Skip to main content

ATI 2019: How does Acronis use disk space when backing up?

Thread needs solution

When backing up in a single version scheme does the program immediately begin overwriting the old version on the destination disk?  If not where does the program store the new version until it is ready to overwrite the old version?

I would appreciate any insight into how this works. 

0 Users found this helpful

Gerald, welcome to these User Forums.

My understanding of single version scheme backups is that nothing is deleted until the new backup file has completed successfully after which the old file is immediately removed, with both files residing on the same backup drive temporarily.

Acronis have always take the approach of not deleting any files until a new one is in place, so as to avoid the situation of having no backup at all, i.e. deleting the old then failing to make a new one!

I really hope we can have a option that make Acronis perform the deletion before backup operation. Take myself as an example, one of my backup tasks contains ~1.4TB of data (~1.2TB after compression), that means the destination drive needs to have 1.2TB*versions+∑changes of free space to feed Acronis ☹.

Peter, sorry but when this 'delete before' option has been requested previously, including recently during the ATI 2019 Beta testing program, Acronis have been consistent in denying this on the grounds of not wanting to leave users with no backup file should anything go wrong with the new task run.

You can achieve the desired results by using a small Pre Command batch file for your backup task.  I tested the one shown below during the 2019 testing.

@echo off
sc stop "AcronisActiveProtectionService" > NUL 2>&1
del L:\Test\Downloads*.tib > NUL 2>&1
sc start "AcronisActiveProtectionService" > NUL 2>&1

This would need to be put into a .BAT file, i.e. DeleteBefore.BAT and then selected in the Pre Command options for your backup task, so that this script runs before the backup is made.

The 2 sc lines are needed for ATI 2018 & 2019 if you have Acronis Active Protection active as this will not allow the .tib files to be deleted.

Thanks for providing the script, it'll need further modification to make it not perform deletion before doing an incremental (or differential) backup, for example checking if TASK_inc_bx_sy_v1.tib exists.

And, well, since my new backup SSD is already online doing its job and it have enough space for that, I'll keep the current settings, it would be fine I guess.