Can't open full or incremental TIB files post clean Windows 10 install- need help
I am having trouble opening my full and incremental .TIB backup files after doing a full reset and clean reinstall of Windows 10 on my HP desktop. I didn't realize i needed to save out a copy of the backup settings transfer before wiping my hard drive. I had been using Acronis True Image for Western Digital using my MyBook drive as the backup drive. When I went and reinstalled ATI for WD, it would not open any of the past incremental or full backup files. I went through all the forum topics i could find, downloaded ATI 2021 and went so far as to create and burn the Rescue Media boot CD, but unfortunately, when you run Acronis True Image though that, it won't allow you to select individual folders and files, stating I need to using Acronis Cloud or something to that effect. This is what I am trying to do- I just want to be able to open those TIB files and get my Music and Documents, but when I try to mount any of the files, Acronis appears to be doing just that, showing a brief activity window of a partition being mounted and then there's nothing there. Opening the TIB files directly through windows explorer just hangs, and right clicking any file to validate the file through ATI doesn't do anything either.
Am I totally screwed here or is there anything else I can try?
Oops, I meant Windows 10, it was a windows 10 clean install. I have corrected up above.
-Alex
Alex, how are you attempting to open your backup files here?
You should be able to double-click in Explorer on any .tib or .tibx file and be able to navigate through the contents in that way.
Otherwise, you need to use the 'Add existing backup' option that can be found hidden behind the (v) caret to the right of the normal '+ Add backup' option, then navigate to the location where the files and stored then select the most recent file for each backup set of files.
Hi Steve,
Alex, the size of your .tib file at around 1.7TB is certainly going to be a factor here and this will be complicated further if your PC is constrained by limited free space and/or low memory space.
My first suggestion would be to ask if you have access to any other PC's that you could try the same operation with? If you do, then installing a 30-day trial of ATI 2021 on that other PC would be the way to test this.
You shouldn't need to take the .tib files to a recovery service if they are all 'good', i.e. not corrupted or damaged etc.
The one key learning lesson for this scenario is that you really should look to split your backups so that you limit the size of the backup archive files to one that is manageable! I have no backups that exceed 100GB in size on any of my systems!
Good points indeed. and I will definitely make the backups smaller should I be successful in retrieving the backups. Last night I let the file explorer load the full backup tib all nigh and this morning was pleasantly surprise to see that it was showing a directory but I stlil could not double click on any top folders to access the files. It looks like during the process ATI launched and was trying to add all the incremental backups to the backup history. Now, when I click on Activity in the middle, I can actually see all the incrementals and the dates they were created and ran- something I Could not see before. So for now while I am at work I am going to let the full file in explorer keep loading up, if this si something it is doing, and see if it will eventally let me double click on the Users file so I can once again access the docs I thought I had lost. I am not sure how acronis wll with the incremental files, it those would be something I just open up in file explorer and retrieve myself? I have a new 6TB external drive coming today, so I am hoping if the large, full tib file will finally open all the way, I can move it on over to the new external drive, and from there figure out how to retrieve any incremental data in the files saved monthly from March - July. Things are definitely looking a lot better than they were this last weekend, but I still wonder just what my computer is doing in the background with explorer. I will try to get another screen shot if it should launch ATI again by itself.
Just to update, I’ve made progress with ATI 2021 using your advice to find the backup files. The full backup was recovered, but I’m having some issues I’ve seen others report when trying to load the incremental to recover. While loading and calculating, the system freezes and it’s the same service (I’m not at home so I.can’t remember the name) that stops in the event viewer logs then my system is completed locked up. I even tried cleaning up and reinstalling ATI but I got the same results. These incrementals not critical but would be nice to recover to make sure all my data was retained. Can this be solved? I try to shut any process down that I don’t need while attempting the recovery.
Alex, the process to restore any incremental backup is to always start by selecting the most recent or relevant incremental and Acronis will walk backwards through the incremental chain to recover all the data including the initial full backup file contents.
If you start with the initial full backup file and then try to so forwards with the incremental files that followed this, you are both wasting your time and adding stress to the target disk drive. The first action of any disk / partition recovery is to wipe the target disk, so each recovery performed in this sequence wipes all the data from the previous one!
Where the size of data being recovered is very large, then you need to exercise lots of patience and let the process continue past any apparent freeze points.
Thanks again for this information, as I had used the add existing backup and wasn’t sure that ATI would know how to pull and extract everything since I hadn’t saved the original backup plan file when I reinstalled windows. But this is great if ATI knows to pull from the incrementals and get everything back. Apparently a lot of files on my music folder had issues as I kept getting the retry/ignore prompt for this folder and no others. I will give it another tonight thanks Steve.