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Cannot access old backups?

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I am using Acronis TrueImage 2020 to perform regular backups to an external (USB) hard drive every week. When I run out of space on that external hard drive, I simply go in with Windows Explorer and delete the oldest versions to make more space.  (Window 10).

But recently when I go in with Windows Explorer, when I go to delete an old backup file, it says I don't have permissions to do that?? I am the only user on this laptop, I am an administrator on it, running Explorer in "run as administrator" does not help this situation.

I have Googled the error message, and tried all things suggested in various places like turning off Webroot and Malwarebytes, setting permissions, etc, but even after setting "full control for everyone", I still cannot delete or access those old backup files.

This appears to be an Acronis issue. How can this be resolved or should I seek another backup solution outside of Acronis TrueImage?

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Jon, there are a couple of points to make here from your opening post.

  1. You should not be deleting unwanted old backups by using Windows Explorer.  This will break the way that ATI works because it does not update the information that ATI holds in its own internal database, and will lead to unwanted error messages.
    This is even more important with ATI 2020 because of the change to using .tibx backup files where there are more dependencies between files.
     
  2. ATI 2018 and later versions also introduced the Acronis Active Protection feature which prevents files related to ATI from being deleted by ransomware and also gives the issue you have mentioned with not being able to delete files.

ATI 2020 also brings a new 'Clean up versions' tool to better manage your backup files and be able to delete them safely without causing issues with the database or AAP.  This tool can be found in the main ATI GUI as an additional option for each backup task by clicking on the caret (V) to the right of the task name.

The recommended method of managing backups is to use the 'Automatic cleanup' rules available on the Backup Scheme options page for each task, which removes the need to have to constantly check free space etc.

I personally use the Automatic cleanup - 'Store no more than 2 recent version chains' for most of my backup tasks, where each version chain creates a Full backup followed by 5 or 6 incremental backups, so covers a reasonable period of time for any recovery.  When a 3rd chain is started with a new full backup file, the oldest chain gets deleted automatically.  You can set the value that works for you for the number of chains to be stored.