Skip to main content

Differential backups - manual deletion

Thread needs solution

Fairly new ATI16 user here.  I have a coupla backups setup to do diffs forever, with no automagic cleanup.  Will it confuse ATI if I manually delete old diffs in the set?

 

TIA

0 Users found this helpful

ATI 2016 will work best if you set up automatic cleanup. See https://forum.acronis.com/forum/100416 for some help.

Thanks.  Still looking for an answer to my question ...

Yes - if you have a backup task in Acronis, the changes are saved in a local database so it expects them to be there.  The work-a-round (if you manually move or delete files in a versin chain), is to attempt a recovery then.  It will prompt that the files are missing and ask you to tell it where they are or "ignore" those files.  You can ignore each one until the messages go away, which will update the database so it doesn't use them anymore and you should be good to go. 

Alternatively, delete the task (but not the entire backup) from within the Acronis application.  Then re-add "an existing" backup into the console, but only selecting the original/full.  

Thanks.  The second option doesn't seem too painful.

As this is a differential scheme, I was hoping I could delete the oldest X diffs, keeping the original full and the most recent diffs.

It's not *that* big of a deal I guess.  It just feels likes arbitrary limitations that don't make much sense.

Yeah, it was availalbe in 2014 and earlier.  2015 kind of dumbbed down the interface to make it more user friendly, but missed the mark in some areas for sure.  We've been passing this feedback along to Acronis through the MVP program as well and are hoping we see a lot of these features brought back again too - probably not til 2017, but even then, we're not sure so we'll have to wait and see.  

BobF,

If you are willing to lose all the diffs, you can try this and it has been 'somewhat successful."

Delete the oldest diff and keep the newest (delete using Windows Explorer).

After the deletion, then run manual validation or simulate the beginning of a restore.

The program should complain and ask you to cancel or ignore,  Choose the ignore option each times it is asked.  If you delete two dif files, then you will probably be asked two times, etc.

It will either work and the diff will continue be creating; or it will not work and the full is still usable.