Backup to new computer

Dup error

Hi walker50,
Besides backing up frequently / regularly, your back up solution should also include the following:

Preform file validation on your back up images regularly and test the restore process to ensure it will work if / when it is ever needed. If an image won't validate, there is likely a problem with the data being backed up, or a problem with the destination. Performing a chkdsk /r on both source and destination might help. You can also verify the integrity of your OS and install using System File Checker sfc /scannow from a elevated command prompt.

Great that you have an identical system to fall back on. Most of us just rely on our back ups and would purchase a new drive if disaster strikes.

My computer crashed and was fixed. It was simple - boot from the OS disk, Win 7, and the drive was repaired. However, Acronis True Image 2013 will not run. I can reinstall but I'm concerned about the settings, and do not want to lose the existing backups.

I’m advised that it’s possible to add the existing backups to the Acronis True Image 2013.
1 Install Acronis True Image 2013
2 Click Browse for backup on the Backup and recovery tab. This opens a window where you can browse for backups on your computer.
3 To add an existing backup to the backup list, select the backup and click the Add to backup list button.

Can someone please advise me if the above is correct? Thank you.

Your steps look to be the same as shown in the ATI 2013 User Guide for this action.

When you go to install ATI 2013 again, if Windows believes that the application is already present, then you should be offered an option to Repair or Remove, where you should try the Repair.

Thank you. I reinstalled and selected repair. I attempted to back up and there was a message "Operation has failed". Any ideas?

Sorry but sounds like you will need to make a clean new install of ATI 2013 in this case, which will require the following steps:

First, uninstall ATI 2013 normally via the Control Panel options.

Next, download and run the Acronis Cleanup Tool (link in my signature) then do a restart of Windows to complete this action.

Finally, do a clean install of ATI 2013 using the full installer program running as Administrator or using an Administrator account to ensure correct privileges & authorities are given.

You will need to recreate your backup tasks after doing the above, and if you have Disk Director installed, this will also be removed by the cleanup tool so best uninstall that too in the first step and reinstall again later.

Thanks. I have not uninstalled Acronis before and saw two options
Delete Acronis secure zone
Delete non-stop backup storage
It seems that both of these should be selected. Is this correct?
 

Both the ASZ and NSB options are referring to places where you may have backup image files stored if you have been using these?

As you are intending to just do a temporary uninstall / clean up in order to then do a clean install of the same product, you can opt to no delete these items.

If you have other backups for the same data that is on external drives, then you can choose to remove everything if you want a truly clean start.

Thanks. The Acronis files are on C:\Program files (x640\Acronis\, the SSD. The backups are on an external drive, Q:\C Dell backups\*.TIB. There's backups to this. Acronis backs up the SSD onto the external drive and this is copied via a batch file with Robocopy, essentially a Mir command with a few extras. This means that multiple drives have the SSD setup and external drive data, reasonably foolproof.

I'll see how installing  goes without selecting ASZ and NSB. If that does not work I'll delete them both and do a clean install. I gather that running the Acronis Cleanup Tool applies in both cases.

How does that sound?

The plan sounds fine and you have good redundant backups for protection.

You may want to consider an upgrade to a newer version of ATI at some point - the newer versions from ATI 2018 onwards now have integrated antiransomware protection for your backup files and much better support for newer hardware etc.

There is a beta testing phase for the next version - ATI 2019 in progress at present in preparation for this being announced in the autumn (Sept / Oct) period.  You would need to fully uninstall your 2013 product to participate but could be an opportunity to test the waters and see how it looks?

ATI 2013 was uninstalled. Disk cleanup was downloaded and I attempted to run it but it did not work. There was a blank screen
C:\Windows\Systen32\cmd.exe
Nothing happening for several minutes so I backed out.

There was also something called Disk Cleanup, which may or may not be the Acronis download.  Disk cleanup selected the drive and then gave options of files to delete
Downloaded program files
Temporary internet files
Debug dump files ...
System queued Windows error reports
It does not help that this screen is in small thin faded text, quite hard to read and use.

Cleaning up the Acronis files should be fairly easy but it's frustrating and I do not know what to do maybe forget about the cleanup part.

There are separate products / programs that you may be looking at here, so please be very careful in choosing the correct one! 

Acronis Drive Cleaner is intended to wipe disk drives in preparation for disposal or resale.

System Clean-up does a different job and is intended to try to clean usage data, akin to utilties like CCleaner.

The Acronis Cleanup Tool is intended only to completely uninstall Acronis True Image / Disk Director when normal uninstall methods do not work - this is the tool suggested to help fully remove your old ATI 2013 application in anticipation of installing a later version.  The link for this tool is a KB document with detailed instructions for how the tool is used.

I was using the right product. It's confusing when products have similar names. The screen locked and I could not continue, so I reinstalled the program. Interestingly, the list of old backups was still visible, quite clever coding. I set up the backup  and ran it, seems to have worked okay.

One interesting aspect is that the backup file went from 28 MB a few weeks ago to 42 MB with the reinstalled program. The backup file size has been slowly increasing for years, but this is a massive jump. I suspect that the increased size reflects Thunderbolt files, and maybe Firefox, getting bigger as I have more downloaded information. I've not changed anything of substance on the SSD. Does anyone know why the file size jumped from 28 to 42 MB?

The installation added a clone item to the start menu
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Acronis\TrueImageHome\TrueImageTools.exe" /clone_disk
I don't really need this, and am thinking about removing it.

I'll wait until next week and see that the backup runs and if the backup file size is the same. If so I'll then delete the copy of the original program I parked on a backup drive.

One interesting aspect is that the backup file went from 28 MB a few weeks ago to 42 MB with the reinstalled program.

I suspect that you really meant a change from 28GB to 42GB rather than an increase of only 14MB?

Difficult to say why the increase but check the backup .TIB file by mounting it to a drive letter via the right-click menu in File Explorer then use a tool such as TreeSize Free to see where the large files or folders are within it?  You can compare by doing the same with one of your older, smaller .TIB files.

Oops, yes, should have been 28 GB to 42 GB. Tree Size Free is in German. Ich spreche kein Deutsch, so it's of limited use to me. It may be possible to look at the tree when using recovery, not sure. I've had a quick look at the C: drive, not much changed. The batch file that copies the TIB file from the Q drive to the backup drives works but it no longer renames the file in the form
Drive C SFF Dell 2018-08-06.TIB
The batch file has worked for years, not sure what is happening, will attempt to fix it.

The Options menu in TreeSize allow you to select from a number of languages, mine defaults to being in English.

Tree Size has been loaded. The language comment applied to the screen where Tree Size came from.

I cannot see how to mount a file to a drive letter. File explorer does not exist in Win 7. My search found a number of ways to mount a file or drive, but all have multiple steps. Once simpler way may be via the command line
subst K: Q:\C Dell backups\
Would this work?

The second weekly backup was done, also about 40 GB. This is a massive increase and will quickly take up the remaining 10% of my hard drive. Note that I'm backing up an SSD with the Win 7 OS and sundry software, around 64 GB, has not changed much in several years.

I cannot see how to mount a file to a drive letter. File explorer does not exist in Win 7.

File Explorer (Windows 8 - 10) is the same as Windows Explorer in Windows 7 & earlier.

If your backup archive .TIB file is a Disks & Partitions backup image, then you should be able to simply right-click on the .TIB file in Windows Explorer and see a further menu where one of the options shown is for Acronis True Image.  This menu gives you a Mount and Validate option.
Note: this assumes you have ATI installed to provide this Windows Shell integration feature.

Thanks, that was quite easy. One slight problem - every time I start the computer a window with the drive appears.

I can now use Tree Size to look into the TIB file, and it's interesting. The folders in the C drive and the mounted backup TIB file D are similar. However, the space is quite different, 65.2 GB on C and 58.2 GB on D.

You need to right click on the drive when you are finished and use the option to unmount it. 

The size difference is covered by the last entry shown for C: where the pagefile, swapfile etc are excluded from the backup image as these are all rebuilt by Windows on starting. 

Thanks. A moment ago I started Tree Size and D was not present. Odd. I am unable to see why there was such a sudden jump in the size of the TIB files. The Total Commander screen shows the TIB files slowly getting bigger over years then in one backup it jumps a huge amount. Why is it so? I am really struggling with uploading images. If the TC screen shot does not appear, sorry.

Sorry but insufficient information to say why your C: backup image should have increased from around 28GB to 43GB without seeing such as a TreeSize listing for each of these files at these sizes?  That should show where the increased size is coming from.

It's taken a while but I think the end is nigh. On 2 August 2018 a new folder
C:\windows\winsxs\*.*
was created. I have no idea why it was created then. There's an amazing 96,000 files in 22,500 folders, 21 GB. This seems to me to be why the TIB file jumped in size. The files in the folder are AMD, which are described here
https://superuser.com/questions/804490/huge-amount-of-amd64-files-in-wi…

The winsxs folder is fairly new, and I have no idea why it was created two weeks ago. Maybe using the restore point before 2 August would fix it.

I still cannot work out how to upload images. There's an attachment in this post but no picture. Very frustrating. At least I know how to mount a drive and use Tree Size.

The WinSXS folders are owned / controlled by Windows and great care taken if touching these.  I would recommend running Windows Disk Cleanup and see what space that returns for your OS drive.

Thanks. I ran disk cleanup, saved 0.7 GB. There's still a lot of files in the winsxs folder. This folder was created in 2009 and modified on 2 August 2018, so it's not new files, just modified ones. It's still unclear why there was such a massive jump in the TIB file size.

My backup system is that I have a backup SSD to the external drive once a week.I keep the TIB files as follows:
The first few backups after I bought the machine.
Then every six month until a year ago.
Then every month until three months ago.
Then every week.
This way if a virus or disaster strikes I've good a good set of historical backups and should be able to find one that pre-dates the problem.

One option may be to exclude the C:\windows\winsxs\ folder from backups. However, this is needed for running Windows, so maybe leave it in. Unsure.

Take a look at the free DiskMax program which can help optimise the WinSxS folders.

Removed duplicate posting

I downloaded DiskMax. There's about 15 options and I need to know what each of them does before selecting anything. For now, theres' no system improvement as I was comfortable selecting just one, remove temp files. Might it be simplest to use a backup that pre-dates the big TIB file size jump?

Might it be simplest to use a backup that pre-dates the big TIB file size jump?

You could do this but the next Windows Update is just as likely to change the contents of the WinSxS folders and show the increase in size again!

Ref: DiskMax, I have used this for several years with no ill effects but you are right to be cautious as it does do a very good job of removing unwanted / temporary data and if you store credentials in your web browser(s) for easier access to favourite web sites, then these too can be cleared if you do not exclude / deselect the options for this when using DiskMax.  I ran this on my own computer last evening and cleared just under 4GB of unwanted data including reducing my WinSxS folder by around 2GB size.

The DiskMax options are fairly clearly laid out and can work on 4 different levels as shown on the initial program panel - I tend to use the System option as I only have the one user account to 'clean'.

I don't like using "global" commands where I do not know what they do. I'll happily use format c: /u on a disk as I know the outcome - system no longer crashes, or does much at all for that matter. I've got a lot of information embedded in Firefox, and would be very upset if I lost all this.

The computer died a little in early July, and after repairing it the big TIB files started. I know not why. Going back to the way it was a week before this may eliminate the problem. I'll have another look tomorrow. It's after 9pm here on the east coast of Australia and I guess that you are either in Europe or the east coast of the US. Maybe Greenland. this is why it's taking so long to work through this. I may rejoin the Flat Earth Society so we are all in one time zone. They code in COBOL.

Progress is being made, and I now have two nifty new programs to aid managing computer housekeeping. For that alone I'm most grateful for your advice.

I am in the UK so is now early afternoon here..!