TI Can't see backup drive but it's there!
But it's there! I can even get to it inside the TI 2018 interface, but that big red X won't go away, so I can't kick it off manually. And if it kicks off automatically later, per my schedule, it fails saying it can't find the backup drive.Is there anything I can do to make it see the backup? I've rebooted several times, nothing helps so far. It's been working uneventfully for a very long time but the last backup I show is dated 2/13, going on a month now.
TIA
Elaine
Charlotte NC
Elaine, could you take a screenshot and post - I'm not 100% what the issue is you're experiencing. It sounds like Ti is saying that either your source or destination drive is not available, but you see it fine in Windows File Explorer?
This can happen if the drive disk signature has changed which can occur if it has been resized (disk management or a partition software), if you've gone through a major Windows 10 upgrade lately (it installs a new OS and a new Windows recovery partition which changes the disk partition layout and sizes). It could also potentially occur if your external drive letter volume changed for some reason. Windows is known to do this if you have one drive set to be a specific letter (let's say D:) and another drive also set to be D:. When one is only plugged in at a time, they will both be D: in those instances. But if they get plugged in at the same time, then one has to be a different letter and would take on the next one available in the alphabet and will remain that letter from then on.
Long story short, something likely changed on the drive in the way it displays itself to Acronis. The easiest solution, usually, is to just re-pick the source and destination in your backup job, even if it appears to be exactly the same, just do it to update Acronis with whatever changed on the drive, and it should hopefully start backing up again.
If that doesn't do the trick, I'd suggest you download and run the MVP logviewer (linked in my signature below) and look for information in the log failures as to why the backup failed. You can post it here if you want some extra eyes on it too.
Interestingly, at least to me :) when I started it up to get the screenshots, I decided to try it one more time. It was still showing the errors, but it actually kicked off normally! I would have thought that as soon as it got a valid (to it :) location, it would have "reverted" to the normal state, telling me it recognized the drive as other software does. Not so (a suggestion for the developers?). I'm attaching the screenshots anyway, if only to show I wasn't imagining it :) :) It's running normally as I type. Still don't understand why it periodically doesn't see it, as nothing even remotely relating to your points above has changed on my end, but I will grab the log viewer for future reference, thanks.
elaine
The icons represent the last information. The red x will show if the backup last failed and goes away when the next good back is run.
Not sure in your case. Typically, as long as the drive is listed in windows, and then you launch Acronis, it will run.
USB drives can spin down for power management based in their internal firmware or windows power saving features - which can also behave differently on portable systems that can run in battery or AC power.
The easiest troubleshooting is to close Acronis and restart after verifying windows sees the drive first (actually use file explorer to navigate it) which may wake it up if it is sleeping.
And, just in case, will not hurt to re-pick it as the source or destination (as appropriate) just to be sure.
I did pretty much all of the steps you suggested, including selecting the drive multiple times, before it "stuck". In any event, it's working again, so I will slink back into the shadows :) :) Thanks!
elaine
I suppose that's good news. Hopefully it remains that way from now on too!
Dang. Well, it failed again, so I went in and re-selected the backup drive and it worked uneventfully. Weird.
I can live with this if I have to, but I sure would like to know why it's not holding the drive.
elaine
It's been a while now, and it continues to consistently fail every single time it kicks off per the schedule, then works uneventfully every single time when I go back in, locate the external drive yet again. I just ran a log view against the one that most recently failed, and it's pretty simple:
5/14/2019 11:00:02 PM: Backup reserve copy attributes: format tib; need_reserve_backup_copy false;
5/14/2019 11:00:02 PM: Operation My C Drive started by schedule.
5/14/2019 11:00:05 PM: Backup reserve copy attributes: format tib; need_reserve_backup_copy false;
5/14/2019 11:00:05 PM: Operation: Backup
5/14/2019 11:00:05 PM: Priority changed to Low.
5/14/2019 11:00:08 PM: Error 0xb0428: The backup location was not found on the destination drive. Make sure the correct storage device is connected to the computer.
5/14/2019 11:00:08 PM: Error 0x13c0005: Operation has completed with errors.
Start: 5/14/2019 11:00:02 PM
Stop: 5/14/2019 11:00:08 PM
Total Time: 00:00:06
It just says it can't find the "location on the destination drive". Duh. And as noted it IS there, H:\backups, a top level subfolder, and I can always see it in Windows Explorer. Given it runs a bit late in the evening, by design, I don't know if it can see it before it runs, but even still, how can a drive simply "disappear" to Acronis when Windows sees it just fine? What could make it "lose" the drive if it's otherwise there to Windows? As noted before, I've had Acronis and this drive for more than a few years now, and it WAS working uneventfully for years. I'm on a now 3 yo network given a move to another state, but I'm pretty sure this was working when I first moved here in late 2016.
<sigh>
elaine
Elaine, is this always the exact same backup drive used for your scheduled backup each time?
And does it always get given the exact same drive letter each time?
Issues like this are normally seen when users are rotating backup drives, even when each drive is given the same drive letter.
Acronis looks at the unique drive identifier in older versions to identify each drive, and in more recent versions, have switched to looking at the partition unique identifier on the drive. If either of these identifiers are changing, it would suggest a different drive is present, hence the error message being thrown.
The way that you can check if the identifier is changing is as follows:
Run the command msinfo32 in Windows, then expand Components > Storage > Drives and look for your backup drive in the list then find the Volume Serial Number which is the last line shown for the drive.
So from the above, my drive VSN = F02806EA for my L: external drive used for one of my backup tasks.
Next, navigate to C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Scripts and find the script .tib.tis file that relates to your backup task. You can open these files in Notepad and look near the top of the file for the name of your task.
Scroll down through the XML data flows in the file (do not make any changes!), then look for the <volumes_locations> section, which will also have the drive path where your backup data is to be stored.
Note that in the lines shown in this section, there is a reference to partition_id and after this there are lines starting with: (in my example).
"\local\hd_sign(54414448)\part_sn(F02806EAB8F02840)start(4194304)"
uri="L:\Test\WINPE_full_b2_s1_v1.tib" volume_id="557086657" />
I have highlighted / underlined the first part of the \part_sn(.... information as this is the VSN found earlier from msinfo32 report to identify the specific backup drive, and which has to match else the backup will report the error you are seeing!
Acronis records the same VSN information for each backup .tib file created for the task, hence there are lines for the initial Full and subsequent Incremental backup files, plus a generic line to be used for the next backup run.
It is indeed the exact same drive, I only have the one. And yes, I understand about rotating backup drives, but it's not applicable here. There's no way it *should* be changing, to my knowledge at least.
Looking in the .tis file, I don't have a reference for "partition_id" where you show it, but there is a "device_instance_id" which may or may not be the same thing, not sure, but it's part of the "<volume_location device_instance_id=" tag.The VID showing in them is NOT the same as what I see in MSInfo, interestingly. From this tis::
<volume_location device_instance_id="STORAGE\VOLUME\{07B632E6-BBD4-11E7-8D97-28B2BDD78F6F}#0000000000100000" uri="H:\Backups\My C Drive_inc_b1_s6_v1.tib" volume_id="1094779282" />
And MSInfo shows VSN is 1843759F. There is NO reference to this value in the entire .tis file, which is odd. I do see this, tho:
<disk_source has_asz_backup="true" sector_by_sector_backup="false" sector_by_sector_backup_unallocated="false">
<holder strid="\local\hd_sign(2E7627AF)\part_sn(4A58AEF72A4A58E5)start(2048)" />
<holder strid="\local\hd_sign(2E7627AF)\part_sn(7A5DF0F8707A5E2E)start(1026048)" />
All in all, I'm beginning to think I should just kill all these backups, kill every reference to Acronis and reinstall from scratch, as it looks like there's some stuff in the config that just don't look right, as best as I can tell. And if I try to tweak it I'm sure I'll mess it up even more :)
elaine
Elaine, how is your backup drive connected here?
Just a regular USB.
Could it be the backup is running after waking up from standby automatically? If so, I'm wondering if the backup is starting, but the drive is not fully powered up from standby yet.
As a test, you could either extend the delay start time to one minute in the app settings, or, you could create a pre script that pings the system IP for say, 20 seconds which would hopefully give enough extra time for the USB drive to finish waking up with the system.
>Could it be the backup is running after waking up from standby automatically? If so, I'm wondering if the backup is starting, but the drive is not fully powered up from standby yet.
Could very well be, but if so, it wasn't anything *I* did, explicitly anyway. I don't even know how to affect that in Windows 10 :(
>As a test, you could either extend the delay start time to one minute in the app settings, or, you could create a pre script that pings the system IP for say, 20 seconds which would hopefully give enough extra time for the USB drive to finish waking up with the system.
I did just notice there is a setting that tells it to run when the destination is available, never really noticed that before, frankly. It was unchecked, so I went ahead and checked it just in case. Other than this, where is the setting to delay start time in the settings? I'm not seeing that anywhere (TI 2018)
Older pic, but the one above the highlighted option. "Run missed operations at the system startup with delay." Try with a delay of 1 or 2 minutes. And make sure the top option is not selected.
I have that option, but it's slightly different, "Run when the current destination device is attached". And yes, that's the one I did set earlier today. Never noticed that before :) I did have the one above it checked, but with 0 minutes, obviously to no avail. I changed that to 5 mins, "just because" :)
Thanks for pointing me at it!
elaine