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Schedled backups while travelling

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At home, I have a NAS device that I back up to daily on a schedule.  While I travel, the NAS is (obviously) unavailable. True Image dutifully announces daily that the "backup failed". When I try to modify the schedule to turn off the daily backup, it tells me the "network share is unavailable" and "failed to check credentials" and ultimately won't let me change the task schedule.

Is there any way to put a backup task on hold (after you've left the local network) so it doesn't continually try to backup daily during a multi-week trip? I do bring a portable drive and do manual backups, but I'd prefer not to have to delete the scheduled job and recreate it every time I travel.

Ed

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Edward, welcome to these public User Forums.

The options available to you for this issue are as follows:

  1. Turn off the scheduled task before leaving home - you can click in the main ATI GUI at the bottom where it says: Next backup: with a date/time which will take you to the Schedule page for the selected backup task, then set the task to be Not Scheduled while you are away.
     
  2. Use a small Pre Command batch file to test for your NAS being available on the Advanced Options page for your backup task, and abort the scheduled task if the check fails.
    Note: you will also need to turn off the Advanced Options > Error Handling settings to stop the task keep retrying when the check fails!
     
  3. The third option, is to not use the Acronis Scheduler for your backup task and use the Windows Task Scheduler instead to launch the backup each day, where you will be able to open the Task Scheduler and disable the task when away from home!
    For this method you will need to still have a small Windows Batch file which launches the backup task.

I have been using the third option for some of my backup tasks over the past 2 weeks while I was away from home travelling.

I would request that you submit Feedback to Acronis using the tool provided in the ATI GUI Help (?) page to add your voice for a change to accommodate this requirement.

Pre Command:  CheckIP.BAT

@echo off
:: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
:: ----- The baseIP should be set to the local device IP address to be checked for -----
:: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

set baseIP=192.168.0.29

:: Checking for active baseIP address on local network
:: errorlevel 0 = IP found / 1 = IP not found.

ping -n 1 -l 1 %baseIP% > nul
if %errorlevel%==1 exit /b 1
@echo %baseIP% found active on network!
:: Task Scheduler lines can be added here
exit /b 0

The above could be combined with the following lines and used with the Windows Task Scheduler to launch your scheduled task in that way.

Task Scheduler batch file:

@echo off
set ATI="C:\Program Files (x86)\Acronis\TrueImageHome\TrueImageLauncher.exe"
set task1=2BF45C62-B17B-4816-B470-9825BDCDC572

@echo Launching ATI background task
%ATI%
timeout /t 60
%ATI% /script:%task1%
exit /b 0

To use the above, you need to identify the correct script ID for your backup task to replace the string shown above for 'set task1=

To find this ID, open the C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Scripts folder where you will see files using this type of file name with a file extension of .tib.tis - these are XML text files and should not be altered.  Open these one at a time in a text editor such as Notepad and look for your backup task name near the top of the file shown as <display> task_name </display> and the Task ID is show above this as <uuid> task_ID </uuid>.

In the Windows Task Scheduler, you need to call the batch file using the format shown in my screen image.

2018-11-19 Task Scheduler.png

Action:  cmd /c start "" "E:\LaunchATITask.bat"  where you need to change the final part to point to where your own batch file is to be found and the name of the batch file.

Steve: thank you for your detailed and well-written reply. I will pursue your remedies, but do you have any idea why Acronis cannot include a simple "disable" feature to a given backup task in the GUI?

I don't get why you can't just right-click on a backup task and mark it as "on hold" or "paused" or something similar? Seems simple to this humble user ...

Edward, I agree that there should be better options provided within the application to remove the need for this type of solution to an easily fixable issue!  I can only suggest using the Feedback tool in the GUI to make your views known directly to Acronis.

Noted the feedback, thank you. :)