Skip to main content

Does an Acronis 2018 Custom Scheme have to be SAVE/SAVE AS to work?

Thread needs solution

Hi ATI 2018 Forum,

Regarding a Disk Image backup, and the Backup Scheme tab, I have a question please:

Does a Custom Scheme have to be "Save As..." button or "Save" button for the scheme to actually work save any changes?

I ask because my weekly disk image "Incremental" job originally had "Create a full version every *3* incremental versions". However, after 1 full, and 2 incremental had already run, I saw I the backup location only had space for two version chains of 1 full and 2 incrementals. So I lowered the job to "Create a full version every *2* incremental versions". I checked today, and much to my dismay, it added a third incremental (even though I changed it to 2 before last weeks second inc ran). Btw, I hit the OK button at the bottom of the job when I changed it from 3 down to 2, so I thought I was done.

I've attached a pic of the Backup Scheme tab.

Thanks for your help.

Regards . . .

Attachment Size
Untitled.gif 142.22 KB
0 Users found this helpful

The answer to your subject question is no.  The Save / Save As option is intended to save your custom settings so that when a new task of the same type would use those same saved settings without having to remember them and enter them manually.

Changing the backup scheme settings such as the number of incrementals while in the midst of creating chains has always been problematic and has been known to have unpredictable results, including resetting the count of incrementals such that your 3 incrementals reduced to 2 would end up with 5, effectively ignoring any existing backups!

The core issue here is in understanding how the Acronis automatic cleanup rules work!

Your option to 'Store no more than 2 recent version chains' actually means that you need to have sufficient free space on your destination storage drive to hold not only those 2 chains (with each having a full plus the configured number of incremental files), but also enough room to hold a further new full backup image. 

The reason for this is that Acronis will only delete the oldest version chain << after >> a new full backup has been created successfully.  This is done to avoid deleting a good backup then hitting a failed backup and leaving the user with nothing to fall back on!

Hi Steve,

Thanks for that great explain of what's going on. The heads-up about "unpredicable results" helps me. Btw, I'm only working with 210GB of backup space, and a Full that's ~62GB and incs that are ~18GB. Currently I see 61+19.7+17.2+14.8+16.6=130GB on the backup disk.

Since v2018 doesn't have the ability to keep the job but delete the files, I'll have to Save the job config first, delete the job (to delete the backups, arg!), then start fresh with simply 1full and forget doing the incs.. That should allow the for three of the ~60GB fulls (ie. the two fulls + space for one full to accomodate the auto delete requirement). So 3x ~60G = ~180GB. That should work for the the available 210GB backup space.

I appreciate you help on this. I'll let you know if any issues.

Regards,

Bret