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Dialing back Acronis True Image

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Hi,

I have ATI 2014, which is installed on a new computer I built.  It seems to be working fine at making backups/restores.  However it is doing a couple things that I'd like to stop it from doing.

First thing - I'd used an earlier version (2008) on another computer.  I have 2 external hard disks that I've used for storing backups in the past with that version.  Recently I was preparing to make a backup of the new computer I went looking for available space on those drives to store the new backup.  The free space there was marginal, so I bought a new 1T HDD to use as a new backup drive.  Now ATI seems to have assimilated all the backup directory structure from those two older drives, and it insists on putting those directories on the new drive.  (they were all appearing as the F: drive when I plugged them into the new computer).  Now ATI is maintaining a large list of all my prior backups, which I'd prefer it not do, and is putting the directories on any disk that is plugged in as the F: drive, even though the backup data isn't in them (thank goodness).

I would like it to only worry about backups that are on the disk presently attached to the computer at any given time - I certainly don't want it making directories on any drive that turns up in the F: position for any old backup I've ever made.

Worse yet, the other morning I came to my new computer and it had some error message about a scheduled backup failing - it was one of the backups that had been on one of the older disks that had apparently been set up as a scheduled backup inadvertently at the time it was made, and now my new ATI was trying to comply with that scheduled backup, even though the source disk wasn't attached, nor did it have a destination location so store such backup (the original disk where the existing (old) backup resides is not attached to the computer).  I don't want any scheduling taking place - especially for some disk that I had once backed up several years ago.

The way I'd like to use ATI would be to just launch it when I want to make a backup, and have nothing scheduled that might start to run while I'm using the computer for something else (it is a recording studio computer, and I certainly wouldn't want it waking up and deciding to make a backup in the middle of a recording session).  I'll decide what I want to backup, and when I want to do it.  The ATI program shouldn't be running any sort of background process.

I'd also really like to stop it from copying the directory structure of the backups from all the other backup drives I've used in the past, which I happened to look at to see if there was suitable free space for a new backup.

So, how can I stop it from running unless I actually click on its icon to run it, and how can I stop it from writing anything on a disk except what I explicitly instruct it to?

Thanks,

--

Greg

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Greg, it sound like you have connected your different external drives to your new computer when Acronis was active, and in doing so, Acronis has identified that you have stored backup image files on those drives and imported details of the same into the program.

This is a behaviour that is still present in later versions of ATIH though it has changed in the sense that Acronis now only looks for backup images when the program is first installed and not when it is opened / run each time.

The other issue here is that your external drives are all connecting using the same drive letter F: and thus this could be confusing the Acronis database as it now has details of previous backup tasks for which images have been created and which were stored on drive F: but now there is a different drive F: connected and folder names have changed etc.

My recommendation at this time would be to start cleaning up the backup tasks that Acronis has detected, take the option to delete any that are not relevant to the new computer, but do not select to delete the files for the task!  Do this for as many of these tasks that are not needed, but remember to NOT reconnect the drive holding those image files while ATIH 2014 is active or else it will pull them back in again.

If you do want to connect a new external drive, then do so using a different drive letter (than F:) so that drives are seen to be unique.

There is some information on backup settings in the 2014 User Guide = see http://www.acronis.com/en-gb/support/documentation/ATIH2014/index.html#10147.html  and see http://www.acronis.com/en-gb/support/documentation/ATIH2014/index.html#7957.html which covers removing settings.