Confusion About Backup Validation

BTW - I just found this quote from the ATIH 11User Guide at :

5.3.9 Additional settings
1. Validate backup archive upon operation completion
The preset is disabled.
When enabled, the program will check integrity of the just created or supplemented archive
immediately after backup. When setting up a backup of critical data or a disk/partition
backup, we strongly recommend you to enable the option to ensure that the backup can be
used to recover lost data.

The above statement indicates to me that the behavior I am seeing is not to be expected. It says that the program should only be checking the backup that was JUST CREATED.

I am not sure if this is found in the ATIH 10 manual but I will look.

Further, I found this quote from the ATIH10 user guide at :

5.3.9 Additional settings
1. Validate backup archive upon operation completion
The preset is disabled.
When enabled, the program will check integrity of the just created or supplemented archive immediately after backup.

This is basically the same text as found for version 11. Again, it states that it should check the bakcup just created. How can this be?

If there is no way around this behavior, it is possible to know the order in which ATIH is validating the files? What I want to accomplish is to have a post-backup command hibernate the computer after the job is done. Since the post-backup command doesn't run after the validation routine (what nonsense), I need to introduce a timeout in my post-backup command so that the validation routine has enough time to run and complete prior to the system going into hibernation. Other threads have indicated that one should check the log to see how long the validations take and use that to set the timeout period. However, since it grows in length ever night, this is not practical. If I knew that the most recently created TIB was validated first, I could hibernate after a fixed period (even though the validation is not yet complete). What a giant P.I.A. this is. This should be so very easy!

Hello David,

Thank you for your messages and please accept my apologies for the delay. I will do my best to assist you.

Let me shed some light on how validation works in Acronis True Image Home.

If you create a full backup with a chain of incrementals, our software will validate the full backup and the full incremental chain. This is done to make sure that none of the backups are corrupt because otherwise, the chain will be broken and you will be able to use the backups prior to the corrupt incremental backups. Please check this article for additional information.

If you create a full backup with a differential chain, by the same logic our software will check the full backup and the latest differential, since this all that is needed to have a working backup. You can refer to the same article that I mentioned above.

You are more than welcome to download and test a trial version of Acronis True Image 2011 Home and check how well it suits your needs. Please check this article for trial versions' limitations.

If you need additional assistance or have any other questions, please let me know.

Thank you.

It appears that, if you just have Fulls, then only the most recent Full that exists under an Item listed on the My Backups pages is checked via Validation.

Thanks for the response, Anton. However, in my original post I state that I am doing a FULL backup - not incremental or differential. I don't know what you mean when you write, "full backup with a chain of incrementals" or "full backup with a differential chain". In my version of TIH, there is an exclusive choice between (a) A NEW FULL BACKUP, (b) AN INCREMENTAL BACKUP, and (c) A DIFFERENTIAL BACKUP ARCHIVE. There is no choice that includes BOTH a full backup AND either DIFFERENTIAL or INCREMENTAL. I have attached a screen print of the Acronis UI to refresh your memory. So your response not only doesn't address my question after all this time, it actually confuses the issue. So again to be totally explicit, I have a nightly backup task that creates a NEW FULL BACKUP every night and puts it into an Acronis BACKUP LOCATION. The backup task options include validation. The documentation says that is should validate the backup immediately after its creation. Since the earlier FULL backups were created the previous nights, they should NOT be validated again. However, every night it validates every single backup that is found in the BACKUP LOCATION. Acronis should know that it has created a new FULL BACKUP, not something that is part of a chain. But as each day passes, you can see in the log of the backup task that there are exactly as many entries stating "Verifying backup archive" as there are TIB files in the BACKUP LOCATION. And each day the time needed to complete the entire task grows longer and longer. Since each TIB file is a complete, full backup and NOT in any way dependent upon other TIB files in the BACKUP LOCATION, there is NO CHAIN and therefore the validation step need NOT validate every TIB file it finds. It should be easy for TIH to know this as the names of the files in a BACKUP LOCATION are completely under the control of TIH and they each contain the date/time they were created. I hope this clears things up for you.

Thanks Scott, perhaps you have a different version than I. But I have both TIH 10 and 11 and neither has a MyBackups page and both exhibit the same, incorrect behavior regarding verification of the newly created backup.

I have many versions, but I was referring in my post above to ati2011. In ati10 and 11, if you validate, it does a chain. fi you have jsut fules, then it does the full uyou specify. If you do an inc, then it looks for all the predecessors in the change. FI you do a diff, it also looks for all the predessors inthe chain even though only the full plus one diff is needed for a restore.

Thanks Scott. But I beg to disagree with your statement. See my post this morning to Anton.

I stand disagreed with. but based on the time involved in validating, on my machines, it's only backing up sets and not every full. so, I'm afraid I don't know what to say about your situation. But I haven't tested with runnin ga validation as part of atask, only doing them manually, so maybe that's the diff.

sorry I don't have more experience with validations but I do them so rarely. . .

Thanks again Scott for trying to help. As a programmer, I think this is a bug since it doesn't do what the docs say it should do. I believe that if you were to try a task such as mine, you would see the same behavior as I report. My main problem is that I want to shutdown my machine after the end of this nightly task to try and save energy. This would seem a simple task - just run the shutdown command as a post-command. But NO! That doesn't work as one would expect. The post-command runs not when the task is complete but when the BACKUP portion of the task is complete. So doing a shutdown in a post-command ends up hosing the validation process. While this unintuitive behavior is not documented in the TIH docs, you can see others confused about it in the forums. The "fix" is to use the timeout option on the shutdown command based upon the time it takes to perform the validation. OK. I can do that. But with the behavior I have reported here, the time it takes is not determinate. It changes every day because each day another TIB is created in the BACKUP LOCATION and TIH decides it needs to validate every TIB it finds in the BACKUP LOCATION rather than the one that was just created. I have managed, in the 4 weeks since I originally posted, to create a work-around using batch files and splitting the backup and the validation into multiple tasks. But it is a huge pain in the butt and it doesn't work at all on TIH 10 because it doesn't support validation tasks. I like TIH and it has saved my butt in the past. But some of the decisions made seem really stupid to me. Most stupid is that the post-command for a task doesn't run after the task is complete - it runs after part of the task is complete. DUH!

I thought it was just me! I am using TIH2010

In addition to daily backups run across my network, I also take full backups of three separate partitions to a pair of USB drives every 15 days. As they are different sizes, the number of generations I can retain differs. The task is configured to include verification.

Looking back at my logs, I can clearly see that the number of times "Veryfying backup archive" appears in each log entry corresponds exactly to the number of full image backups on the USB disk. As some of the partitions are over 25 GB, a typical backup is written in 1 hour 10 minutes, then spends another 2 hours 15 minutes performing 10 separate verifications. On my smaller disk, only a couple of verifications happen.

If your backups are have been verifying okay, I wouldn't verify every time that I made a backup. Just once in a while to confirm things are still working okay. Verifying only confirms that the file was not corrupted during writing or after being written. If your pc is working okay, I don't thik it's something you need to do every time.

If you are doing any incs or diffs, all of those in set are verified when you very a backup.

Chris, it is interesting to know that this odd behavior continues beyond the version of TIH that I own. It is disappointing too. I have come-up with a "fix" that allows me to get the behavior I want using pre/post commands and several batch files. But it is ugly and pretty crude. It also should simply NOT be necessary.

Scott, I do understand what you are saying about what verification actually does. But I don't really agree that because there is a bug in a function (or at least how the function has been documented from way back) that an appropriate "fix" is to simply NOT use the function. After all, I am using TIH as part of my backup regimen. A backup that is not at least verified for internal consistency is a backup that could potentially be corrupt and therefore of no use whatsoever. Indeed, a corrupted backup MAY be a sign that something is wrong with the system or its hardware and that alone could be valuable information to someone seeking to avoid disaster. Finally, if there is a problem or a need for enhancement of the software (or its documentation), simply ignoring the problem is of no value to anyone. It would appear that no one from Acronis gives a damn. Anton's reply above shows that he did not read the initial posts very carefully or simply did not understand them. His failure to reply to the far more detailed posts I and others have made is further demonstration that Acronis doesn't really care about all this. I find this sad and it certainly is NOT an inducement to upgrade but instead to find another solution.

I concede that a backup could become corrupted at almost any time -- not only while being written (due to a memory or disk error), but later when being read (due to a memory or disk error), while being copied, and even while jsut sitting there as a bit can conceivably decay on magnetic or optical media even when the disk is not being used. One must check as often as one feels comfortable doing so -- that's what determines what is appropriate. It's like insurance and risks; you have to multiply the amount of harm times the probability and then consider that against the resources required to mitigate the risk. I do about 12 backups a day and never had one that didn't verify. So I don't worry about verification very much and don't apply many resourdces towards verifications. I used to to but I eventually cut way back. I'd say that in recent years, I've done as many restores as I have validations. Otoh, I also keep several backups of each disk just in case one of the backups does becomes corrupted (or other calamity strikes) and I keep copies in more than one location.

I agree that we are talking about the mitigation of risks. And you are correct that the need varies with the level of paranoia. For the most paranoid, the behavior exhibited might be ideal. But the cost of a verify (if performed as documented) in my case is very small - an additional 10 minutes in the process. So doing it at least once just after a backup is created seems a prudent, rather than paranoid, response to me. I also keep multiple backups on multiple disks in multiple physical locations (include a safe deposit vault at the bank. I have had several backup files proved to be corrupted when the time came for a restore. However, testing of the disk demonstrated that the disk was fine - so I suspect that something went awry in the backup creation process. Since I take backups nightly, the previous day's backup proved useful and only 1 day's worth of data was lost. That was bad enough for me. Cheers!

I'm using TI 2011 and I have been using since I forget when. I have never enabled validation. With 2011, same thing except this version validates anyways (full backup always!) with validation disabled.

I would like this option to be disabled but seems that version 2011 has a mind of it's own

Well, after several iterations, I have decided to implement a simple "fix" for my problem as follows:

(1) I leave my full backup job set to validate upon completion.

(2) I leave my full backup job to place its output in a backup location. It is g:\AcronisBackups.

(3) I create a directory sibling on the drive where the backup location exists. It is g:\AcronisBackupsVerified.

(4) One time only (per removable disk g:) I move any existing .tib files from g:\AcronisBackups to g:\AcronisBackupsVerified. So g:\AcronisBackups now contains ONLY the backup location config file and has NO .tib files.

(5) I introduce a post-command batch file for by full backup job that contains:
rem >>> Begin batch file <<<
set backupdrive=f:
set sourcedir=AcronisBackups
set targetdir=AcronisBackupsVerified
set validationtime=1200

rem create the directory for the verified backups if it doesn't exist
if not exist %backupdrive%\%targetdir% mkdir %backupdrive%\%targetdir%

rem schedule the move of backup files once validation is complete
c:\tools\soon.exe %validationtime% cmd /C move /Y %backupdrive%\%sourcedir%\*.tib %backupdrive%\%targetdir%

rem leave some time for the move to complete - make it over a minute to avoid at problems
set /A validationtime+=65

rem schedule the system shutdown for after the move and the validation
c:\tools\soon.exe %validationtime% shutdown -s -c \"Post-backup shutdown\"

rem mask the fact that soon returns a non-zero value upon success and this
rem makes Acronis complain a bit
if errorlevel 1 exit 0
rem >>> End batch file <<<

Batch file commentary - this process simply ensures that there are never more than one .tib file in the backup location at any given time. This defeats TIH's insistence upon verifying every .tib file it finds there. Since the only one to be found is that just created, it gets verified and this happens in short order.

Conclusion - this process will work on at least TIH versions 10 and 11 which I have in use on several machines. This simply moves the .tib files out of the backup location once validation is complete. To use this, you simply need to change the values of the initial 4 set commands to something appropriate for your environment. You will also need to download and install the soon.exe command from the Windows 2000 resource kit and modify its location in the above batch file. In my mind, none of this should have been required. But this is a fairly simple solution to the problem.