Feature suggestion: Backup only when specified network connection is available
I'm a laptop user, and sometimes I'm connected to my home Wi-Fi, where Acronis backup works great. Sometimes I'm tethered to my cell phone, though, and backup there will cause data overage charges - not to mention, it's really slow, or even non-functioning, in the case of backups that are destined for a home network share.
So I'm suggesting a new feature in the backup settings, which allows us to specify a network connection that must be available for the scheduled backup to run. It would be basically like the same setting that is available when setting up a regular scheduled task in Windows Task Scheduler. It would also need to take into account the fact that a backup might start running on the specified connection, but not be finished before a user switches to a different connection. In that case, the backup should automatically pause, then resume when the specified connection is detected again.
As far as the rest of your request goes, you should sumbit feedback through the application so it's logged directly with Acronis as this is the user forum and Acronis support is not likely to come across all feature requests and suggestions here, but submitting feedback will officially log it.
Ultimately, I don't know of any COTS home backup applications that have this same behavior your looking for - especially with the pause and resume functionality and or change in network awareness. The other major competitors don't offer these features either (not the ones I've used and also test). Typically backup jobs on these home products just look for the specified source and attempt to write to the specified destination and the specified time (or may run as soon as the system comes online and it checks that the scheduled time was missed), but isn't much smarter than that for home products. Enteprise/server backup software sometimes has this feature, but usually costs considerably more as well.
If conserving your data tethering is an issue, you may want to tweak your automated schedule to only run when you know you won't be tehering and then manually kick off the job if you want it to run when you're at home, but it's not automatically scheduled.
Definitely submit the in app feedback though.
Thanks. I submitted feedback through the application, per your suggestion.
The pre-command feature isn't available for cloud backups, which is most of what I use nowadays. I do already schedule backups to run when I expect to be home on weekends, but that's not always good enough, since sometimes there isn't enough time for a long-running backup, or I'm traveling.
If I can find the time, I may try to see if I can write a Windows service that can watch for running backups and pause them when network conditions aren't right.
Matthew...welcome to these user forums.
Perhaps you could write an app that analyzes "IPCONFIG"
When I am logged into my home Wifi, IPCONFIG shows Default Gateway:
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 10.0.0.1
When I am logged in through my cell phone, IPCONFIG shows Default Gateway:
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.137.1
I beleive the toughest part is how to provide the pass/fail results to True Image.
Regards,
FtrPilot
This might be a good place to start and should apply to any Windows version from 7 to 10. Basically, when the network changes to something other than what you use at home, have that event trigger a scheduled task to disable the Acronis scheduler service (point it to a .bat file with sc stop "AcrSch2Svc"
Then, when an system event shows that you have connected to your home network, have it start the acronis Scheduled Service again with another .bat file using sc start "AcrSch2Svc"
I haven't quite figured it out yet as I'm not using wireless as described in the article, but it should just be a matter of getting the right events to trigger the scheduled tasks to run when desired.
Steve's "pre-command" may be what you're looking for in the meantime...
Rob, I have had to abandon trying to use Powershell to Pre/Post Commands as it is almost impossible to get it to return the correct result to ATIH - regardless of what you set, it always says the command ran successfully despite throwing errors! There are lots of reports of the same in Google.
I have created a new document - attached - showing a simpler and working process just using a Ping command to test for a local network server. Unfortunately, Acronis have not provided any means of using Pre/Post Commands with Acronis Cloud backup tasks, so will need an alternative method for anyone who is running a regular scheduled task to the cloud.
Have same task as laptop user: at home I have external drive with photo, backup goes to NAS + Acronis Cloud.
If backup task starts when I`m in travel, I`ll recive some errors: about unaccesible target, missing source drive etc.
So I made sheduled task, run in System security context at startup and then every 15 minutes:
powershell.exe -command IF ((test-path "E:\RAW") -eq $true) {Start-Service -Name "AcrSch2Svc"} else {Stop-Service -Name "AcrSch2Svc"}
And set startup type "Manual" for "Acronis Scheduler2 Service"
While searching for a solution for this problem I came across this thread. It seems like the is still no build in solution for this, so I would like to share a solution using the following bat-scipt as a pre-command like mentioned above:
@echo off powershell -Command "Write-Host -NoNewline ([string](netsh wlan show interfaces | select-string 'ssid') -match 'YOUR SSID HERE')" > nc.txt set /p wlanex= < nc.txt del nc.txt IF "%wlanex%" == "True" (EXIT 0) EXIT 2
It uses the PowerShell to search for a given SSID. This can also be executed on systems with strict PowerShell-Regulations, because it's only one command executed.
Jelko, welcome to these public User Forums.
Thank you for your contribution to this topic and sharing your solution.
The good news for users with ATI 2020 & later versions is that there is now an option on the main ATI Settings panel for "Wi-Fi networks for backup" where you can choose which networks need to be available before your backup tasks will run.
The description of this option might suggest that it is for backups to the Acronis Cloud but the further descriptive text would suggest it applies to all backups!
When the networks are selected and your computer loses a connection to any of them, all current backups are paused and scheduled backups will not start. Once the computer connects to any of these networks, the suspended backups will be resumed. The scheduled backups that have been missed because of this setting will be started as well.