Validate yes or no
Here are some issues that tech support and I have been dealing with and found this forum and thought others would benefit or even explain the solutions to the issues.
Problem began with 2011 version. It would lock up when trying to validate a backup whether full or incremental on my 400 gig full backup. Even the 8 gig incrementals would not validate. Tech support had me upgrade to 2012. I did and it would now validate the files BUT it took 4 hours to validate either a full 400 gig full OR a 8 gig incremental backups. Tech support began to question the quality and trustworthiness of increments that took 25 minutes to complete the backup and 4 hours to validate.
Here is where I am now: They told me to change the validate now setting off and validate manually later.
I cannot tell if a backup has been validated, I have to do each validation of the incremental and full backup every time I validate and it takes 4 hours to validate so 5 incremental and one full backup would take 24 actual hours to complete (6 validations 4 hours each). You also question the quality status of these backups because it should not take 4 hours to validate a backup that takes 25 minutes to backup. I have sent many logs for you to examine and come up with a solution but nothing has been fixed.
Since currently there is no way to know which backups have or have not been validated, seems like Acronis needs to quickly put some check mark or V on backups having been successfully validated or when selecting validate it opens up a window asking which backup do you want to validate and ONLY shows backups never having been validated. Also to be able to choose multiple backups to validate rather than one at a time.
Are you ever going to tell me the solution as to why an incremental backup takes 4 hours to validate? Once you solve that problem I can set the backups to auto validate and all should be well.
Out of curiosity since each backup is validated separately and you never validate the incremental chain as a connected series how can you tell that the chain will work. Each link of the chain is tested but the actual chain is never checked as a whole. This makes me think that "a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link" so to be super confident that not only is each link ok but the connected links are good as well shouldn't that be tested (validated) as well? We are therefore confident that the chain works should you ever need to go back to the first link.
Anybody understand? I am elderly and so I might not see the picture clearly, but if a chain is never tested as a whole can you say that you are 100% sure you have a valid recovery solution? If no one puts together the links and one is not validated how will you know which links have been validated since Acronis does not make know which increments are or are not validated?
IMHO It would be nice if the logging was such that one was able to see what files were being validated and the time it took to do each one. From what I can see using W7 Resource Monitor the files are validated starting at the most recent incremental and working back until the full backup is reached but right now there is insufficient info to show what is going on. In may case as well when a backup is taken the validate part as displayed in the GUI shows the macro I use to name the file and not the actual file name. All my backup files are named @task@_@date@_@time@ (set in the browse option for the backup destination) and for example the system partition backup task is called W764 so the full name comes out as: W764_2011_11_21_1536.tib but only size will tell you if it is an incremental of full backup
The fact being I have emails stating that a validate of a tib file only validates that file. It does NOT go back to and through previous increments and even including full. That is the problem it only validates the one increment or tib file at a time and only validates that one file. Email directly from tech support!
The best and least time consuming way to validate is to simply attempt a recovery. The 'cheapest' way to accomplish this is to mount the backup as an image and boot from it. If this works, then that is the only validation you need. The best real-world method would be to have another machine available that you can restore to.
I never bother with the validate; it takes forever.
@Jerry,
Well I use the Windows 7 Resource monitor and that clearly shows that all the files in a backup set are opened and read.
I don't know who sent you that e-mail but IMHO they are 100% wrong unless I have something strange going on on my system - but it has been like that for as long as I can remember.
If it does it the way you have been told then validate is not worth doing at all, ever, because in order to restore an image from one of the "n" incrementals you may have, that incremental, all the ones before, AND the full backup must be 100% readable
I agree with RayG. To put it as gently as possible, some of the Acronis support techies aren't perfectly well informed.
As for it taking forever, it really shouldn't if it's working properly. It certainly doesn't in my own case, although I almost always boot to a WinPE environment for my backup, validate, restore ops. For me, validation takes considerably less time than the backup itself.
Do you notice any difference if you run it from your recovery disc? I sometimes suspect that some of the current versions of the Acronis filter drivers used in the full startup configuration don't get along well with Microsoft's Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) handlers. (I assume that your BIOS is set to use AHCI, rather than straight IDE, for your hard drives.) In fact, according to the Acronis R&D VP, their drivers actually have to bypass the Windows hardware abstraction layer (HAL) completely for some purposes and could thus be affected in various ways depending on individual system components. That, of course, gives the "your results may vary" meme a whole new significance.
Well here is what Acronis said about manual validate:
"Jerry, there may be a possibility that the back up image was not good and this is why validation is taking time."
I understand that you want to enquire about the validated back up archive. I will certainly assist you with the releant information.
Jerry, we can not confirm whether a back up archive is validated. Whenever you manually validate a back archive, it does not validate all the back up archive.
This comes from Acronis support.
Not sure about answer to "(I assume that your BIOS is set to use AHCI, rather than straight IDE, for your hard drives)"
So the backups whether full, incremental, differential is not validated as a whole but rather as a file. Like it has been said, if one link in a chain is bad then following links are worthless. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link certainly applies.
Oh by the way I have another laptop with a 60 gig internal that I want to replace with a 160 gig. Thought I would do a backup onto another 1TB external drive and then restore to my new 160 gig drive and plug n play. It did not work. I thought Acronis will permit me to be able to do a HDD replacement. If this can be done I would appreciate knowing the steps. Right now the 160 gig drive is in usb external 2.5 case. I took out the 60gig from laptop and put in external usb case so I could use Acronis on my main system to do a backup from 60gig to 1TB. Then put 160 gig usb and did a restore but it would not boot.
Jerry,
When you backup, make sure that your backup inclues *all* the partitions as you see them in Windows disk management console. WIndows explorer will not show you hidden partitions, for example.
When you restore on a bigger disk, restore one partition at a time in the same order they were in Windows disk management. Don't change the size of any partition except C:\system or any user created partition. Don't try to change the drive/partition letter. DO make sure you mark primary, active the partition that was active before.
If you don't restore manually and resize selectively, ATI will scale the partitions automatically and that can create issues.