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Problems not questions yes

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Questions from a senior

    I have tried using 2019 and have had very good results, but switching to "21" has left me in the dark on certain things.  I've been putting off writing this for many a week for the fear of appearing too dumb.
    First of all I only use the program once a month on the first.  I know there are better ways but it sems to serve the purpose I want.
I am completely happy reinstalling Windows to my SSD drive and then update my favorites and Roboform which is fine by me.
    As of now I am trying to decide between ATI and Macrium Reflect.  MR has a free edition (big advantage MR), but the one time I tried to to reinstall Windows with it, it didn't go right. (much bigger advantage ATI).  Luckily I had a boot copy of 19 on disk.
    I found out that the difference tween the tib and tibx is tween 19 and 21 and the new way 21 writes the saves, which is nice because of the reduction in size.  Whether 21 can use the 19's saves is of no concern to me as long as my latest tibx is correct
   When I do a backup I do a FULL backup of my Windows C: SSD drive so I presume that each save would reinstall Windows to to the same C: if so noted.
    On validation I check the first box which in turn marks off the first dot in the circle, I hope thats right.  In my 19 copy there was one check box only.
    Another question is there a right way to delete past saves?  I got in trouble with 19 by not doing it with the options, advanced setting.
     Hold on last question
       the saves on my external drive are
         Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB_full_b1_63,000,000
                                              19             full_b2_54,000,000
                                              21            EMT_03B6Q.tibx_______45,616,000
                                              21            EMT_03B6Q-0001.tibx__47,283,000
                                              21            EMT_03B6Q-1_________47,238,000
                           
    I know the first two are from 19 and the last three from 21 but I did each using the full backup method.  Read somewhere in the files that the 0001 was because of a incramental or diferential scheme. ?
    I know the first and third from 21 were done without the check in the box for exclusions so why if it did copy the exclusions why was the file size smaller?
   Many thanks to those who read and any answers appreciated

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Billy, to try to answer some of the points raised above.

First, all later versions of ATI are backwards compatible with the files created by their earlier versions, so ATI 2021 can work with any files created by 2019.  See the link in my signature that gives more information about backwards compatibility.

Next, the new .tibx file format was introduced by ATI 2020 and continued in ATI 2021 but is only used by new Disks & Partitions backup tasks created by those versions of ATI.

There a lot more rules to be observed with .tibx files than were needed for the older .tib file format, but if your backup task(s) are setup correctly with automatic cleanup rules for managing how files are being created and kept, then most rules are transparent.  I will post a list of Acronis KB documents related to .tibx files at the end of my reply for some night-time reading!

Validation in ATI 2020 with .tibx files was a problem but that has been fixed in ATI 2021 where the key change implemented was to allow the user to select what to validate, i.e. just the most recently created backup file, or all backup files that belong to that task, where the latter will take significantly longer than the former.

Finally, it is almost impossible to identify exactly what type of backup has created the new .tibx files without looking at this in the ATI GUI on the Activity page view.  This is a major change since ATI 2019 where the file name included obvious text to indicate the type, i.e. _full_ or _inc_ etc.

If your backup task configuration for the Backup Scheme is set to only create Full backups, then all of the files in your list of .tibx files are all Full backup files, regardless of the other text appended to the file names.

Lastly, deleting unwanted backup files should ideally be done via the automatic cleanup settings for each task, where I would recommend using the 'Store no more than X recent versions' option for automatic cleanup as this is the easiest to understand.

With 'Store no more than X recent versions', you need to have sufficient storage space to hold X+1 Full backups in order that the oldest backup file(s) will be deleted when that X_1 version file has been created successfully.

The alternative method to manage unwanted backups is to use the Clean up versions tool which is available in the drop-down menu for each task shown in the ATI GUI by clicking on the caret to the right of the task name shown in the Backup panel.

See the following KB documents published by Acronis with regards to .tibx files.

KB 63518: Acronis True Image 2020: do not delete first tibx file

KB 63227: Acronis True Image: Do not delete .TIB or .TIBX files outside of Acronis True Image

KB 63498: Acronis True Image 2020: new tibx backup format FAQ

KB 63425: Acronis True Image 2020: Limitations of tibx backups

KB 63516: Acronis True Image 2020: Incremental backups do not create separate files when using new backup format

KB 63445: Acronis True Image 2020: how to view and manage backup versions in new backup format

KB 63444: Acronis True Image 2020: tibx backups in local destinations