Split backup, disappearing and appearing tibs

Philip, what version of Windows OS are you running and do you have Windows Fast Start enabled on your system?

Thank you for the document with screen images, the file with the v1-2 part of the name is an indication of a problem when creating the previous backup using that v1 name part, hence Acronis retries the backup but doesn't remove the failed backup file, instead adds the -2 suffix.

Without the log files for your backup task that created these files it is difficult to know what problems may have caused this to happen.  Please download the Log File Viewer app from the link in my signature below and use this to look at what messages are being written in your task log files.

The disappearing / reappearing files issue is why I asked the initial question above - the only time that I have seen this type of behaviour is when backups have been done when Windows Fast Start is enabled and the backup is done using the Acronis Rescue media but when Windows is in a hybrid sleep state, i.e. in hibernation.

I would recommend running CHKDSK /R for both your Source and Backup disk drives to ensure that both drives do not have any file system or bad sector errors which could cause problems with backups.

Steve, thank you very much.
I have run your app and am attaching the log; no clue what it says.

I have never even heard of Windows faststart. Where would it show up, please? Task manager?

I ran check disk recently and got a clean bill of health. I can run it again this weekend when I have time.

Thanks again. Let me know if you see anything helpful in the log, please.

If I remember correctly Fast Start is a BIOS/UEFI setting. (But as always I could be wrong!)

Ian

Philip, thanks for the log file details, this shows the following errors:

id=6;  level=3;  module=485;  code=35;  date/time=12/1/2016 4:01:09 AM
message=The specified file does not exist: N:\Acronis Video-E Backups\System_VideoE_inc_b1_s2_v1-2.tib

This tells us that the previous backup had encountered an error with the backup file because the missing file named above ends with _inc_b1_s2_v1-2.tib  - the v1-2 part shows that there was an earlier file with the same name already present, hence Acronis had to add the -2 suffix to make that file unique.

id=7;  level=3;  module=11;  code=127;  date/time=12/1/2016 4:01:09 AM
message=The initial full backup version is not accessible at the moment

This further message tells us that the full backup file which any further incremental backups are to be based on cannot be found.  This raises the question as to whether the drive letter for this backup task has changed or whether these files have been deleted manually?  Was the task created to store the backups on your N: drive, and is this drive letter the same as what you see in Windows Explorer for the physical drive?  Is this a local or a network drive?

There are then further similar messages complaining about these missing files shown in the log, all this before the backup task has been properly started.

id=16;  level=2;  module=100;  code=0;  date/time=12/1/2016 4:01:34 AM
message=The following backups have been successfully created: N:\Acronis Video-E Backups\System_VideoE_inc_b1_s16_v1.tib

The message above is a little puzzling given the earlier messages, because for an incremental backup to be of any use at all, you must have the initial full backup version for the backup chain, i.e. _b1_ and also you must have ALL incremental backups in the version chain, i.e. _s2_ through _s16_ yet the first message tells us that one of these incrementals is missing?

I would recommend checking the drive letter is correct, that you can see all the files in the backup chain present on the backup drive, and then do a Validation for the backup task to see if that throws any error messages about any missing files - if you do get these, then try to take the option to browse to locate the missing file and let Acronis reconcile the database informatio for this version chain.  If any files are missing, then I would recommend cloning the task settings and starting a new backup version chain in to a different target folder.

On the question of Windows Fast Start, this can be seen in the Power options, and may be shown as Hybrid Sleep.

Steve, I am enormously grateful for your generous expertise. Let me try to answer the questions you have posed.

I am running W7 64bit. I do not see either hybrid or fast start in my power settings. They indicated a custom plan to turn off the hard drive after 20 minutes and put the computer to sleep after 5 hours. Also, although I don’t recall this, they require a password to wake up the computer.

Let me just say before going further, that sometime Acronis works like a charm for a month or more. After a problem last year, when Acronis couldn’t find the main back up drive after I had unplugged it and run full backups to a second USB HD, which I do every couple of weeks as a second back up and keep stored elsewhere, I learned how to specify a letter name for each external drive. These do show up properly as such when attached. The N you see is always attached except briefly when creating new backups on the other. My routine for the N drive is to delete everything once a month, create new full backups and let Acronis create incrementals every several days, on different days, of both my C and E drives.

I was going to try a backup validation this weekend anyway, something I haven’t done, after reading a Windows Secrets article about confirming that one's backups really work. I'll look that up and see how it goes. I'll also rerun chkdsk on both drives.

If I understand you, somehow Acronis is splitting the new C full backup for an unclear reason, since I was starting in an empty folder. After my other checks, I'll delete the backup plans in Acronis and recreate them with slightly different destination folder names.

I am attaching a screen shot of the E-drive history. Note that this one is proceeding, but that it made a jump in size suddenly time before last. I can think of no reason it should have done this, as I have made no changes to the drive's contents recently.

Again, my thanks. I'll let you know what I come up with soon.

Four minutes after my past post:

Well, that was fast! Validation cannot find any of my backups, of either drive. The first message I got, when attempting to validate C,  said that t couldn't find version 1. Ignoring that, it couldn't find v2, then 3, etc. That appeared to be going nowhere. For E, i got repeated "can't find Version 1" messages.

I'll run chkdsk, then try deleting all backups and plans, and starting from scratch.

Philip, one further question here given you are using two different backup drives.  

Are you also using two different backup tasks to backup to these different backup drives?  
Or are you using the same task and swapping between the different backup drives?

If you are swapping the drives with a single task, then this will cause problems as each drive is recognised by the unique drive identifier (UUID) which is recorded in the Acronis Database for the task that first uses it.  

You should only have one drive per task, though you can have multiple tasks writing to the same drive.  If you want to alternate backups to different drives then this must be done by having separate tasks to do this, i.e. Task 1 writes to drive 1 on Mon to Thurs, Task 2 to drive 2 on Fri to Sun.

Thanks, Steve. Three things.

1. In reply to your question, I am backing up the two internal drives, C&E, to, alternately, two external drives, N&P. Therefore, I have two N-destination backups (C  to N adn E to N) and 2 P-destination backups configured (similarly), but the latter are only full, the former incremental. So, I have four listed backups.

2. I tried running chkdsk from drive Properties/Tools/Check, on both N and P. N stalled after quickly reaching 35 files scanned and no more after 15 minutes. I cancelled it, rebooted the PC, deleted the backups from it and tried again with the same result. P was even less sucessful, appearing to start but stalling with the number 1024 under the scan time bar and no progress shown on the bar after 15 minutes. That's a new one, and I'm not sure what's up now.

3. Please see attached file with an error message from trying to validate the E backup on P (full backups drive). It gave me the "Can't find version 1" message again, so I used the browse to go to the backup file. Note that the "b5" designation it's looking for. The backup on the drive is "b8". Can you tell me what the b is for and why this would be? Again, on this drive, I make full backups every few weeks. I delete them before creating new ones the next time. Am I doing something wrong? Do I need to go read the manual again? As you can see, I am out of my league.

Philip, thanks for the further information which suggests some issues here:

CHKDSK should be able to run for both of your backup drives and do so to completion, but this may take some time depending on the size of the drives involved.  I would suggest setting this to run then leaving it overnight then checking the next morning that it has completed.  The results for CHKDSK are recorded in the Windows Event Logs.

If you are deleting backup files manually then you are not using the recommended method of automatic cleanup to manage your backup versions, and therefore your backups will be out of sequence with the information held in the Acronis Database files for your backup tasks.  

This is why you are being advised about the b5 backup being missing when your drive only shows the b8 backup files.  this _b?_ indicator shows the backup sequence number, so b5 = backup version chain sequence 5, whereas b8 = version chain sequence 8.

The way forward from this point will be to cleanup your tasks and task history (held in the database) and perhaps the easiest way to do this at this point is to make a clone of each task using the option to 'clone task settings' which will create a duplicate task with the same name but prefixed by (1), so if you have task1 this will be cloned to (1) task1 with all the same settings.  Delete the original backup task settings - you do not need to delete the backup files (just the settings), then check the settings for the new cloned task and rename this <before> you run it for the first time.  Deleting the original task will remove the information for that task from the Database, and then new information will be put into the database when you run the new cloned task.

You should consider configuring the automatic cleanup rules for each of your tasks while doing the above clone of the settings.  Automatic cleanup works on version chains, where a version chain = 1 x Full backup plus all associated Incremental backups with the same backup sequence number (_b?_).  Cleanup only works when the next version chain has been started with a new full backup.

You can configure to keep version chains for X days - this is counted from the date that the next version chain was started.

Or you can configure to keep no more than X recent version chains - again this only deletes the oldest version chain files when the X+1 version chain has been started.  So if you set to keep no more than 2 chains, the oldest chain will be deleted when the 3rd version chain is started.

Hi again, Steve. I have run chkdsk, with find and repair optins both checked, on both C and N drives; I'll check P at some point, but that seems unnecessary at the moment. N showed O errors; C showed no errors up through step five, which, of course, takes the longest. At last check, about halfway through, it was running fine; the computer rebooted itself before I returned, which I imagine means it was happy; no warnings came up during logging back in. As you instructed, I checked the event viewer, not a utility I am  familiar with. I viewed the Windows System events. The only thing that stood out to me from today's log (C check) was the single yellow-triangle warning, see attached. do you know if this is something relevant?

I haven't tried to validate the new backups I created after following your instructions for activating the cleanup function. In all cases, a new full backup was created, and the C backup did not split. It would seems to me that the crux of the problem was my manual deletion of backups, which was preventing Acronis from finding was it was looking for.

I'll try validation again later, when I get a chance, and let you know.

My thanks again.

Philip, the event log entry in your PDF document was simply for an issue for when a USB device was plugged in and the system had a problem with a device driver loading, so nothing associated with running CHKDSK.

See webpage: How to Read Event Viewer Log for Check Disk (chkdsk) in Windows 7 / Windows 8? for how you can find the CHKDSK results in the Windows Event viewer.

Thank you for proper event-viewer-reading link. The chkdsk report was clean.

I ran a manual C backup, which created the expected small incremental from the new full I had created (as above posted), and then ran a validation for that backup, i.e., C to N, which ran smoothly for about 20 minutes and finished without sending any errors. There was no "validation fine, you're a hero, give yourself a raise" message, but I assume Acronis was happy. I'll proceed with the other ones as time allows over the next day or so. I appear to be back in business.

This has been an excellent education. Thank you so very much. I wish I could return the favor.

Philip, glad to know that your backups are proceding OK, and trust the the further one will do the same.