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Automatic Cleanup

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Hi Steve,

This should be a much easier question.

I have tried on a number of occasions to use Automatic Cleanup in association with writing full backups of selected groups of files. I've used both longevity settings and number of copies of settings.

So far, I have not been successful in getting Acronis 2016 to reach the number of volumes or the dates and then to keep dropping the old ones out of the stack. Should I be able to do that? Is there some obvious trick to setting it up?

The way I found out about this is that I was writing about 5 gigs of folders to an internal drive. Eventually the drive filled up and I couldn't write any more backups. I was astounded to see lots and lots of backups where I had requested either 5 total or 5 weeks worth of backups.

Seems like I'm not understanding something.

David

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David, the key to getting automatic cleanup to work correctly and reliably is to set up your backup task and set the desired cleanup settings then leave it alone as far as is possible.

Making changes to the task can cause automatic cleanup to be reset and start counting again as if it is a new task, and deleting any files outside of ATI can also confuse it!

If you are mainly creating full backups, then this should be the easiest to setup as you will have a reasonable understanding of the size of backup files that will be created.

My own preference for both understanding and simplicity is to always use "Store no more than X recent versions / version chains".  The key requirement here is to have sufficient free space on the destination storage drive to hold at least X+1 backups or backup chains.  This is because the oldest backup / backup chain will only be deleted after the +1 full backup for a new version / chain has been created successfully.

I never use the alternative cleanup method of delete after Y days because this is more difficult to understand and to manage.  This scheme works on the same principle as 'Store no more than' but the Y days do not start counting until after the next Full backup has been created, so nothing gets deleted until Y days after that new full backup!

The key complication for automatic cleanup rules is managing multiple different backup tasks to the same drive and ensuring the settings are such that each can be managed automatically by the rules set.

One other important factor:  Always use unique backup task names as far as possible and use separate / different destination folders.

Why? If you have several PC's each with a task called 'C-drive' being stored in the same destination folder, then either of the backup tasks cleanup rules may delete the files belonging to the other PC!

Hi Steve,

 

Great explanation, and I think the key point is once things are set up, never change anything or organization gets mighty confused, mighty fast.

I think another thing that was messing up volume control was if I asked the system to keep five versions and on the way to the five, if I manually deleted no 2 for example, I think the system got mighty mad at me.

Thank you for your help on this and on the other item I have open. I just left you an update there. And, by reference, I reincorporate here the kudos that you'll find on the other post.

 

Many thanks. You are our true friend!

 

David