Does red x mean my backup is no good?
I'm annoyed at the red X showing up all the time. Of course, one thing I really want to know is DO I have a reliable backup; but I also don't want this continuing to happen.
I have a Windows 7 home 64 bit computer with about 8 or so external usb II and III drives. I have audio programs which use enormous amounts of data, which needs to be on external drives, such as Fxpansion's BFD3. I only need to backup the System Drive, and can't use cloud storage due to security.
The RED X is recurrent. At least one of the drives and/or the usb bays have chronic issues where they turn off during start up, or do not turn on, and I need to "time" the pressing of one of the drive's start buttons, which avoids the issue. But I haven't been successful everytime, and since the drive letters I want are already assigned, I can see no other method for making them static. Windows 7 doesn't indicate that there are some "static drives" and some "non static drives"; but even if one is "non-static" Windows 7 won't let me assign the same letter.
Under MY BACKUPS my latest backup exists on Drive M, and the file is there. But it was only supposed to backup Drive C. Somehow it backed up an external drive. I assume this is the root of the RED X, since it is possible that it recognizes that the data presently on Drive Q is not the same as it was when the backup was performed a few days ago.
But to be clear, the drives exist, both sources and destination. Regarding verification and then reverting (if needed) to this backup, should I ignore the RED X?
It makes no sense why Acronis can't find it. I shut it down and restarted it 3 times and it still shows the....EVIL.....RED....X
The message "Check whether source and destination..." exists is possibly irrelevant as to whether the backup is useable for restore operations; source/destination do exist (but possible drive Q is now a different drive Q - but I don't really care about the data on Drive Q - its the system drive I care about) and the backup is where its supposed to be, and completed okay when I ran it.
When I click on "check for a solution" I go to an infamous Axronis page where there is no recommended solution.
Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
Hi, thank you so much for the very-in-depth answer. I still have questions... I had already done the steps of setting up static drives from the end of the alphabet. This has happened afterwards - still the red x. The drive letters should not be being renamed. Could it be the steps I have taken in the last 2 days that cause Acronis not to find that the drives match with its database record? Namely, I ran a windows system restore (there was only one available at that time - from last month) that failed, and a "startup failure" restore that apparently succeeded, although it claimed to use a restore but didn't tell me which one - obviously it must have made one in the last day or the restore must have failed, one or the other - since programs installed since that time are still installed.
My issue is that Windows does not seem to be operating properly after one of my pci cards apparently went bad. I removed that card, but noticed that windows had some issued.
That's what made me look to Acronis and my Acronis backup, also from last month.
I made these backups when I found that Windows had deleted all my "restore" versions that I had, and I could not figure out why..
I became concerned of course when I saw that Acronis had a red X, and also had included not just the system drive but another drive.
So my question to you now is, how can I restore the system, without restoring this 2nd drive (and I don't even know which drive it chose to backup, since apparently it changed the letter name...)?
After your answer I should like to learn how to avoid this in the future, but that is of course secondary.
Bob, ATIH defaults to selecting 'Entire System' for backing up unless you start to dig down and select individual drives and/or partitions.
Another default that you need to be aware of is in the Exclusions for backups, where it defaults to excluding System Volume Information as well as the data folders for common web browsers. The net effect of these exclusions is that all System Restore points are not included and you can also lose all your browser bookmarks, extensions etc - if you restore a backup with these default exclusions set.
The reason for advising the above, is so that you can backup this data separately if you need to protect this before restoring the Acronis backup from last month.
With regard to the other drive that was included in the backup, I would recommend opening the backup .TIB file in Windows Explorer and looking at the contents of the drives it includes to see if you recognise which drives they are. You should be able to double-click on the .TIB file and walk through the contents like you would for a zip file.
When restoring, you can deselect any drive or partition that you don't want to restore, so that you don't overwrite newer data with older when it is not needed to do so.
For reference, it is recommended not to do 'Entire System' backups as this can include all fixed drives and other removable drives that are connected at that time of backup. It is better to make 'Entire Disk' backups, including all hidden / system partitions and do this separately for each different disk drive you have installed. 'Entire System' is really intended for total novice users who want to do a first full backup of everything on a simple / less complex system.
That red circle with an X symbol means the partition has errors. My experience is that the errors have to be cleared before you can get a good copy.