Failed Backup drive. How to delete the old backups and start with a new backup drive.
I have had Acronis True Image 2016 for a couple of months and was backing up to a USB Backup Drive which has now failed. The computer O/S, all programs, all data files etc is all fine, I just lost the backup drive. A few weeks ago I stopped the auto backups when the problem first occured to stop getting the errors. I now have a new backup drive and just want to start backing up to it now. How do manually I delete those old backups metadata etc. I can't see how to do this. I found an article that said to run Acronis Management Console or something like that but I can't find that program anywhere. I looked in the More Tools and found things like Boot Rescue Meda Builder, Drive Cleanser which is where I would expect to find this Acronis Manangement Console but it's not there.
The article also talked about using the command line tools, but the tools have to be installed and I just feel there has to be an easier way to do this. I feel like I am missing something here. This should be simple.
Any help would be appreciated.
-Don
Steve,
Thanks so much for your post. Completely missed the options on the backup task. In fact, since I only had 1 backup task I didn't even realize that was a backup task (just thought it was titles for the different selections of backup, archive, sync, tools etc) much less the options for the different backup tasks. That little tid bit of info really clears a lot up. Thanks so much. HUGE help.
So, let me ask another question (which I think will help me get an even better understanding of all this). So it appears my failed USB drive was F drive. My new USB drive is also F drive. I assume I could change the drive letter to G or something, but lets say I don't and just leave it as F. The name of the old backup task is Entire PC. Could I do the following:
1. Clone the settings (clone Entire PC backup task, creating a new let's say Entire PC Ver2 backup task)
2. Leave the destination the same on the new backup task Entire PC Ver2 (IOW F drive, same folder)
3. Delete the original backup task Entire PC.
4. Run a backup on the new Entire PC Ver2 backup task.
And everything be good as in all the metadata, history etc of the old backups on the failed drive be gone for good (IOW Acronis True Image have no knowledge of those old backups) and Acronis True Image only know about the new backup Entire PC Ver2 just created. Or should I make sure the new drive has a different drive letter. Pretty sure this would all be good, but just so unsure of all this want to give it my best to not make a mess of things.
-Don
Don, for your further question, you should be fine to do as you have described in the 4 steps above.
Just for completeness here, each disk drive (internal or external) has a unique identifier (UUID) that is recorded along with the allocated drive letter (i.e. F:\) in the Acronis SQL Lite Database files.
When you delete the backup task settings for the original task writing to the failed drive, then this information should be purged from the database.
With the clone of the backup task, this will record the UUID and drive letter for the new backup drive and store this in the database - hence this will be a new set of information for a new task, with a new backup history when the task executes.
As a precaution, I would suggest not running the new, cloned task, until after you have deleted the original task settings - this in case you want to re-use the original task name and avoid any confusion in the database if the original task information was still present.
Thanks Steve for all the input. I have created my initial backup on the new drive and look to be all set.
Thanks again,
-Don