Need help on configuration of a backup

B, the key point about automatic cleanup rules is that they are only applied after a new full backup has been created but there is a significant difference between the two options.

If you use 'Store no more than X recent versions / version chains' then automatic cleanup is performed as soon as the X+1 new full backup has been created.

If you use 'Delete versions / version chains older than X days' then those X days only start counting from the day when the new full backup has been created (so more files may continue to be created before anything is deleted!).

Now the backup folder on my NAS is 12,4Tb with only 4 files

DESKTOP-name.tibx 3,23Tb
DESKTOP-name-001.tibx 3,21Tb
DESKTOP-name-002.tibx 3,20Tb
DESKTOP-name-003.tibx 2,76Tb

1) My first question is is that normal that the files are 3,23 Tb when I make a backup of a 1Tb drive ?

Is that due to the incremental backup ? 

What exactly is included in your 1TB SSD backup source data?

I would not normally expect an incremental backup to be so large unless a large volume of changed data is involved in-between each run of the backup task.  Incremental should only backup data that has changed since the previous backup was created, so is normally a lot smaller than the original first full backup run.

The first file in the list is because you elected to not delete that first full backup, which in this case also includes the first set of incremental backups too.

At this point with only 1TB free space available on your NAS destination, you need to use the Clean up versions tool for this backup task and do some manual pruning of the older backup chains or else your backup task will fail due to lack of free space!

Next, change the automatic cleanup method from 183 days to use 'Store no more than 2 recent version chains' as there is no way you could store the volume of data on your NAS if the old option is kept.

From what you say, each .tibx file would contain 1 Full plus 5 increments.

First question... is this a Disk/Partition backup of your C: drive, or is it an Entire PC backup? If Entire PC, could there be any other disk involved.

Second, check the exclusions. Make sure the things like pagefile.sys, swapfile.sys, $Recycle.bin, System Volume Information, etc. are excluded. Also excluding your temp folders is a good idea. Including these things in a backup will guarantee very large increments.

Since this is a daily backup, you should have a new .tibx every six days. Thus with your 183 day cleanup you could expect to have 30 or so .tibx files. I doubt you have a 100TB backup.

Best to follow Steve's advice about using number of chains to keep for the cleanup rules.

Steve Smith wrote:

B, the key point about automatic cleanup rules is that they are only applied after a new full backup has been created but there is a significant difference between the two options.

If you use 'Store no more than X recent versions / version chains' then automatic cleanup is performed as soon as the X+1 new full backup has been created.

If you use 'Delete versions / version chains older than X days' then those X days only start counting from the day when the new full backup has been created (so more files may continue to be created before anything is deleted!).

 So do you suggest I switch to "store no more of x recent version chains "? Which would be a good number ? 

Steve Smith wrote:

What exactly is included in your 1TB SSD backup source data?

I would not normally expect an incremental backup to be so large unless a large volume of changed data is involved in-between each run of the backup task.  Incremental should only backup data that has changed since the previous backup was created, so is normally a lot smaller than the original first full backup run.

 

I guess I made a mistake a also save my entire computer including a 3.5 drive (see at the end answer to BrunoC) 

Steve Smith wrote:

At this point with only 1TB free space available on your NAS destination, you need to use the Clean up versions tool for this backup task and do some manual pruning of the older backup chains or else your backup task will fail due to lack of free space!

Next, change the automatic cleanup method from 183 days to use 'Store no more than 2 recent version chains' as there is no way you could store the volume of data on your NAS if the old option is kept.

When I open Clean up version tool  what should I delete ? Not sure. I have some full and incremental

Or could I delete manualy the 3.5 drive from Explorer when browsing the tibx file ?

Otherwise if it's too complicated maybe I could delete everything and repeat the process excluding my 3.5 drive this time (could keep the first backup just in case).

BrunoC wrote:
From what you say, each .tibx file would contain 1 Full plus 5 increments.

First question... is this a Disk/Partition backup of your C: drive, or is it an Entire PC backup? If Entire PC, could there be any other disk involved.

Second, check the exclusions. Make sure the things like pagefile.sys, swapfile.sys, $Recycle.bin, System Volume Information, etc. are excluded. Also excluding your temp folders is a good idea. Including these things in a backup will guarantee very large increments.

Since this is a daily backup, you should have a new .tibx every six days. Thus with your 183 day cleanup you could expect to have 30 or so .tibx files. I doubt you have a 100TB backup.

Best to follow Steve's advice about using number of chains to keep for the cleanup rules.

Thanks for that comment Bruno, I double clicked on one of the files and realised the entire PC was backed up including another 3.5 drive ! 

So that explains it :)

Is there a way I can delete it from within Acronis and saving only C drive ? 

To avoid that in the future should I add the drive to the exclusions or is this somwhere else in the configuration ?

I see also a NTFS which is the Recovery Partition 512MB and EFI System Partition 100Mb
I also should note that for now my SSD drive has 600Go free space (since I use mostly the 3.5 for data)

When I click on the first file I see 17 dates have been backed up:

May 23 24 25 25
June 7 9
July 05 09 10 11
Aug 08 09
Sep 03 04 05 06 07 

As for pagefile.sys, swapfile.sys, $Recycle.bin, System Volume Information, yes they are excluded.

Thanks both for your quick answers that helped a lot !

B.

B.

Sounds like what you should do is just create a new backup task. First thing is to select Change Source and select the Disk/Partition backup. Select all the partitions of the C: drive only.

As for the old backup job... first turn off scheduling so it won't run again. Then you should be able to manually get rid of older versions. In the Backup section, click the down arrow icon next to the backup task and then click Clean up versions. This should bring up a box allowing you to select old backup files to delete.

Once you are comfortable with your new backup job you could go back and completely remove the old one.

Thanks @BrunoC for that answer.

I will follow your advice and create a new backup job.

Any hint on the configuration.

As I said right now I have

Schedule: once a day

Backup method: incremental

Create a full version after 5 incremental versions

Old version cleanup rules, delete version chains older than 183 days

Do not delete the first version of the backup: ticked

Backup splitting : automatic

Validation: No

Performance: Operation priority : Low

Date upload speed: Maximum

Snapshot for backup : VS

1) Full version after 5 incremental (is that a good rule ?) Should I put 6 ?
2) Should I change the cleanup rule to "store no more of x recent version chains "? I think I was recommended to keep 3 versions before...
3) Any other comment on the configuration ? Should I validate ?

 4) As for the oldbackup job,  is there a way I can get delete the 3.5 drive backup or is it "stuck" inside the .tibx file ?

5) When I use the cleanup version tool and I try to delete an incremental it ticks all the versions including the full version. It seems is not possible to delete just some incrementals to leave a full backup and that they are dependent versions.

I found info here https://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/documentation/ATI2020/index.html#…

Is there a way to prevent this on future backup scheme ?

Thanks again for your feedback

First question: do you really need to keep the first version for the backup?  Are you likely to want to revert back to that specific point in time?  (I never use this option personally!).

Next question: do you need to do a daily incremental backup for this task?  Does you data change significantly on a daily basis?  Assuming that doing a daily incremental is appropriate, then with the use of .tibx files where the incrementals are consolidated automatically into the same initial full backup file, then you could increase the number of incrementals before creating a new full chain.  I have been running a backup task with 30 daily incrementals that is doing a new full backup each month rather than each week.

On my PC, my initial full backup of my 500GB SSD is approximately 115GB and after adding in 30 incremental backups, it is about 150GB in size.

I am using 'Store no more than 2 recent version chains' for that task which then requires around 420GB space on my destination drive to allow automatic cleanup to work correctly without needing any manual intervention.

With regards to your original backup task for 'Entire PC', I would suggest opening the Clean up versions tool then deleting the oldest initial backup chain to free up the space held by that chain, then running the new backup task to get it established before deleting more of the older files.

Once a new chain has been started, then Acronis no longer allow incremental backups for previous chains to be removed, again the whole chain has to be deleted.

Note: you cannot delete individual drives contained in a backup image / chain - these files are read-only files and can only be deleted in full.

Thanks @Steve Smith for your answer. I did the Clean Up Part and left only 1 full with its incremental.

Should be a total of 3.7 Tb (because has also my 3.5 drive in it)

Now what is strange is that on my NAS I still have 4 tibx files for a total 9.2 Tb

Did I miss something ? 

Should I delete the whole backup and start again ?

I have now 4Tb free when I used to have 700Gb on NAS volume.

Questions: 1) do you use the validate option ?

2) Do you add other exclusions then the one by default ?

Note: you cannot delete individual drives contained in a backup image / chain - these files are read-only files and can only be deleted in full.

Thanks for that answer, could be a cool feature for newer versions of the software if that could ever be possible :) 

Now what is strange is that on my NAS I still have 4 tibx files for a total 9.2 Tb

Do those 4 tibx files match those shown in the Clean up versions tool for the task in the GUI?

If there are any orphan files on the NAS that are not shown in the GUI, then I would suggest deleting them providing that they are for the same task / have the same root name.

I very rarely use validation and never as part of any backup task.  Validation can only show that the backup file remains unchanged from the time when it was created on disk.  It does not guarantee that the same file will result in a successful recovery or that the backup operation didn't include corrupt files or malware etc!

For the most part I tend to keep to the default exclusions for my main OS disk drive backups. For my data drive backup, then I do add exclusions for specific folders such as those holding my VMware and Hyper-V virtual machines used for testing which I use a synchronisation program to mirror to a backup drive separately.

Hello Steve,

I just ended a first backup of my SSD drive. The total of this 1 file is now 162Gb :P

I followed your rules so:

I have been running a backup task with 30 daily incrementals that is doing a new full backup each month rather than each week.

(...)

I am using 'Store no more than 2 recent version chains' for that task which then requires around 420GB space on my destination drive to allow automatic cleanup to work correctly without needing any manual intervention.

When I open Clean Up tool on my previous backup

It says  Recent: 1 Full of 3.7Tb and 5 incrementals of 22.9Gb 3.5Gb 5.4Gb 4.6GB 4.3GB so total is still 3.7Tb

When I open Explorer the folder is 9.2Tb the first file is 12Ko then I have 2 files of 3.2Tb and a file of 2.78Tb 

If I open the 3 of them they have folders with the same dates from the clean up tool which are: 

Sep 04 ; sep 03 ; Sep 06 ;Sep 05 ; Aug 21 ; Sep 07

So I don't know what I can do now :(

B.

Edit: I just thought of something: I will backup the 3.5 drive in another place and will delete the whole folder, how about that :P

But still wonder why this difference in size after cleaning up :/

You shouldn't need to delete the whole folder if you just delete the old backup completely via the Clean up versions tool.

The way the new .tibx file format works means that each file you open, whether it be 12KB or 3TB will all show exactly the same content because this is obtained from the metadata for the backup task.