Skip to main content

Backup fails when one of two external hard drives is not connected.

Thread needs solution

Hi everybody.

 

On one computer, I want to backup data every day, one day on a "first" external hard drive, one day on a second one.

A specific letter is assigned to each drive, Y for "Drive Y", Z for "Drive Z".

The backup on drive Y is scheduled at 20h00mn every day.

The backup on drive Z is schduled at 20h01mn (necessary ?) every day.

For both backups, the option "do not execute if drive is not attached" is enabled.

The option "Execute the missed backup" is not activated.

 

The problem is that when drive Y is not attached, the backup on this drive fails, and the backup on drive Z is set to "Queued", until the PC stops with a third backup (at 22h00mn).

The problem is not the same when drive Y is attached because the backup on this drive is scheduled before the one on drive Z.

 

I ran VSS Doctor, the report is joined.

 

This type of backup on two different devices is OK on an other PC and with two USB sticks.

 

Can you please help me ?

 

Thanks.

 

Stéphane

 

 

 

0 Users found this helpful

Stéphane, you may need to consider a slightly different approach for this issue with backing up to multiple drives.

One option is to use a Weekly schedule and select alternating days for each backup task.

So, one task would run on Tuesday, Thursday & Saturday, and the other task on Monday, Wednesday & Friday when the second backup drive is connected.

The alternative approach, if keeping your current schedule, is to use a Pre Command to check for if the backup drive is connected and fail the task if not.

The Pre-command would be a small Windows batch script that does a simple check for the drive.

Example: CheckDriveY.bat

echo off
if not exist Y:\ goto nodrive
exit /b 0

:nodrive
exit /b 1

You could change Y:\ to Z:\ in the script for a second CheckDriveZ.bat script.

Some further screen shots for using a Pre Command script showing it working / failing (when the drive is not found) and how the Advanced > Error handing options need to be changed to stop the task just retrying when the Pre Command fails due to no drive found.

Hi Steve.

 

One more time, you help me :-)

 

I will test what you wrote.

 

But one question :

Using a pre command to test if the drive is attached or not : isn't it what the "do not execute if device is not attached" option should do ?

 

Best regards.

 

Stéphane

Hi Steve again :-)

 

I've tried your solution, on a PC with Acronis 2019.

It works ;-)

But, I've tried without a pre-command, just with the "Do not show messages ..." option enable.

It works too !

Note that Acronis True Image 2019 does not show the "Do not execute if device is not attached" option, if the device is a hard drive. ATI shows the option if it's an USB stick only.

I will try this setup this evening.

I will tell you if it's works with ATI 2018.

 

Best regards.

 

Stéphane

 

 

Hi everybody.

 

Yesterday, I did some tests on the PC with ATI 2018.

Although the "Repeat attempt if a backup fails" option was desable, each time I ran the backup, the backup made 5 attempts before stopping.

But it was not a problem. The backup on the Z drive started right after.

 

So today, I rewrote the backup task on drive Y.

I confirm that with ATI 2018, the " "do not execute if device is not attached" option is available even if the device is a hard drive ...

 

Tomorrow, I'll see if ATI retries the backup on drive Y (the drive will not be attached).

 

Best regards.

 

Stéphane