TI2016 Cloud: Stalls/fails when files left open
Acronis Community:
Been having trouble with backups when data files and programs are left open on the computer. My client has an unfortunate habit of not always cleaning up her workspace before the backups are scheduled to run. And if she doesn't clean up, the three backups (1 cloud [files and folders] and 2 local [files and folders + image]) never complete.
Is there a workaround for this situation? I wish True Image was sophisticated enough to just skip any files that are open, but I can't find any feature that copes with this.
Thanks!
zzwerzy
What are the open files? By default, Acronis use Windows Volume Shadow Service (VSS), which is designed to backup open files. However, some files are stored in memory and not on the disk as they are actively being worked on (Word, Excel, etc). In those cases, the user must save the file to commit them to the hard drive first... automatic saving can be confgured in these apps in 5 minute increments (or as often as necessary or needed).
If VSS is having issues on the system, this can cause an issue. In those cases (troubleshooting VSS is difficult), you can disable VSS for each backup job and Acronis will backup using their proprietary snapapi backup method instead. VSS is ideal if you have active SQL or Oracle databases when a backup is run, but if not, then Snapapi backup method is just as good and may be more reliable since it does not have a dependency on Windows VSS.
3 ways to disable VSS - try option #1 for a specific backup task
Thanks, Bobbo!
Files left open by the client prior to the scheduled backups are typical to a bookkeeping environment: primarily Quickbooks data files. Occasionally PDFs, browsers and Word/Excel files might be left open as well.
System is relatively clean and I have no evidence to support possible VSS issues.
Office 2010 has most of its defaults, so the 5-min. auto-save is active. Will test with open Office files tonight. Possibly they can be eliminated from this concern.
Again, thank you for sharing some of your time with me. More data soon.
zzwerzy
Follow up question:
When in "files and folders" mode, is there a way to instruct TI to just skip any open files?
zz
There is no specific option to 'skip any open files' but the normal exclusions have the following entries which would normally exclude open files:
*.~
*.tmp
These are normally file types / extensions that are used by open files, but any files that are open in memory would automatically be excluded and only the version held on disk would be saved via the VSS snapshot function.
Thanks, Steve. Yes, I've got the exclusions enabled and the ones you cited are there.
Turns out that I can leave browsers, PDFs, and MS Office files open without a problem. It's QuickBooks data files that are the problem. If my client leaves QB open, the backups stall at the open data file. Unlike local backups, when using TI Cloud there is no user interaction screen which allows the operator to skip the problem file(s). Since the cloud backup is the first of three daily backups, if QB files are left open it interrupts the subsequent backups and nothing gets done (until the next morning when the user closes QB).
So, Quickbooks is the culprit. Any other TI users out there dealing with this?
zz, a search on Google came up with the follow webpage: Backing Up QuickBooks On Windows - this looks to be for a different backup product but I would guess that the principles being offered would apply to any application that is looking to backup open Quickbooks files.
Acronis also uses the Microsoft VSS service to perform the backup, so the approach given in the above page hold true here too.
Backup your Quickbooks files using the backup automation tools provided with the program.
Exclude your *.QBW files in Acronis and backup the .QBB files instead.
Thanks, Steve. Read your link. Here's another relevant one I found:
https://community.intuit.com/questions/1328121-problems-with-scheduled-…
Paraphrasing the Intuit article, the solution uses Task Scheduler to stop and restart the Intuit User Service prior to backup, thus forcing QB to disconnect from the database.
I'll try it and report.
zzwerzy