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Backup Scheme

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For some unexplained reason, during my last backup, True Image appears to have chosen to carry out a full backup instead of the expected incremental backup.

I started with the following files on the external USB backup drive:-

2TB Raid 1_full_b3_s1_v1.tib

2TB Raid 1_inc_b3_s2_v1.tib

I wanted to create another incremental backup i.e. 2TB Raid 1_inc_b3_s3_v1.tib.

Instead it created a full backup with the following name:-

2TB Raid 1_full_b3_s1_v1-2.tib

Why?

The Backup Method was set to 'Incremental' and 'Create only incremental versions after the initial first version'.

The only explanation I can come up with is that the external USB drive that holds the backup files was initially not powered on when I initiated the backup. I powered it up after a delay when a window popped up to warn that the drive was not accessible.

Is this expected behaviour? If so it seems quite bizzare.

No warning was given that it was creating a full backup.

This is one of my gripes about the user interface compared with True Image 11. There is a lack of informational messages and feedback about what is going on during a backup.

 

 

 

 

 

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I've just checked the log and it does indeed indicate that it chose to carry out a full backup because the drive was not initially available.

I have a couple of comments about this:-

1) Why does the user interface not allow logs to be viewed in a sensible way? Instead you have to hunt around in the user manual to find out where the log files are stored on disk. Then you have to manually figure out which log(s) are appropriate to the problem being investigated. When you do eventually find the right file, the log content is not presented in an easy to understand, human readable form.

2) After True Image detected that the backup drive was not accessible, it displayed a warning message. That's what most users would expect. However, after rectifying the problem and powering up the drive, most users would not expect the software to then take it upon itself to do something that was not called for i.e. create a full backup instead of the requested incremental backup! Most users would expect to re-try the failed incremental backup operation.

Can someone provide a rational explanation as to why it behaves in this way?

 

 

Brian, your file name: 2TB Raid 1_full_b3_s1_v1-2.tib immediately indicates that Acronis considered the prior full backup file to be in error for some reason, hence it created a new full backup with the v1-2 suffix.

In response to your questions, the new UI with no access to the logs has been raised very many times but that is an Acronis design decision which they do not seem inclined to change, as it is the same with ATIH 2017.

I can only suggest submitting feedback directly via the Feedback tool in the GUI Help section to add your comments to those of many other users.

Sorry forgot to recommend that you download the Log File Viewer app from the link in my signature as this makes accessing and reading the logs a whole lot easier.

Ok, so I have a couple of follow-on questions:-

1) How do I recover the situation now that I have a full backup named 2TB Raid 1_full_b3_s1_v1-2.tib ?

The next time I invoke an icremental backup, will it automatically use this new full backup as it's baseline? or do I need to delete and re-create the backup instructions? The user interface in TI 2016 makes it hard to predict what will actually happen. The user interface in TI 11 was far more obvious, intuitive and predictable.

2) How I do I stop this problem happening in the future: I only want True Image to create a full backup when I ask for one. That seems a pretty obvious thing to want to do. A full backup is time consuming and uses a lot of disk space. If an incremental backup fails, then I want to be informed so that I can rectify the problem. What I do not want is for True Image to ignore the requested backup scheme and create a full backup without being specifically told to do so.

 

 

It seems to me that the essential piece of information missing from the user interface in TI 2016 is visibility of the backup chain.  This is now hidden away in the internal database. Consequently the user has no idea which file will be used as the baseline or the basis for the next incremental backup. This becomes more important when things go wrong and the user has to try and figure out where the chain is broken.

In TI 11, the backup wizard asked the user to select the previous file in the chain to be used as the starting point, so it was easy to see what was happening. Now all that is hidden. That's fine when everything works as it should. It's not so good when something unexpected happens and the user is left struggling to understand what went wrong and how to recover.

 

Brian, some of the concerns that you raise in your posts above are design issues that we have no ability to respond to here is these user forums, you need to submit your concerns via the Feedback button in the ATIH GUI which will go to the Acronis development / support teams.

If you have a valid full backup and your backup scheme is set to create incremental files, then it should use that valid full backup as the base for the incrementals.

If your backup scheme is to only create incrementals after making an initial full backup file, then please understand the potential risks associated with this scheme, as any error with any single incremental file in the version chain will then break the chain from that point forward.  This is not to suggest that doing this is wrong, that is a decision that only you can make, but the whole reason for software such as ATIH is that disk drives do go bad, though thankfully not as often as I have seen in the past!

In terms of your second question, I am not sure that you can prevent this type of issue from happening again, as it is impossible to say what the exact cause of the problem was other than that possibly your external drive was not ready or available when the backup task was started?

My backup scheme is not to only create incrementals after making an initial full backup file. However, I want to choose when to do a full backup. I don't want TI to decide on my behalf based upon a simple count of incremental backups. I want to carry out a full backup only whenever there has been a significant change to files on my system. As it's a single user system, I know when there has been a significant or important change that I want to use as baseline for the future.

I do know exactly what caused the failure: The external USB backup drive was not powered up when I initiated the operation. After I realised this, powered up the drive and initiated the backup again. I expected TI to carry out the requested incremental backup based upon the previous file in the chain. It must have internally flagged the earlier failure and decided to carry out a full backup instead without any warning or request for confirmation. In future I will check that the backup disk is powered up and accessible before I kick off the backup. The point is though, that the problem here is not that the failure occured but the way it was handled by TI.

Brian, you can decide on whatever backup scheme suits you, but if you select an incremental scheme then you also need to select how many incremental files will be created before a whole new full backup gets created unless you elect to create incrementals forever.

You can elect to use a Custom scheme where you only create full backups and if you make this an unscheduled task, then it will create a new full backup on demand.