running CPU-intensive things at the same time.)
Thanks.
Update: When I clicked the play/go button this morning, it gave me a popup saying the destination drive is full. But I still don't have the option to consolidate or delete selected backups; my original issue is still unchanged.
Jordan,
It looks like ATI is stuck not having enough space to actually run the auto-consolidation. I'd say this would be a surprising situation. As you can see, NSB is not very flexible, You cannot manually intervene to clean stuff up, and you don't control the retention rules. That's one of the reason why I don't use it.
Delete the task and restart a new one.
BTW, always have a regular disk and partition backup handy, just in case the NSB doesn't match your expectations when you need to restore...
Thank you for the reply, but what do you mean by "always have a regular disk and partition backup handy, just in case the NSB doesn't match your expectations when you need to restore"? I don't have several backup disks on my computer that I can have multiple different backups going. If NSB isn't reliable and I should use another kind of backup method, then I'll need to switch (I can't do both). What I want is my data to be backed up, and I don't care which method I use. I just want the most reliable backup in case a HD dies.
If you don't absolutely need to higher frequency backup NSB offers, use a disk and partition backup:
- all partitions that are on the system disk should be included. It is OK to exclude files and folders of content that would be backed up/copied differently (for example large, uncompressed, non-changing files like video, music, pictures, music, PDFs), if you need to reduce the backup size,
- incremental backup is fine, but make sure you do a full backup after a handful of incremental: a rule of thumb is that your last full should never get so old that it would be impractical for you to restore it and be OK with it,
- turn on auto-cleaning, and choose the "store no more than X most recent version chains". Choose X to be as big are your backup disk allows for, but leave always enough space for a new full backup.
Finally, remember to create your recovery CD and test it by recovering a couple of files.
Ideally, use a USB disk to store the backup files, and rotate the disk so that you have some backups off line and off site. If you rotate disks, assign a fixed drive letter for each disk and create separate tasks.