Rescue Media Whole Disk Backup of PC to External Raid Often Fails Validation
For more than 4 years I have had problems validating backups on external WD My Book mirrored Raid 1 USB drives. Since support is not easy to get, I just put up with it. I would do a combination of re-validating a backup a couple of times or backing up over and over again until the backup would finaly validate. In general, a whole system backup should only take a couple of hours to complete; however, I find myself spending one or more days trying to achieve a high level of confidence that my backups are valid. I am voicing my problem today because I thought that someday, hopefully version 2017, the problem would clear up. This is not the case. There seems to be no pattern as to when it will validate. Is there any other way to determine, other than restoring 500 gig drives, if the backup is really corrupted.
When can we expect a validation operation that offers more robust details?
If a backup fails, it would be nice to know what part of a backup is bad?
At this time, there is no way of knowing if I lost part of an old text file of little or no value from 1999 or if the core of the Windows system files is damaged in the backup.
1) Because I have little faith in what happens in the Windows environment, expept for daily backups, I always use the Rescue Media for standalone backups that I archieve.
2) Sometimes I have Acronis validate as part of the backup process and sometimes I do it in two separate steps.
3) The USB drive is connected directly to the PC and the network is unplugged from the PC.
4) The message I get is Backup failed.
5) I always restore some files after a backup just to know that I can. However, it is very uncomforatble to have the formal validation process say failed and for me to believe, with a high level of confidence, that there is still not a glitch in the backup.
Which should I feel more confident with:
a) Acronis' validation routine or
b) Me restoring some files and saying OK everything is good.
AF, thanks for the further information.
If you are mainly seeing 'Backup failed' messages, without seeing the logs for the task being performed, it is difficult to know whether this would relate to a validation action or to the backup itself?
Which version of the Rescue Media are you using for these offline backups / validations? Is it the standard, Linux based, media or are you using the Windows PE version of the media? This may make a difference with regards to the device driver support for your USB RAID backup drive.
The Acronis validation process is essentially a recalculation of the checksum that was written to the backup file when it was created in order to test whether the file can produce the exact same checksum. This does not guarantee that the file contents are 100% reliable as Acronis will only include what it reads from your disk drive source, only that the same checksum can be achieved and therefore the file is the same as when written! This is why it is possible to validate a backup for a totally different system where the source data is not available to make any other comparison.
When you explore, navigate, restore etc from within the structure of the backup file, then you are getting a more tactile feel for the integrity of the backup data but short of looking at every file, again it is difficult to guarantee that it could be 100% restored. I am sure that the same is true for all other backup products doing the same activities. The only real measure would be to restore the backup in total to a spare drive.
The rescue media was created using Acronis 2017 for Windows (up to now I was using 2015 with the same issues).
Since over the years I have validated backups using PC's that were not used to create the backup, I assumed Acronis used checksums or some other imbedded indicators to identify the condition of the backup.
You have confirmed what I thought took place and that was the underlying reason why I did not ask for help years ago.
In my opinion, evaluating checksums is a good way of achieving a good vs. unknown indication of the quality of a backup.
Today, I feel validation is one of Acronis' weakest areas in True Image, which is of upmost importance. I would rather have one or two well validated backups a year than 52 or 365 backups that I have little confidence in. I would like to see Acronis provide an option or standalone software package that was robust enough to interrogate the state of a backup file and provide a 99.5% confidence factor that the backup could be relied on in the future. Defaulting to "Backup Failed" is more or less a copout for a better product. Currently, there are likely 1000's of customers who believe they have good backups, until one day they find out they may not. I have been there and done that 20 years ago and do not wish to repeat the situation today. With technology what it was 20 years ago, I understand how a backup may or may not be as good as one thought it was. With fast computers and incredible drive access speeds, I feel there is a responsibility from a leader like Acronis to provide their customers a method for validating backups with nearly 100% confidence. It sounds like the best they have to offer is that we think it is good if it passes, it may be good if it fails, and if you can't recover a backup we told you it failed. I sure hope businesses are not allowing this level of confidence to be implemented on a daily basis in their companies without responsible supervision. I can read the headlines; "We Backed Up the Computers But We Are Never Sure If the System Will Recover If We Need To."
I truely like Acronis and will continue to cautiously use their product. Unless they have already done so, it is time for them to take charge and provide us, their loyal customers, with a more robust product....or maybe not (depending on if this comment passes the validation process).
AF,
Your concerns are well noted. Be advised that this Forum is a user Forum and as such is not visited on a regular basis by Acronis Support staff. Therfore I recommend that you use the Feedback options available, one of which is a link at the top of this page, to submit your concerns directly to Acronis Support. This is the only option to get you issue and concern looked into.
Thank you. Your are a good MVP Volunteer. However, I do not think it is worth my time to submit concerns to Acronis Support. I have been programming since 1976. The one thing I learned over 40 years of computers is that the end user is always at fault and the effort it takes to demonstrate otherwise is too high of a price. Again, that is why, after four or more years of intermittent failed backups, it still is not worth my time or effort to ask for help.
I have used Acronis backup faithfully since 2010 and this is the eighth time I have had a failure and tried to recover using Acronis. ALL 8 times have been a disaster. None worked and I had to do a full re-install to get going again.
Today I started getting something online that said they were Microsoft and wanted me to call a number to fix my computer. Popups started so I forced a shutdown. Now I am trying to recover a backup from 2 days ago and get a "recovery error, failed backup file". I validate when I backup and have done validations on my backups before but I still get corrupted files and cannot recover. I cannot get Acronis to recover even some files much less the complete system?
VERY unhappy with "the world's leading backup software". Not much use to make backups if you cannot recover from them. I have written to support and have not had a response yet. There must be a way to recover some files if not the full system but I can't find any help on the web.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
Joe L.
Joseph,
First welcome to the Forum. Sorry to hear that you have issue with recovery. Since you do not provide much detail on your failure I cannot suggest any action for you to take except to contact support. Recovery is covered in full for support.