Scheduling "twice a day" backups fails second entry
If I try to schedule using the "twice a day" specific times schedule entry, the second entry reverts to 12:00 am. That is after a new entry, stays in field, clicking OK, but when checking the schedule 12:00 am replaces any other time entered.
Could this be a "bug'"? Any advice would be welcome.
Thanks.
Thank you for your comment and the links. It seems others are having the same problem and I wonder if they found the solution.
I will experiment with a small update to see if it updates on the second entered time even if the entry is replaced by 12:00 am. Also I learned that to "save" you have to "run backup now" but I thought this was only with new backups, and did not do it with modified existing backups. I cannot Acronis documenting this anywhere.
I will report back when I find out anything further.
After experimenting I can report that indeed though the second schedule time "auto" changes to 12:00 am the backup does occur on the time entered and continues to do so daily, but occasionally the second time slot does not happen.
Worse still after functioning normally for days, 3 daily backups I scheduled overnight just did not happen last night and I cannot see how I can find out the reason for this. The backup simply says " last back up yesterday" "next time and date = as tommorow".
The whole system appears unreliable. I changed from 2014 to 2016 in late July just before I changed from W7 to W10 Pro and I find 2016 worse not better and certainly not user friendly. After many years rather than spend more money on a yearly update I think it may be time to explore other options.
George, you've made 2 major changes, not just Acronis, but also your OS. I have a feeling that Windows 10 fast start/fast boot is the culprit behind your missed tasks. If the system is "shutdown" in Widnows 10, with fast boot enabled by default, the system only hibernates and doesn't really shutdown. As a result, any "missed backups" don't trigger as missed becasuse the system was not actually offline. The fix is to either turn off fastboot (if you have a decent SSD, you probably won't even miss it), or instead of shutting down with the power button, do a restart (which forces a full shutdown), or shutdown using command prompt with shutdown /s which also forces a full shutdown. This issue with fastboot has been resolved in 2017 now and missed backups should run with fastboot enabled and/or when awaking from hibernation. I've never tried the 2 day option so am not sure about that one.
Other possibiities for missed backups could be power settings for hard drives, NICs and/or usb devices under power management. You should also check to see if things like the USB ports have additoinal power savings enabled in computer managment >>> device manager. If the source drive and/or destination drive are unavailable during scheduled backups (either due to the system being asleep, hibernating, off, or power saving features active at that time) the backup won't have a chance to run on the schedule and the run missed backup only applies if the machine has started up again (in 2016). You'll find these issues in other applications as well if the machine is not available at those times and I haven't seen any twice a day backups in other products - you can supplment with a second backup, but you can also do that in Acronis as well.
Thank you for your reply. Last night I checked all the power settings and made sure of them: Fast StartUp + Sleep + Lock were all ticked but greyed out: I ticked on "Change setting currently unavailable" and cleared them ( make sure to click "save", way down the page). The Power plan was High Performance - No Sleep, and the only adjustment I thought may be needed was changing USB settings, selective suspend to Disabled.
The overnight backups did not work. When I tried a manual backup. the email log reported:Connection to the service is refused, The operation was terminated unexpectedly.
I then tried two restarts and manual backups are working. I am waiting to see if the scheduled backups will work. If so I guess I will have to make sure to do at least one reboot daily - otherwise I still do not know what is causing the problem. This is he exact error message - does this give the clue?
---------------------------------------
PSDiff task is waiting for user interaction.
Description:
Information: Connection to the service is refused.
Details: The operation was terminated unexpectedly.
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Again thank you very much for your help and guidance.
Could I ask would you know if a scheduled backup cannot be performed at the scheduled time because e.g. a previous backup is still running will the missed backup be performed later or just missed?
George, can you post any log files where you are seeing the error messages you quoted above, i.e. PSDiff task...
This is a new one for me, I have not come across anything like it personally and a quick search on Google only found utilitys related to handling Photoshop PSD files.
That is the only emailed log file of this type that I have. When the overnight backups failed there were no log files received, and I also did not find anything for those dates using the Log File Viewer Ap.
This log file was received after I tried to manually to start some of the backups: I feel pretty certain that I clicked on a couple and repeat clicked as there was no response, but I found only the one log as recorded.
Today I found my overnight backups worked so it appears I need to do a Restart every night –maybe it has something to do with how the Acronis Scheduler recognises changes in the date. Or W10, or both. Anyway not a bad thing to do a restart. I wonder if W10 now also does restarts with its automatic updates, yesterday I came back from dinner to find the computer and my laptop had both restarted and were waiting for the password - there was nothing to do this, no power glitch, in any case I have a good reliable APC UPS which recorded no interruption.
Hmmm, this sounds like fast boot at work (even though you say it's disabled). Can you check and see if you have hiberfile.sys on the root of your C: drive? You might need to turn on "show hidden files, folders and drives" and disable "hide protected operating system files". If you disable hibernation completely (at least temporarily, fast boot can never be active.
Run Command prompt as Admin (right click and "run as administrator"... Type powercfg -h off. To reverse this, later go back and type powercfg -h on
if you want to enable the option to hibernate again.
Otherwise, yes, restarting, triggers that missed backup option and allows it to run the missed backup again. With hibernation disabled, hopefully, the backup would just run at the normal time as long as you have the option to wake from sleep enabled.
Thank you for your comments, but unless W10 ignores the settings in Control Settings, Power I cannot see how that can happen. I do not like using Sleep / Hibernate and always have these switched off: also I always have hidden and system files showing. However I did have a hiberfil.sys (I removed it before in W7) about the right size for my system RAM – I removed this now so as you said if W10 is doing strange things it will not be able to do so unless it recreates the file.
I’ve attached a few screen snips to show my setups. I am inclined to blame W10 but for the moment will be happy my backups are working.
BTW a few days ago, maybe at the same time as this, my laptop which is a 1 year old Lenovo X1 also with fresh W10 lost the R click on the Start Menu, but it happily continued to do backups! I’ve spent time searching and apparently the R click menu problem is common with many solutions which have not worked for me (also common) except the final which I will not do - creating a new admin profile.
If hibernation is disabled, why is there a hibernation file on the system then? If you don't intend to hibernate anyway, using the powercfg -h off command in an elevated command prompt will turn it off 100%. There will be no chance for hibernation or fastboot to ever come into play.
The bios may have some more impact on sleep states as well. What is your system make/model?
At least test with hibernation disabled and see if it makes a difference. There's no harm in turning it off and tunring it back on later if you want to. However, it may be the key to what's happening and my hunch since your scheduled backup runs fine right after a full reboot which has triggered a full shutdown and startup.