Acronis Cloud Restore Missing and Corrupted Data
I had a situation where my computer and my local backup drive failed at the same time. I had to rely on Acronis Cloud backup to restore my data. I encountered the following problems.
1)Outlook 2010 .pst file was corrupted. scanpst.exe repaired file but all data after 9-8-16 was missing.
2)Quicken 2016 data file was corrupted and unuseable.
3)Chrome user data folder was missing.
Luckily I also have WHS 2011 backing up my data. I was able to restore all of the missing or corrupted files using WHS 2011. This tells me there is a problem with Acronis backing up my files. If I recall correctly Acronis Cloud excludes the Chrome user data folder from the backup by default. If that is the case, that is unacceptable.


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I haved not used WHS 2011 in awhile but from what I recall WHS makes backups of client machines outside of the client machines OS. Acronis True Image works the exact opposite of that. True Image also follows Microsoft exclusion rules and as Steve says if the applicaitons like Outlook and Quicken are running during the time of backup then things are prone to failure.
Your best results with full OS backups will be if you use the bootable Recovery Media to create full OS system disk backups where only temp files and folders are excluded by default.
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I don't use Quicken, but can agree with the issues I've seen with backing it up, not just in Acronis, but other products as well. Often times, files such as OUtlook are committed to memory (volatile, temporary storage space) until set save intervals or the application is closed out. Items in "memory" are not on the disk and will not be backed up until committed back to the hard drive and then a backup is run again.
Quicken actually has it's own backup method. If you backed up in quicken and then ran Acronis backups, those quicken backups would defintely be backed up.
https://www.quicken.com/support/how-backup-or-restore-your-quicken-data
As for the default exclusions of user data in browsers, that was definitely not ideal in earlier versions of Acronis. It was changed in 2016 (current version) and in 2017 to longer exclude certain user profile "appdata" directories that housed browser settings such as favorites. In older versions of 2016 and 2015, the user needs to remove those default exclusions from the backup task. Alternatively, taking a full, offline backup with rescue media will ensure that the entire disk is backed up "as is" with no exclusions. The reason Acronis (and other backup products) have some default exclusions is because Windows creates large, temporary files when active (pagefile, recycle bin, etc that serve no purpose for a backup). The previous default exclusions of browser data was definitely not welcomed and has been changed in the more recent releases.
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I'm using Acronis 2017 and it still didn't backup the Chrome user data folder. Sounds like another instance of Acronis not backing up data in applications that are open. I bet Acronis Backup 12 doesn't have this problem.
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2017 has no issue with this. If you have a task from an earlier version, those settings/exclusions will remain as the upgrade does not modify existing backup tasks... it only changes the default exclusions for new tasks.
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This problem is NOT related to the type of files I'm backing up. The problem is caused by Acronis Cloud backup. I backed up my system using Acronis Disk & Partition backup with all of my programs I use open and was able to restore my system with NO corrupted files. This is just another of the many problems Acronis suffers from.
I had to use Acronis snapshot to perform a Disk and Partition backup because VSS was causing my backups to be 10 times their normal size. Granted, this many not happen to everyone but it happened to me on a clean OS install. That is unacceptable.
So, if your local backup drive dies like mine did at the same time your main system fails to boot and you overwite your data trying to troubleshoot why the hell your cloud backup doesn't work. You have to rely on WHS 2011 to save your butt. Thanks Acronis
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Hello Technogod,
Issues with Outlook and Quicken files must have occurred because you switched the snapshot method from VSS to Acronis snapshot. Some applications require to be notified when a backup begins so that they can save the necessary data from RAM into their files and suspend for a moment, just to allow the disk snapshot to capture their files in a consistent state. Such interactivity between the running applications and Acronis backup software is provided through VSS snapshotting.
The issue with missing browser data was fixed in Acronis True Image 2016 Update 2, released last year. In your case the problem persisted because the backup task remained unchanged from the old version. If you did a clean installation of the version 2017, backup task would be recreated and browsers' useful data would have been correctly saved into the backup.
Regards,
Slava
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I just don't trust Aconis with my data. That's the bottom line. Acronis is constantly fixing things that should have been fixed a long time ago.
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Hello! I am having the same problem with Acronis 2017, that I cannot restore my outlook pst file from the cloud successfully. I also have all emails restored from 1.6.2016 on after sca.pst - but not later. I have several versions stored online - my idea is now to downlaod different versions and see, if I have more success witrh an earlier version...what do you think? This is really painful, as my laptop has been stolen, and the Acronis cloud is my only backup ( I am a backup newby, so I thought I am save with this...).
Thank you!
Andreas
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Hello Andreas, see instructions on how to use the .pst file to restore your Outlook data here: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Import-email-contacts-and-calendar-from-an-Outlook-pst-file-431a8e9a-f99f-4d5f-ae48-ded54b3440ac
Regards,
Slava
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