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Target drive is running out of space

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I have been using ATI2016 to do regular backups of my Entire PC to a 2TB external disk, and now the inevitable has happened - the external drive has run out of space.

I can see from the backup (.tib) file names and sizes on the external disk that there is a combination of "full" (seemingly created monthly) and "inc" files.

What is the correct procedure to free up space on the target drive? I would prefer to use some option within the package rather than manually delete what I believe to be the oldest group(s) of files.

It also seems to me that just going out and buying another external drive is not a proper solution, as I could end up with incremental backup files that belong to a full backup on the previous drive.

 

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Stephen, welcome to these User Forums.

The recommended method for managing your backup files on the destination drive is to use the Backup Scheme option for Automatic Cleanup.

Given that you are currently running out of space on the backup drive you will probably need to do some manual cleanup first as automatic cleanup only runs after a new full backup has been created and you may not have sufficient space available to create such a new full backup.

When deleting backup files manually you need to ensure that you only delete the files which all belong to the same backup version chain, i.e. those with the same B number in the file name, so file_full_b1_s1_v1 plus all the file_inc_b1_s2_v1 through file_inc_b1_s99_v1 according to how many incremental files were created for the same backup sequence.

After deleting such files manually (via Windows Explorer), then you need to perform a Validation for the backup task that created the files - this will attempt to reconcile the information held in the Acronis Database for the task with the status of image files on your backup drive.

In reply to by truwrikodrorow…

Thank you for your reply.
Please can you confirm that this is what I need to do:
1) In Windows Explorer select the files:
Entire PC (computername)_full_b1_s1_v1.tib
Entire PC (computername)_inc_b1_s2_v1.tib
Entire PC (computername)_inc_b1_s3_v1.tib
Entire PC (computername)_inc_b1_s4_v1.tib
Entire PC (computername)_inc_b1_s5_v1.tib
Entire PC (computername)_inc_b1_s6_v1.tib
2) Delete the selected files.
3) From the Acronis main window right-click [Entire PC]
and from the drop-down menu select Validate.
Assuming that Validate says everything is okay...
4) Run an Entire PC backup as I usually do.
5) Set the Automatic Cleanup option.
- How do I set the Automatic Cleanup option?
- Do I only need to set it once?

Stephen, yes, correct for the steps 1 to 3 in your update, this assuming that Entire PC is the name of your backup task you are validating, which should be so given the file names shown.

Steps 4 and 5 need to be reversed, set automatic cleanup for your Entire PC task before you run this again.

With the Entire PC task selected / highlighted, click on Option, then open the Backup Scheme page then look to set the options similar to as shown in my screen shot below:

2017-08-22 12_35_23-Acronis True Image 2017.png

Okay, I have done steps 1, 2 and 3, using Windows Explorer to delete the first set of backup files as listed above.

Running Validate shows this dialog box:

image

Is this expected?

If so, should I click "Ignore this version"?

 

Yes, it is expected. Click on "Ignore this version" and it will be deleted from the index, so that recovery set will then work properly. You can confirm that the index is now OK by redoing the validate which should not produce any errors.

Ian

Thank you. When I clicked "Ignore this version" it repeated the dialog box for each version from 5 down to 1. Then the validation completed normally.

Just to check, I ran the validation again and it completed successfully with no dialog boxes being shown.

Then I enabled the Automatic Cleanup options as you showed me, and restricted the number of backup versions to be retained.

Then I ran a normal "Entire PC" backup and after this completed normally I can see that the oldest backup versions have been automatically deleted, and I should now always have enough space.

(I ran the validation again and it completed successfully with no dialog boxes being shown.)

Thank you for your help.

Stephen, thanks for your feedback, glad to hear that all is looking better now and automatic cleanup is working for you.