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Why/How Is My Backup Corrupted?

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I am using ATI 2016, Build 6571. I currently create 4 Acronis backups to different drives (2 internal, 2 external). I use a full, single version backup scheme.

One of by backups is rather large (424GB)....it includes the internal drive (C) where my Win 10 OS is installed, and an external drive (L) containing many photos and short videos from my game cameras.

Last week I successfully performed this large backup to an external drive (I). Then I scheduled this backup to be performed each Fri morning at 12:01am. To my surprise and disappointment, when I checked my computer the next morning, Acronis showed the backup performed overnight to be corrupt. I mean, same backup of same drives was OK earlier in the week, but now it's corrupt?

To make matters worse, two other things happened with this backup:

    (1) It completed to the point that it then deleted my good backup from earlier in the week; so now I have no valid backup remaining.

    (2) When I click on the large .tib file generated overnight on backup drive (I), I get the message to "Please locate the last volume of the backup" (I honestly don't know what this means).

 

I know drive (I) is a good working drive because I also performed a Macrium backup of drives (C) and (L) to this drive, and I used SyncToy to backup some data files to drive (I). I have no problem currently reading the results of the Macrium and SyncToy backups.

I would appreciate any help/advice to understand what is going on. Thanks in advance......

 

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Durago wrote:

I currently create 4 Acronis backups to different drives (2 internal, 2 external). I use a full, single version backup scheme.

Do you use separate backup tasks, one for each of the 4 Acronis backups to a specific internal or external drive?
Or are you using the same Acronis backup task and pointing this at the different internal / external drives?

Durago wrote:

One of by backups is rather large (424GB)....it includes the internal drive (C) where my Win 10 OS is installed, and an external drive (L) containing many photos and short videos from my game cameras.

Is there a reason why you are doing all of this in one backup task instead of using a separate task for each of the drives being backed up, i.e. one task for drive C: and a second task for drive L:?

Durago wrote:

Last week I successfully performed this large backup to an external drive (I). Then I scheduled this backup to be performed each Fri morning at 12:01am. To my surprise and disappointment, when I checked my computer the next morning, Acronis showed the backup performed overnight to be corrupt. I mean, same backup of same drives was OK earlier in the week, but now it's corrupt?

To make matters worse, two other things happened with this backup:

    (1) It completed to the point that it then deleted my good backup from earlier in the week; so now I have no valid backup remaining.

    (2) When I click on the large .tib file generated overnight on backup drive (I), I get the message to "Please locate the last volume of the backup" (I honestly don't know what this means).

Do you have a copy of the Log File Viewer app and what does this show in the logs for this backup task?

Existing backups are normally deleted when the new backup was created successfully unless there was an issue with drive space - the logs should help show what was happening here?

The message to locate the last volume of the backup has featured in other posts recently where a work-around was offered by Dmitry from Acronis Support but please answer my earlier question about whether you are changing drives with your backup task, as this can cause corruption in the Acronis database if so.

Steve, thanks much for your response. I wish I knew how to quote you and then answer your question right below the quote, but I just don't know how. Quote and Reply just work differently on this forum. But I will try and answer all your questions below:

(1) I use separate backup tasks for each of the four Acronis backup tasks, and each backup goes to a different destination drive.

(2) Drive C (my OS install) and drive L (my game camera photos/videos) are both very important to me, so I back them up together to Drive I. Never had a problem before doing this with Acronis and don't have this problem with Macrium. So why all of a sudden with Acronis? Is this something Acronis can't really handle?

(3) I know about the drive space and the fact that existing backups are not deleted until the current backup is successful.....you educated me on this last week when I ran out of space on my destination drive. What upsets me about this particular backup is that Acronis went ahead and deleted my previous good backup, so I was left with garbage.

(4) You asked me "whether you are changing drives with your backup task, as this can cause corruption in the Acronis database if so." I'm not sure what you mean here. But yes, each of my four Acronis backups go to a different drive. But for a particlular backup, the drive stays constant. So how can changing drives corrupt the database.....what are you trying to tell me here?

(5) You asked if I had a copy of the Log File Viewer app and what does this show in the logs for this backup task. Steve, unless this app came with Acronis, I probably don't have it. Where do I get it?

 

BTW, I re-ran the problem backup while I was out shopping this morning, and it did OK this time.....it doesn't show as corrupt. However, now all four of my Acronis backups show the message to locate the last volume of the backup. So I guess I really need to understand that.

Truth be told, Steve, I am really losing confidence in Acronis. I mean, if I have this much trouble creating a backup, what's going to happen to me if I ever need to restore?

Thanks again for hanging with me on this..........

Durago, the Log File Viewer app can be downloaded from the link in this sentence.  There is also a 'sticky' post in the top of the 2016 forum for it.

The message to locate the last volume of the backup has featured in other posts recently where a work-around was offered by Dmitry from Acronis Support who wrote:

Dmitry Nazarov wrote:

Hello, everyone!

If you're having the "Please locate the last volume..." issue when opening backups in Windows Explorer - try deleting all the files in C:\Users\[your_username]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Database 

This may help resolve the issue.

But yes, each of my four Acronis backups go to a different drive. But for a particlular backup, the drive stays constant.

If the above statement is correct, then there should be no problem with the database - the problem only occurs if you connect different drives with their different unique identifiers (UUID's).

 

Steve, I'm sorry but I don't know what you mean by "if you connect different drives with their different unique identifiers (UUID's)".

Honest to goodness, all I'm trying to do is use Acronis to create some backups. Until yesterday everything was fine, then it all went south.

I will try the above solution for the issue  "Please locate the last volume..." , because now I'm having it on all four of my backups.

Thanks for your response...........

Steve, the harder I try to work this problem, the deeper in yogurt I get. I just tried the suggestion by Dmitry Nazarov and here are the error messages I received:

- Can't delete Archives.db because it is open in COM Surrogate

- Can't delete Archives.db-shm because it is open in System

And when I use File Manager to open the .tib file, why is it looking in the archives? Attached is a screen shot of what I see

Attachment Size
371059-131023.jpg 72.9 KB

Good Morning Steve -

Well, I made some progress, although I absolutely do not understand what happened and why, and now I am truly nervous about using Acronis.

Here's the latest on what I accomplished:

(1) I deleted my old backup on drive I and created a new one. I got the green check mark that the backup went OK.

(2) But when I tried to open this backup using File Explorer, I once again got the "Please locate the last volume of the backup" message; in fact, I got this message when I tried to open any of my four Acronis backups. So I tried the suggestion by Dmitry Nazarov and still received the error messages stated in my previous post about why the Database files coiuld not be deleted.

(3) I then closed out Acronis and rebooted my computer. This time I was able to delete the files in the Database folder

(4) I was then able to open all four of my Acronis backup files using File Manager.

 

Steve, I'm still trying to figure out what happened to me and why. You stated previously that if my four Acronis backups went to a different drive, then there should be no problem with the database - the problem only occurs if you connect different drives with their different unique identifiers (UUID's). I commented that I didn't understand what you meant by connecting different drives with different UUID's. Can you explain this to me so I can see if that was my problem? Right now, everything seems to be OK with my four backups, but I don't want to have to go through this again.

Thanks..........

Durago, thank you for the feedback on the steps you have taken and that the advice from Dmitry looks to have solved the issue with the 'locate last volume'.

Durago wrote:

I commented that I didn't understand what you meant by connecting different drives with different UUID's.

Let me try to make a simple example to explain about UUID's.

External drive 1 has UUID = 0101
External drive 2 has UUID = 0202

Your Backup Task 1 saves to External drive 1
Your Backup Task 2 saves to External drive 2

In the Acronis database it has:

Backup Task 1 = UUID 0101
Backup Task 2 = UUID 0202

All is working fine while nothing changes with the above.

Now, if you change the External drive for your Backup Task 1 to a different drive, say drive 3 with UUID = 0303 the Acronis database still has Backup Task 1 = UUID 0101 which no longer matches the UUID of the new drive that is being used (drive 3 = UUID 0303) - this can then confuse / corrupt the database information for the task.

This is very simplied - the actual UUID values can be very different to the simple examples shown above, i.e. on my Dell laptop, my internal disk drive gives the following information using the DISKPART command.

DISKPART> select disk 0
Disk 0 is now the selected disk.
DISKPART> detail disk

ST1000LM014-1EJ164
Disk ID: FA7342AB
Type   : SATA
Status : Online

Each disk drive you attach to the computer will have its own unique Disk ID (UUID) and this information is stored in the database for the Acronis backup task that is using the specific disk drive.

Steve, thanks much for the explanation.........I now understand what UUID's are all about.

Turns out, I might have inadvertenly changed drives for a specific backup task (Task 4). My original drive (I) cratered a few weeks ago and was replaced by Seagate under warranty. When the replacement drive arrived, I did a quick format and then connected it to the same USB port as my old failed drive (I). Then I performed the same backup Task 4 to this new drive. The first backup went OK, but a few days later when Backup Task 4 was performed on a schedule, Acronis reported this backup as corrupt. And then my problems really began, because I guess at that point I had corrupted the database.

I simply thought that since I gave my new drive the same letter designation (I) as the old drive, Acronis would have no problem with the replacement. But thanks to your explanation, I now see that since the two drives had unique UUID's, that screwed up the Acronis database.

Fingers crossed, all things Acronis seem to be working well.........and thanks to you, I understand what went wrong. I repeat, you are a true asset to this forum.

Durago, glad to have been able to help.