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Acronis 2014 Backup Issues

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Hello all,

I've been entrusted to perform a backup of a Windows 7 machine through the Acronis bootable media disc. I have four DVDs containing said Windows 7 backup, and the software seems to want me to insert disc 4 to start the process. This seems unorthodox, but managable.

My problem comes in when it begins to request the other three discs, or at least what I assume to be the software requesting the other three discs - it asks me for "version 1" first, and every now and again asks for version 3. This completely defies my expectations, as what I was thinking would happen is for it to tell me when to insert whichever volume, read the relevant information, and ask for the next volume, what I get is it asking me for the same volumes over and over. I've restored many computers in my time, and for software that claims to speed the process up, this has been the longest experience I've had. I could have installed a fresh OS and began backing up files and programs from external hard drive in less time.

I've spent about an hour inserting disc 1, 4, 1, being asked again for disc 1 even though it's in the drive, 4 again, and the cycle never ends. Am I doing something wrong? Does it need to be reading these discs constantly, and if so, why on earth does it need that? How many people have as many optical drives as they have backup discs?

Fortunately, I do actually have the luxury of having tons of optical drives at my disposal - at the behest of users more experienced with this software than I am, I will happily hook up four optical drives and let all of the discs be read as close to simultaneously as possible. If there's a simpler way that I'm overlooking, though, please alert me to it, because something just seems off about having to go to extremes like that just to get some backup discs to do their job.

 

Thanks.

 

EDIT: The answer seems to be yes, you can cut down your disc swapping and the time that it takes overall by simply having x optical drives hooked up during this process, where x is the amount of backup discs you've created. How such a strange system made it out of the testing phase is beyond me, but I hope that my solution helps those who follow: Yes you will be swapping discs for hours. You can speed up the process by having as many optical drives connected and running a disc as you possibly can, but you'll still have to hold Acronis 2014's hand through finding the discs every time it wants one, as it for some reason cannot remember where a disc is that isn't disc 4.

Good luck.

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Hello Michael,

Can I confirm that your Windows 7 system has been backed up on to 4 x DVDs and that you are now trying to perform an additional backup of the same system based on the original DVD backup?

If the above is correct, then I can imagine that it would take a very long time, especially if the subsequent backup is either an Incremental or a Differential backup.  The reason being that either of these types of backup schemes will need to compare the current system data against the backed up data (on DVD) to identify what has changed in the interim period between the last and current time of backup activity!

I would strongly recommend only keeping backup data on DVD as a safeguard mechanism with the intent of taking the DVD's off-site and not to be used for subsequent backups.

The best way forward would be to create a new backup of your Windows 7 system to an external hard drive (USB, SATA etc) or to a Network Drive (on a share or a NAS).

You can still use the Acronis bootable media to perform the backup but you will see a significant improvement in performance over what you have been trying to do.

The further downside to using DVD's with subsequent incremental or differential backups is that the next time you want to do a further backup of the same type, you will be asked for even more DVD's, all the original plus all the subsequent set that make up the complete 'version chain' of backup image data.  I am sure that there is a limit to how many optical drives you can physically connect at one time here!