Acronis not deleting old backups
The setting on my Acronis backup sceme show "Store no more than 3 recent version chains". The drive storing the chains now shows I have 5 now and I'm worried about disc space.
Any advice or help please?
Steve, just as a additional bit of information, before I had the recent problem and had to have an Acronis back up reinstalled, everything was OK and after 3 "chains", the system always removed older ones.
I'll try and get the information you've asked for but I doubt very much I'll be capable of doing it. Thanks for the help anyway.
Will it be OK to manually delete stored "chains" from the disc where my backups are stored?
Acronis backs up my entire C drive in the following way which I believe is Incremental. Monday - Full Back Up, Weds - Fri and Sunday, incremental back ups of the same drive.
Mike, ATI should delete the oldest version chain after the 4th Full backup image file is created successfully per your cleanup rules in the image posted.
If you have more than 4 full image files then with ATI 2018 you don't have the option that was introduced in ATI 2019 & later to use the new 'Clean up versions' tool to remove unwanted files, so you are left with doing this via Explorer.
If you have Acronis Active Protection enabled, then you will need to turn this off first, before deleting unwanted .tib files.
After doing such deletes, you should then do a Validation of the Backup task owning those deleted files. The reason for this is that deleting files in Explorer still leaves information about those files in the internal Acronis database files, and Validation will help clean up that information by presenting an error pop-up for each deleted file found. Choose Ignore if offered else Cancel for the pop-up error windows until Validation finishes.
If you continue to see this issue, then consider doing a Repair Install of ATI 2018 as per KB 60915: Acronis True Image: repairing program settings steps.
Apologies Steve but all that's a bit new to me. The image below shows what I think is 8 Full back up on the disc.
Mike, looking at your file list, it looks like you have been selective in manually deleting old files and this may be at the heart of the issue here!
Your Backup Scheme settings do not match the files you have present on your drive.
E.g. You have the option 'Do not delete the first version of the backup' un-ticked and yet you have a full backup with _b25_ shown in the list, which while it is not the first version, is months earlier than the next _b84_ full backup.
Next, both the _b25_ and _b86_ backups do not have any associated _inc_ files for these chain numbers, so don't match the other files in the listing which all have 3 inc files.
When trying to do the next manual cleanup, I would recommend deleting all files in this backup sequence from _b25_ up to (and including) all the _b87_files, so that you are left with just the b88, b89, and latest b90 version chains. Hopefully, this will then allow the cleanup to operate when the next Full for the b91 chain is created, and this will delete the b88 chain.
Thanks for the reply Steve.
Just to confirm, no files have been manually deleted from that disc at all. That was why I asked if it was OK to do it. As far as I'm aware, everything on there has been done by ATI. The disc was with the company that reinstalled the Acronis back up for me but I can't why they would delete any files.
It was the b85 Full back up that the company restored for me.
Mike, I would still give the same recommendation as above unless you want to go for a clean break from this old backup task and start again with a new backup task?
When deleting files manually, you should always perform a Validation after'wards in order to reconcile information held in the Acronis database files.
If you would like to make a clean start, then do the following:
- Select your current backup task in the main ATI GUI, then click on the caret to the right side and select the option to 'Clone settings' for the task. This will create a duplicate task using the same name but prefixed by (1).
- Leave the duplicate cloned task alone at this point.
- Next, for the original backup task, click on the Delete option from the menu, then on the option to Delete everything from the pop-up that is shown. This will remove all files known for that task from your backup task.
- Using Explorer, check the backup drive to see if there are any remaining files for the task that were not deleted? If there are, delete them too.
- Now that the old task and files are purged, select the new duplicated cloned task.
- Use the task menu option to Rename the task as you want it, i.e. remove the (1) prefix.
- Next, go through the task settings, i.e. check that the Source, Destination & Options settings are as you expect, then if all is ok, click on the Back up now button to run the task.
Thanks for the help and advice Steve. I'll have a go at the option in your last reply.