TIH 2011 does full backups instead of incrementals *** solved

You should create a new task and see if the issue persists.

Pat L it's easy to say "Create a new task". In this case Michael noticed the problem. But in my case when Non stop backup just stops with no error messages. And then when I check the TIH icon it says "NSB is paused". No explanation why it's paused. There is no LOG to check or something. In the paused state you can not even start TIH. Still no error.. nothing. It just wont start. And then after a reboot, TIH starts a whole new backup from 0%. In my case 570GB of data. I use an external drive of 1TB and TIH have filled it in 2 days using Non stop backup... but I haven't changed practically nothing! In my opinion TIH 2011 is totally useless. I'm really not sure If my data is safe and if I will be able to restore it in case of disaster. And as Michael says... the application crashes frequently with no reason (when clicking on "Browse" button).

Tried other ways of backups (incremental... ) But TIH disapointed me more. I tried to create DIFFERENTIAL backup and have limited it to 850GB (since my external drive is 1TB). When this limit is reached TIH does not simply delete the oldest DIFFERENTIAL backup. It starts a full consolidation which fills the external drive and the operation fails. I really can't understand why there is no option to just delete the oldest DIFFERENTIAL backup (it can be done with differential, but not with incremental backup).

I have bought TIH 2009 and was OK. Then bought (not upgraded) TIH 2011. Totally disapointed. Don't think I'm going to buy another from Acronis.

Alan

And of course... if you want any help from them... PAY!

Alan,

Good or bad, ATI always creates a new backup before deleting or changing an existing one. Implications:
- for a chain of partial (incremental or differential) backups, with auto-cleaning, ATI will always first create the next full, before deleting an older chain. So if you set it up to create 2 partials after a full, to keep only one version, ATI will create one full, 2 partials, then another full, and then delete the first full and 2 partials.
- for autoconsolidation, ATi will create a temporary working of the archives it has to change (so it duplicates a full), then work on it. If the operations succeeds, then it deletes the original backups and rename the working copies into normal copies.

Long story short, you need a lot of space to manage your backups. I typically recommend to have a least 2.5 to 3 times a full backup as backup space, with the following logic:
- minimum size setting: full + incrementals, keep only one chain,
- one full, another half full or full equivalent for the incrementals, yet another full to enable the auto-cleaning.

I personally don't like NSB because you cannot control the retention rules, size and you cannot validate the backup.

Whenever I have trouble with a task, my basic troubleshooting is to try successively:
- to delete the existing task and create a new one,
- to repair install,
- to uninstall/reinstall.

I have re-created the backup task, no success.
I have re-installed TIH 2011, this helped for a while. At some point it started all over again and now I am again not able to do incremental backups. They are all full backups.

Is TIH 2011 not able to backup to a remote PC where the hard disks are in RAID 1 configuration? This is exactly as it looks to me.

Michael

If you leave the standard naming of ATI, what file names do you get?

Did anyone ever find a resolution to this issue for TIH 2011? I created a new full system backup task, using the defaults for incrementals, once per week. My full system is about 720GB's backing up to a new 3TB USB drive. It did the first one fine last week then, this week it did another full backup instead of the incremental one. Unlike the older versions of TIH, there does not seem to be any check box to look at to ensure incrementals is set. Instead it's just a dummed down more global description-like setting ... which apparently is not working. I am running the latest updated version of TIH 2011.
Any ideas? Does anyone have a fix for this bug?

Thanks,
Mike

Mike,

When you look at your backup disk with Windows Disk Management, does it show as a basic MBR disk or as a GPT disk? Since its size is 3TB, it should be GTP. ATI needs the Plus Pack to support GPT disks.

http://kb.acronis.com/content/6533

Thanks for your suggestion Pat. However I checked in Windows Disk Management and my 3TB Seagate (FreeAgent GoFlex Desk) drive shows as an MBR disk and it seems to be functioning just fine for normal disk activities. The ATIH 2011 backups are being saved to it, it's just that it is not doing the incremental backups. By the way, I do already have Plus Pack installed. I am also running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1 on a Dell Studio XPS 9000 (Intel Core i7 processor (920 running at 2.67GHz) with 12GB memory) just in case any of thsi matters.

Any other suggestions would certainly be appreciated. Backing up and verifying 700+ GB of data sure takes a while. :)

You might be able to improve your backup time by getting some usb3 hardware. My usb3 is very fast.

Your best backup time is between 2 internal disks. If you have an external available 5-1/4" disk in your case, you could install an inexpensive Antec easy swap caddie for holding a second internal disk. The caddie would make for quick and easy portability.

Yup... a USB 3 card for my PC will help... it's on my list. :) I could go with an eSata drive too.
But it'll even go faster if I can get my incremental backups back down to the 10GB range...

I realize you have just created a new task but consider one more new task as editing a task does not always produce a good result. Note the example. Adjust the number of inc's to your selection and also adjust the number of chains you want to keep. This type backup scheme has been successful for others. Why not give it a whirl.

Click image to enlarge.

Mike,

Do you let ATI name the archive automatically or do you force a custom name? If you use automatic names, can you post the list of files you get. I just want to make sure that fulls are actually fulls not big incrementals.
MyBackup.tib, or MyBackup(X).tib is a full
MyBackupY.tib or MyBackup(X)Y.tib is an incremental

I am out of touch for a couple of days but will check on both suggestions above when I get back to my system.

I have now:
- Reinstalled TIH 2011
- Even reinstalled Windows 7 and TIH 2011
and still same behaviour.

I create a file backup that saves my entire C: drive to a shared NTFS file system on a remote PC (around 220 GB).
Whether I use the standard naming convention or define the names myself does not make a difference.
Whether I use the standard backup scheme (version chain - not sure what the exact english term is) or define my own using incremental backups does not make a difference.
On the first day it will do a full backup as per normal.
On the next day it does another full backup (by the size of the file) instead of an incremental.

When I test this with smaller backups (only one folder) it works as expected. Only when I backup the whole drive it faisl.

Any idea?

Michael,

I was expecting that using a custom or default name would make a difference. The only thing is that when you use the default name it is easy to see which backup is *really* a full versus a really big incremental.

Another way to see this is to explore the backup chain within ATI: this opens what Acronis calls the Backup Explorer Window. You can see at the bottom of that window the different versions. Mouse over the squares: a pop up will tell you if the version is *really* a full or an incremental.

Whether using the default naming or the backup explorer, do you confirm that ATI does only full when the backup scheme calls for incrementals?

Also not that when you use the standard "version chain" backup scheme, ATI will create 2 full backups initially. The first full will never get deleted, while the second one will be replaced over time.

Thanks Pat L. I also spoke to one of my colleagues at work (whom I had suggested Acronis to a couple of years ago) and he told me the same thing as you mentioned in your post. "Also not that when you use the standard "version chain" backup scheme, ATI will create 2 full backups initially. The first full will never get deleted, while the second one will be replaced over time."
My colleague said he had tried all kinds of things to prevent this bizarre behaviour but it always insists on making 2 full backups before it gets around to doing incremental ones. Sure enough, my 3rd backup was finally an incremental one. I don't know why Acronis has insisted on this bizarre behaviour (as well as very poor information explaining it without having to dig far and wide) but I can only assume that they don't trust the recoverability of a single backupusing their software so they make two copies. Disk space is cheap these days but when you are backing up 700+ GB per full back up, it's not THAT cheap.
At least the mystery is solved, even if I don't like the answer.

Mike,

You can easily avoid this issue with 2 backups and create a custom scheme to your liking.
If you turn auto cleaning on in a custom backup scheme, choose the option to keep a limited number of most recent backup chains. It works best.

After weeks of testing and even reinstallation I still have the issue.
TIH 2011 still does full backups every time (not only the first two) and they are all almost the same size.
I don't defragment every day (I learned this could have an effect).

To me this looks like a bug! But can any support be expected for TIH 2011 now that TIH 2012 is out?

Michael,

Did you test doing backups to a local disk (not network attached)? Your problem has to do with the location being the network and ATI losing track of each backup, so it behaves like there was no full.

I think I have resolved the issue.
This is how I do my backups:
- Each morning at 2:55am I start my source and my target PC (via the BIOS real time clock).
- At 3am the Acronis backup job is executed and copies files from source PC to target PC (via a file share).

The issue is that the source PC boots much faster. By the time it is up and all services started, the target PC is still booting and the file shares are not available. So the source PC doesn't see them and assume they are not available.
When the backup starts, it seems, Acronis does not check the contents of the target PC for available older backups and assumes a new needs to be created. So it does. It is still a bit of a design flaw since Acronis then successfully writes to the shared drive, so it could have also attempted to read from it first.

Anyway, the solution is simple. I boot the source PC only at 2:58am, so by the time it is up the target PC is up in all cases and the shared drives are immediately available to the source PC. Works fine so far.

Michael