Consolidating Backup is running for 24 hours. What is it and how can I get rid of it?
I've been using acronis ti 2016 for a half year or so. I migrated to a new pc using acronis and did the acronis migration so that the same acronis instance is running on the new machine. I discontinued the scheudled backup for the old pc and tried to reproduce the settings other than paths on a new backup job. That's been running normally on the new machine for a week or so.
Yesterday for the first time I have seen it start "consolidating backup". It has been running for over 24 hours at this time. The 'remaining' message is rarely updated and means nothing.
I don't understand what 'consolidating backup' means. I have never seen it before in the previous half year. Obviously it's a train wreck. I don't see a way to switch it off, so it's functionality must be implied by settings having to do with cleanup etc. I can't even review the backup job's settings as acronis is busy consolidating.
The backup drive is inside the pc, sata 3, hybrid so it's as fast as it can be without pure ssd. It's a 4 tb drive,
Should I just cancel the backup? For all I can see it's going to take a week. The 'meter' is completely meaningless. I am not sure what I can check (your schedule manager suggestion) with this current operation ongoing.
I will stop the task soon (in case I get lucky with a quick response here) and delete all of the tib files for this backup job.
I did stop the task. I ran get list and this is what it showed
inst=yes start=yes loc task=0-0 > get list
Id ExecApp ExecCmd
--- ---------------
CurUser 1 (mydomain\sim):
1-3 ~*TrueImageHomeNotify* /dummy /script:"5D94F4E9-E785-4185-A269-F74EC6F947
FB" /uuid:"5D94F4E9-E785-4185-A269-F74EC6F947FB" /run_mode:?RunMode?
1-5 *TrueImageHomeNotify* /dummy /script:"DD44FFBD-A37A-49AE-8D4B-FB381DF261
C7" /uuid:"DD44FFBD-A37A-49AE-8D4B-FB381DF261C7" /run_mode:?RunMode?
1-11 ~*TrueImageHomeNotify* /dummy /script:"450B3C21-A008-4E4A-8271-1DE6E0C936
D0" /uuid:"450B3C21-A008-4E4A-8271-1DE6E0C936D0" /run_mode:?RunMode?
1-13 *TrueImageHomeNotify* /dummy /script:"16871ED6-64D8-4B04-ADB4-396B7092B7
0B" /uuid:"16871ED6-64D8-4B04-ADB4-396B7092B70B" /run_mode:?RunMode?
1-15 ~*TrueImageHomeNotify* /dummy /script:"C8503F88-231E-4377-A619-1655F07C46
02" /uuid:"C8503F88-231E-4377-A619-1655F07C4602" /run_mode:?RunMode?
1-17 C:\Program Files (x86)\Acronis\TrueImageHome\TrueImageMonitor.exe /shutu
p
User 2 (NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM):
2-1 C:\Program Files (x86)\Acronis\TrueImageHome\prl_stat.exe for_scheduler
inst=yes start=yes loc task=0-0 >
I have no idea what any of that means of course. As far as I was concerned, there should only have been one scheduled task. Do all those entries imply more than one scheduled task was in play?
I cleared all of the tasks using task zap. I have the backup task set now to run automatically once per day. I think I should delete all of the existing tib files, curious if that's the correct approach?
Navigate to the hidden folder C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Scripts. Inside you should see at least one name that matches one of the ones above in schedulemanager. Any that aren't in that script folder are "ghost scripts" or were created with a validation task - you can delete any that don't actually exist in the script folder. You've already run taskzap though, so no need to do that anymore, but if you were to run schedule manager again you should see a task that matches the script in C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Scripts
5D94F4E9-E785-4185-A269-F74EC6F947FB DD44FFBD-A37A-49AE-8D4B-FB381DF261C7 450B3C21-A008-4E4A-8271-1DE6E0C936D0 16871ED6-64D8-4B04-ADB4-396B7092B70B C8503F88-231E-4377-A619-1655F07C4602
I don't think you have to delete the old backup .tib files. However, you may want to move them to another folder (perhaps an "old" folder within the same directory - unless you don't mind deleting them. At least wait until the first new full is done first so you have something in case your computer takes a dump right this second.
What type of daily backup are you using - all fulls, incrementals, differentials?
Did you set a cleanup schedule (if not, eventually your drive will just fill up)
A suggested scenario would be to do daily incrementals (just an example): 1 full + 6 incrementals = 1 week - 1 version chain.
Keep no more than 4 version chains = 1 month.
Of course, do what works best for you, but something like this should give you a good amount of backups and at least a month to go back to once you hit that point. Cleanup would start to happen after the 5th full backup has completed since version chains are considered closed out when teh next full has successfully completed.
One other note, if you tweak a script during a version chain, the chain count gets reset. I.e, you are on incremental 3 and then tweak something and save, it would need to do 6 more incrementals in the scenario above - give you 9 in this case because saving the script sets the count back to 0.
Thank you that's all useful inside info that I will attempt to absorb. I had not realized that tweaking a backup resulted in a incremental count reset.
My pattern has been
Daily at 6 pm
Full + Incremental with full version after 6 incr versions
Delete version chains older than 7 days
I think I will toss the tib files. I have a copy on the NAS too, those get copied over by post backup script. If I toss them I can let it roll for a week and see if it starts going nuts again. This backup pattern worked well on the previous machine, not sure why on the new machine it went into it's consolidation tizzy.
Sounds like you have a backup plan!
Be careful with hybrid drives - they are not always what they seem and may be part of the issue (perhaps not though). On paper, they sound like the best of both worlds for speed and storage at a low cost, but that's not actually the case (in many instances). Hybrid drives are good at booting quickly and launching some applications that run often. However, a hybrid drive requires a "burn in" learning period before you see any real benefiit in these areas as it has to learn what files are frequently called upon. This is why bootup becomes quicker because it's generally using the same boot files at every start. HOWEVER, other than boot times, in many cases, the drives can be slower because the caching parition is not used for random file changes (like new backup files that are only created one time) and/or is just too small to be effective. If the caching partition becomes saturated, it also and ends up being a bottleneck that actually slows the drive down. The bottle-neck can happen especially when doing large/long read/write sessions, like backups that are creating one giant .tib backup file at a time, but then again, the cache probably isn't doing anything with these 1 time write files anyway. Also, many SSHD's use 5400/5900 RPM spinning drives which, of course, are slower than 7200RPM... so when the caching bottlenecks occur, or the cache is simply being ingnored during random writes, you're left relying on the slower spinning drive.
If at some point you're ever willing/able to spend about $70, get a 250GB SSD and put your OS on it with yous apps and your working data files - even a very entry SSD will be leaps and bounds faster than the SSHD in realworld daily use (not just things like boot time). And, you can still use that 4TB to house your pictures, photos, music and possibly even your backup .tib files. Just a suggestion, but hybrid drive performance is sporadic/random at best except for when doing the same routine tasks that call on the same files over and over agin. We don't touch them at work - too many issues and people are amazed at the performance difference when swithing over to full SSD's. It's like night and day and the price of an SSD is really quite low if you stick to teh 250-500Gb range and keep media files on the cheaper/larger spinning and/or hybrid drives.
Here, the boot disk (c and d) are sdd, and the backup disk is hybrid. It's not a particularly ideal role for the hybrid drive but it performs ok.