Email Backup will not run on schedule

Is your email client Outlook?

Try not opening Outlook and see if the schedule runs on time. Don't open and then close Outlook as it often keeps a session open after closing and prevents imaging of PST files.

Yes Outlook 2010.

Will give what you say a shot and report back. Thanks.

I have a similar problem with Acronis True Image 2013 running on Windows 8 RTM. I installed True Image Home 2013 a couple of days ago. A “File Backup” scheduled to run at 7.00pm every day has never run automatically through the scheduler. It will run if I “Back up now”. I have been using every version of True Image Home since version 9.0 and have backed up the same files on the same schedule configured in each version without any problems. I think True Image Home 2013 may have been released to market prematurely, unfortunately it is the only version that supports Windows 8. Hopefully a patch will be issued soon?

Riddlespoon,

Do you have Outlook as well? If so what version?

What files are you trying to backup?

Colin,

I booted my system and did not start Outlook.
Left it running overnight and the Email backup scheduled to run daily, every 1 hour ran on schedule every hour!

So it appears TI cannot backup email when Outlook is open.

That isn't going to work for me as I am after a method of backing up my emails throughout the day and I always have Outlook open and minimized.

I have a very high volume of emails which I want to keep backed up on a regular basis.

So unless there is a way around this then it looks like I am restricted to backing up email at Login or logoff. Or manually shutting down Outlook, running the backup and then manually restarting it.

This is very restrictive and disappointing as I have other software on other systems which will backup Outlook when it's open.

Appreciate any thoughts on this?

Thanks for pointing me in the direction of the problem.

This has been a problem in the past that Outlook doesn't remove all its components when closed but leaves the database shadow indexing in RAM, which prevents TI and ABR from locking the PST file as Outlook has not released the lock it itself put on it.

With the ABR products one workaround is to change the Windows volume snapshot service (VSS) server from VSS to another one or disable it. I'll have to check to see if TI 2013 offers the Acronis volume snapshot service somewhere or if the only option is to disable the service.

It might be possible to run a pre image script that temporarily stops the VSS service and then restores it after TI has run.

It isn't only Acronis products that have this problem with Outlook.

Looking at this further, if Outlook needs to be closed to allow an Email backup to run then that of course does not explain why the backup succeeds with Outlook open when you run the backup manually via the 'run now' option. The logs show successful completion with no errors.

I have also checked the manual and cam find no reference to Outlook having to be closed for Backup. It does complain if Outlook is open when you try and restore Email from backup.

Perhaps this indicates the problem lies with the scheduler rather than Outlook ?

I'd also be very keen to hear if anyone else can duplicate the problem.

Colin B wrote:

This has been a problem in the past that Outlook doesn't remove all its components when closed but leaves the database shadow indexing in RAM, which prevents TI and ABR from locking the PST file as Outlook has not released the lock it itself put on it.

Tested a bit further and Outlook can be opened and closed without leaving anything resident. so Outlook 2010 may have resolved that particular issue.

Ie. it appears at this stage that it's just a case of Outlook having to be closed / exited in order for the scheduled email backup to run. Although the TI2013 manual does not state this requirement which is odd and makes me think the issue is with something else.

Will see how it goes from here but keen to have further feedback.

Thanks.

I may have managed to finally resolve my issue, or at least I can say the Email Backup Task has been running correctly on schedule for the past 24-hours now – hopefully this will continue.

I must say that I feel like I have been working with a moving target – sometimes settings that didn’t work seemed to just come right, when I re-tested to confirm previous test results. Maybe it was a case of being over-tired and a bit brain dead after a while.

What I discovered:
1. The Email Backup Task does successfully backup your emails with MS Outlook 2010 open (eg. minimised). So it is not necessary to close Outlook before the backup will run.
2. Email notifications from the Email Backup Task are successfully being sent and received to my pop3 account
3. For some reason, whenever I reboot my laptop the Email backup runs immediately and creates a new backup. However, it still maintains the original schedule. Maybe it’s a case of ‘if backup missed, run on resumption of system being available’ sort of action but I haven’t found that setting yet.

What I changed to get it to work:
(after determining there was an error in the joblog saying something about lacking authorisation to run).
1. I password enabled my Windows User account and logged back in. (Typically I run without pwd but can live with this if required)
2. I unchecked (removed the tick) from the ‘Run as other Account’ from the job settings. Note that despite doing so it kept coming back checked and prompting me to enter Windows Login Details – immediately after changing and saving the setting. I had to CANCEL that prompt to leave the change (un-ticked) in my settings.

Everything has been running correctly and on schedule since.

Unfortunately I was unable to dedicate block time to resolving this and so was fixed more by hacking and trial and error rather than a more methodical approach. That said, hopefully there is information in here which may help others.

Now, on to testing Restore from the Email backup…. LOL!

To stop the task running after a reboot,

Open the schedule options and look under advanced settings to uncheck the
If missed, Run at startup option.

There is no 'If missed, Run at startup' option available fro the Email-backup.

The email backup function has to work when Outlook is open, as it does a backup email by email, not a file backup, plus of course it backs up the settings and accounts.

This means that it takes about 17 minutes to backup my 1.6GB pst file, runs my quad core i7 960 CPU at maximum frequency and about 15% load on all cores while backing up, and produces a 6MB notification email which is all text, 18854 lines of text. This notification email itself locks up Outlook 2010 for a minute or so while previewing it. Outlook is flagged as "Not Responding" when I click on the email. That is not good!

I thinking the logging functionality needs the ability to set levels of logging, so that rather than listing every email title that gets backed up, it just summarises how many emails are backed up. Or maybe the log file keeps all the detail, but the email notification just has a summary. After all, I only need to know if it worked or didn't, and can check the log file for details.

I have my email backup set to do two full backups a day, but I think I'm going to have to review that strategy given the time it takes and the email it produces. Maybe incremental would be better. Or if I just did a file backup of the pst file it would be done in seconds. Hmmmm.

Yes it's quite clever in that it actually backs up the individual emails themselves - well done Acronis, most products back up at the File (Database) level only.

After my testing, I also came to the conclusion that the Email Backup option was over-kill for me and I now just back up the .pst file along with my other key User Data files.