I need help recovering an incremental backup version (ATIH 2013)
Hi, I'm using ATIH2013 (build 6514) on Windows 8.1 64 bit.
I'm trying to recover a backup of yesterday, but it isn't appearing on the list. In fact, it seems that TIH stopped listing my incremental versions at some moment. It is only showing me my last full backup (of a particular scheme) and no incremental versions of it. Older chain versions are being shown correctly (as far as I can tell) but not the newer ones.
On the backup description it correctly says that the last version is of yesterday and the corresponding .tib file is where it should be. What can be happening? Could any one give me a hand here? This is really an emergency.
Thanks!
PS: I never used the "backup consolidation" thing. Could this help me? I ran the backup validation and it finished with positive result. I have 94 versions of this backup (full + incremental chains). Is this too much for ATIH to handle? It is taking a very long time even to show me the version chains on the recovery window.
Hey, GroverH. Thanks for your reply.
My main problem is that the desired incremental version is not being listed on the recovery wizard. It will only show the last full version of October, 13th.
I tried to mount an image to extract the files (the backup images are there!), but the image mounting tool won't work. It tells me to reinstall the software. Trying to uninstall it I came across "No True Image components found" error. So I tried to install it again over the old installation but the image mounting tool won't work any way (it will show the same error message about not being able to start). Not to mention my missing backups.
If at least I could extract the files and start a new backup task...
Is there any "hard way" of doing this?
I'm becoming worried because this is the backup of my research :(
Thanks again.
EDIT: I tried using the recovery cd. It will show me all versions after scanning the backup disk. Unfortunately, it will complain about a missing file version and the recovery will fail. That's really odd, because I use a dedicated disk only for backup and TIH is the only software accessing it regularly. I think it has been propagating some error since the last full backup. I thought TIH was more robust than that. I have set up a backup scheme well suited to my needs but it looks like TIH will start behaving oddly as the number of version chains increases, making it unsuitable to preserve longer archive histories.
If you choose an earlier file to restore, does that help you?
One of your problems here is number of incrmentals being created. The incremental design is that all prior files within the chain must be present and in good condition. As each file has just a piece of the changes, all files need to be restored. Conversely, the differential design is a backup which needs only the full plus the single more recent file or only two files needed for restore. Each diff file contains all changes and represents what the computer was at time of backup.
Making more frequent full backups is also a good safety factor.
As your problem is a recovey problem, contacat customer support and fill out a support request. Be sure and specifiy that you have a recovery issue and Acronis advertises that they help will all recovery issues without charge or will refund your service charge.
Do contanct them and see if that heps. In the meantime, create a new backup task using the custom backup scheme as mentioned in my prior postings. The custom full/incrmentals does work but needs fewer number of inc and more frequent fulls.
Good luck and post your final results.
ps: Have you reviewed the log files of your backup. Perhaps the info supplied with those can be useful.
Thanks.
I did a complete software removal using Acronis' tool (linked somewhere). After installing TIH again, I was able to explore the .tib files and recover data from the penultimate chain. I helped me enough and I'm relieved.
I'll start new backup schemes, using 1 full each 6 increments, making it 1 full per week. I was doing 1+20. The 94 I mentioned previously it the total amount of backups I have for that job. I thought 1 full backup per month, plus 1 incremental per day were good numbers.
If I may, I'd like to ask you another word of advice. If I need to be able roll back to a more recent version of some archive and have a longer history for it, should I use that nonstop backup thing instead? I'm talking about never losing more than a day of data and also being able to fully roll back to the state of two months ago, say.
Now, about the problem I had. It is concerning that the backups would pass validation but wouldn't be recovered due to missing files. I thought the validation process would analyze the complete state of the backups and their recoverability.
Thanks again.
I do not use non-stop backup so cannot offer comments. The regular version has fulfilled my needs.
If a backup passes validation (especiall validation via the CD), then it should be restorable.
Validation makes sure the write's matches the read' s. So the validation of the backup files indicates the file is in the same condition as when it was first written. I make a practice of occasionally checking the system disk for disk or file erros so that my backup does not contains any sunch errors which would hinder their restore.
If the backup passes validation, it shoud be restorable no matter if the age is one month or one year, etc. If the disk quality is still there, the restore should succeed. Basically, I am saying that if you have a backup of your data, then TrueImage should restore the data so your computer is the same as when the backup was created--no better--no worse--the same.
If your data is that important to you, then additionally consider having another storage disk used via alternate weeks so the loss of one backup disk is not a disaster. Perhaps using a diff type backup rather than inc. but with the same frequencey settings.
As the TI REcovery CD is the vehicle for restores, many of will occasionally use the CD to validate some of our backups--just as a little more security that all it still healthy.
Here is an example of how some of my storage folder looks. I like to use
_@exec@_
as part of my file name which accounts for the sequential number you see in the example.
