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Backup to Tape Fails Without Services Restart and Inventory

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I have a Windows Server 2012R2 Server hosting 3 VMs.  I have 2 scheduled backup jobs each night to an LTO6 Tape Drive directly connected to the server.  The first job completes a full backup of the three VMs.  The second completes a backup of the OS and System Reserved Partition on the host machine.  As we have the space, all backups are full backups every night.  My problem is that unless I perform a restart of all Acronis Services and then an Inventory of the tape drive with the proper tape inserted, the backup will not complete successfully.  If I only complete the services restart, the backup will wait for user input stating it cannot find the tape.  If I only perform a tape inventory, the backup jobs fail immediately (within 3 minutes of the start time) with an input/output error.  If I perform a manual stop and restart of all Acronis Services, followed by a tape inventory, all backup complete successfully.  So my question are these.  Is there a fix?  If not, can someone tell me how to perform a scripted inventory that I can add as a precommand to my backup job?  I can write a script that will stop and restart the services to run 15 minutes before the scheduled backup times.  Any help would be greatly appreciated as I am not getting any good answers from Tech Support.

Thanks,

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Hello, yes you can schedule the inventory by using Acronis command line tool and Windows Task Scheduler (or other 3d-party scheduler). 

Here is the description with examples: https://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/AcronisBackup_12.5_… 

Also if you have an I/O error, try to change the Backup format to Version 11 in the Backup Plan options: https://i.imgur.com/SgMAdhK.png

Hi Andrey

 

Your answer is all well and good, but the question remains. The backup to tape use to work except for the eject tape after successful backup part, which to this day nobody can understand why this hasn't been fixed. Why do we need to spend our time hacking a fix for a product which we pay good money for. Can you please explain how we would be able to bill clients to fix an issue with a product that use to work and now it doesn't.

 

Basically the new release of version 12.5 doesn't work with a tape drive, I have had massive issues with throughput speed and this inventorying and erasing tapes etc etc. My solution use to work perfectly (except the eject after backup) the new version tape backup has never worked, backing up to NAS fails randomly, there are unexplained multiple nightly backup of the same machine.

I have had multiple Acronis engineers remote in and hack the registry to try to improve the speed etc, IT USE TO WORK. NOTHING HAS CHANGED AT MY END?????

 

Regards

Andrew

 

Hello, please check your backup plans configurations and schedule. The machine cannot start backing up on its own, the backup task is scheduled in it. In the worst case, delete all backup plans and configure anew.

Regarding Ejection after backup - the issue was resolved in the latest update (internal ticket - ABR-145669).

Anyway, we will find your support ticket where you probably provided Sysinfo and dig in to your issues.

Curious if you ever were able to get tape device to work correctly in version 12.5? We are new to Acronis so never used any other version prior. We are having similar issues to similar tape device (LTO4). We are still in trial phase and have yet to complete a simple test backup to tape on the server where tape device is installed internally. Have yet to try to backup our second server on network. Wondering what special options you have set to make yours work --did you use Version11 as backup format for example? We get the Insert tape when there is one already there even after inventorying.

Thanks for any help. This software seems very buggy and complicated.

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Hello Bud Veltman.

Can you please decribe your workflow? How do you see product should work?

We are working under automating of similar case: Automatically recognize inserted tape in drive and continue backup without need to click 'ok' in GUI. Is this your case?

 

In reply to by truwrikodrorow…

Alexander,

Here is what I did to work around my issue.  First, I changed the Acronis VSS Provider service from Manual to Automatic and the recovery options for the server to restart.  I then developed a script (cmd file) that will stop and restart all Acronis services approximately 90 minutes before the backup is set to begin.  This is scheduled in the Task scheduler.  Lastly, somewhere in the forums, I found an article on how to use a command prompt to run a tape inventory from a command prompt.  I have that script set to run as a Pre-Command to my backup.  These steps seem to alleviate the issues I was having in getting the proper tape to be recognized before a backup runs on a nightly basis.