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New feature suggestion

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I am not sure how to go about suggesting a new feature from the ATI software design team, so I am posting this as a request in the forum.

One of my biggest gripes about ATI 2016 and 2017 compared to True Image Home 11 is the fact  that the new user interface hides useful information from the user. This information is essential when it comes to identifying and correcting backup failures.

What I would really like to see is the ability for the user to view the backup chain for incremental and differential backups. It would also be useful if the user could verify that the files in the chain are present and are visible on the backup device.

That way, the user will have better confidence that the backup will succeed before the operation is initiated. It will show that the backup drive is powered up and connected and that the required files are present accessible. It will also show how many previous incremental or differential backups have been carried out. This information is useful when it comes to deciding whether to carry out another incremental backup or go for a more time and disk consuming full backup.

Currently, the only way to identify the backup chain and the number of previous incremental backups appears to be to either look in the log files for each of the historical backups or trawl through the complete list of tib files on the backup device.

 

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Brian, you can use the Feedback tool in the ATIH 2017 GUI - Help section to pass your comments / ideas to Acronis development / support.

You wrote: "What I would really like to see is the ability for the user to view the backup chain for incremental and differential backups. It would also be useful if the user could verify that the files in the chain are present and are visible on the backup device."

This is available today in all recent versions including 2017 - simply click on either of the Restore options shown for your backup task in the main GUI, and this will open a new window with a drop-down list box showing the dates/times when backups were created, so one for each incremental or differential backup that was created.

2017-06-12 15_49_17-Recovery selection.png

The option to verify that all files in a backup version chain are present and correct is shown as Validation in the menu for each task.

2017-06-12 15_53_15-Validation.png

Validation will walk the chain and identify any missing files etc.  You can also use the Open location option (shown above) to go directly to where your backup files are stored on your backup drive.

I miss this feature too.  I liked it when you could view backup names, and see the complete chains list, and also had the ability to remove old backup chains from within the GUI.  I also miss the calendar showing those backup chains and the logs. Logs were a great feature but also missing in 2017 within the GUI.  I used those 2 features alot. 

 

FYI, when you manually remove an old chain (even if it's from a much older named backup job), VALIDATION no longer works at all in 2017 and quits without any error in the GUI, thus no green checkmark appears.  However, if you setup email alerts, it shows up there has having failed due to file read error, though the backup file can be opened within the GUI.  So, over and over I recreate a new backup so it can pass validation, but keep a few files from the former backup, and when I delete the old backups manually, the NEW backup fails validation.