2016 Deleting backups and backup versions you no longer need...

This is a joke right? You are telling me that I have to reboot my computer using the recovery boot CDs just to remove a backup version?

I think I would rather spend the time asking for a refund. I have to wonder if the people that are writing this software have been drug tested.

There is the delete optioin by right clicking the task name. This option will delete all the tib files created by that specific task.

My posting is an extract from the user manual. If you have really old backups to be deleted, this is the technique provided by the Knowledtge base.
I am just a user reporting their instructions. Their istructions for using the CD presume you want the task to continue. If no task involved, then a simple delete via Windows Explorer should suffice.

The lack of a supported method to delete a user selectable backup version from the main UI is one of the primary reasons I abandoned ATI 2016 and requested a refund. This is a critical regression in functionallity and makes it extreamely difficult to manage the backup chains.

Until such time as this function is restored, I will not be buying a newer version than what I have now which is ATI 2014.

Wow, that's really bad. Many backup jobs I set up - and it were a few during the last 6 years on all the wider family's systems - need some maintenance sooner or later, usually because diskspace runs out. Previously removing older versions and then changing the number of generations kept (buying time to get a new disk and setting up a new task) was easy albeit unintuitive. Looks like it is no longer so. I'll wait for a bit, but if I encounter problems that require me to start the system with a recovery media just to manage backup versions then I'll be out the door too.

This is one of the few companies that I have seen that actually release worse software as time marches on.  Most companies release improved versions, this company seems to reduce functionality as they release new versions.

Walter,

Don't forget, your TI REcovery CD is your best friend when you main hard drive fails. Boot from the CD and you can create your replacement hard drive. Each time i update to a new version, I keep the old CD on a CD spindle along with the other older CD's so I always try  to use the same version to restore as used in creation.  While this is not always a requirement, the newest may not restore a very old backup so it can save grief in you retain a few older copies.

https://kb.acronis.com/content/1689

My "guess" as to why the procedure of using the CD when deleting is the fact that the program began tracking and creating history back with version 2014 and deleting via the CD is outside of Windows and outsdie the history file--but that is just a guess.

It is understandable that you would need to use the TI Recovery CD to access your backup archives when your main drive fails. That's the reason it's highly recommended to create one. And, yes, I would have retain one for each version for which you have retained archives. I should NOT need to use it to manage my backup archives.

As I stated earlier, I will NOT be getting a newer version of ATI until this function is restored to the main UI. (Even then I'll take it with a big grain of salt.)

Grover, I do have CDs - as a matter of fact I usually burn one for every installation to stay near the system, as ATI saved me twice - but I really don't see why anyone should have to use such an overly complicated way just to manage backup versions. That's like having to boot Windows into safe mode to use Regedit.

GroverH - thanks for the information (even though, from my point of view, this is a "would you like the good news [that individual backup deletion is possible] or the bad news [you have to reboot the computer and do an Acronis-scripted rain dance to get rid of the backups you don't want] first" situation.  Your contributions to these forums are valued by us casual users without your depth of product knowlege.

JohnEd, Walter, and chaycock.....

Right on !

Having had experience with deleting a backup file manually (using Explorer) and then dealing with the subsequent mess (I recall that I ultimately deleted the whole backup job and recreated it), I went poking around the Internet to try and find a way to delete a few backups from a job because my media was getting full.  Either I created the job improperly (I'm sure I told it to get rid of backups older than 10 days, and there are some that are three weeks old), or the cleanup mechanism is somehow broken.

Note to Acronis:  Why is it not possible to allow users to just delete the files they want to get rid of, and have the software ask you for the location of a missing file, with the option of deleting all the files that need to be deleted (when the missing file involves a chain of files needed for the whole backup).  And if the software's trying to do a backup that depends on a chain with a missing link - fail the backup !

I do have a boot disk, so I'll try that - although it's almost a 50/50 chance that deleting and recreating all my (3) backup jobs will take as long.......

D.

Agree that it is not the most intuitive way of cleaning up old backups.  Two methods I have used as work-a-rounds:

1) Manually delete the old backup .tibs in Windows, or move them elsewhere, (yes I know, I know - shame for doing that since this is not supported).  Then go back into ATIH console and attempt to do a "Restore", which is the key component to the process.  You will immediately be greeted by a warning message that a .tib is not in it's proper locaiton and be asked to navigate to it, or choose to "ignore" it.  If you ignore it, it will be removed from the database.  You have to click through an ignore message for each manual .tib you moved or deleted, but it's fairly easy and fast to do.  It would still be nice if this was built directly into the application like previous versions though, but wanted to point out it is possible.

2) Automatic cleanup scripts as an alternative.  It doesn't let you pick and choose exactly which items you want to remove, but it's a good way to groom out older backups automatically so you don't have to do the manual cleanup as often. For me, personally, I keep weekly backups, 1 full + 6 incremental of my main OS.  I keep 3 version chains and have it clean up the oldest version chain at the end of the 4th version chain so this gives me about a month of daily backups I can fall back on.  Each person will have their own plan, but this is just one suggestion.   

Hello Bobbo,

I do appreciate that you describe workarounds for this issue of managing the backup archives. As an Acronis Volunteer, I do hope, however, that you use whatever influence you have with Acronis, to let them know that these workarounds are not acceptable for the long term and I will not be, or encouraging others to, purchasing a newer version of the product at least until this functionallity is restored.

These workarounds are very awkward at best, and risks a major loss of data at worst.

1. As you acknowledged, manually moving the archives should never be needed, except in extrordinary circumstances. And having to 'trick' Acronis into removing the archives is asking for trouble. This still does not solve the isssue if the user wants to remove, say, just the last incremental? It's not clear what incremental to 'ignore' will work, if at all.

2. By personal experience, I know there is a major difficulty with depending on automatic cleanup. Say you have two full archive sets. Now ATI will start to create a new full. If Acronis runs out of disk space during the backup, you are hosed. You are forced to do this manual delete process in order to recover instead of using the safer process of managing the backups via the UI.

I'm happy to pass this along.  I'd also suggest that you submit feedback witthin the application so that it gets registered through your account as well.

Completely understand both of your points as well.  I can say that, for me, *so far* both options have not led to any issues (that I'm aware of).  The first does seem to update the database correctly, but why it's not built directly into 2015 and 2016 is indeed puzzling, I agree it's a missed feature and the more feedback Acronis gets on it, the better.

The second method is a matter of space management.  If you have limited space to work with, definitley can be an issue, but that will be the case in any backup/cleanup scheme if you don't have enough space to allocate for enough backups in your scheme.  Still understand where you're coming from though.

Definitely some features that I'd like to see come back to.  The good news, regardless of how the Windows installed version of ATIH is configured, your offline reocvery media can and will always be able to restore a good backup .TIB set or files out of it.  I have never not been able to recover files using the offine media and a known good backup set and so far, the same goes for full system recoveries when pushing an image back to the same system.  Despite the ups and downs of the Windows installed interface, the reliability of the offline recovery media has been the major reason I've stuck with Acronis products all these years.  

Keep sending your feedback in though to Acronis and hopefully they will listen.

It's is true that functionality is now reduced. On previous version I could delete incremental backups and whole backups. Now everything gets wiped out.  The menu is also confusing First option seems to delete everything including setting  and 2nd option says it will delete setting but keep files.

"This is a joke right? You are telling me that I have to reboot my computer using the recovery boot CDs just to remove a backup version?"

I have to agree with others that this product is too unbearably unusable. The simplest action takes me half a day to find on the web and even then I don't have any confidence because it is ridiculously illogical. Besides, the basic interface, with confusing icons instead of menu items, makes it virtually impossible to find things. For example, this webpage above says "In the Backup section," and I swear to God, I have not been able to locate "backup section" in 2016, much less find "My Backups." I simply can't take this any more. I'm just going to regard the expensive 3 user version cost as a total loss and move on.

What are the popular non-Acronis alternatives you people use?

And are any of them file-based - that is, Explorer based, so I can manually copy selected files from a drive letter? That is, allowing me to restore with
copy j:\fastback\DRV_D\Foo\data\G*.* D:\Foo\data\G*.*
instead of being restricted to restoring only the way that the product lets you?

Thanks.

P.S. Do not, do NOT use Acronis 2016 on XP. Not only will it usually drop to a crawl 2 minutes into a restore, and randomly either crash or not 45 minutes later, but you will damage your DLL structure irreparably. Uninstall does *not* put it back as it was. This product should never, never have shown "XP" on the box because it DOES NOT WORK ON XP - at least my XP, and mine is super vanilla. I spent 30 hours (actually, more) collecting dumps and making problem reports, and they still don't even understand what their own product does. The developers don't understand the kindergarten programming concept of closing files after opening, the failure of which leads to runaway resource consumption. Can you actually believe that a SOFTWARE MAKER can't understand a concept as basic as closing files?! Anyway, DON'T USE IT ON XP.

This is such a HORRIBLE PROGRAM. I wish I had found out about the troubles people have with it before buying. I installed it, did differential backups and set it to automatically delete backups older than 2 weeks, but it never deleted anything and within a month filled the disk space. Once that happened, I was hosed and had to delete everything, uninstall True Image, reinstall, then set up new backup scripts. This time I checked frequently and saw it had done a full backup (...full.b1.tib), then the 6 differential backups, then a new full backup (....full.b2.tib), and the next several differentials, once again NOT deleting the old backup. In the ATI console, only a single backup version was listed, not 2. I tried your suggestion of manually deleting the .b1.tib backups and then recovering and saying "ignore", but then no backup was listed. Horrible, horrible documentation, horrible implementation, horrible support. This thread showing no way to manually delete old backups except bizarre workarounds cements it for me. WHAT A MESS

Oh, the second time around I told it to delete things older than 8 days, not 2 weeks.

Hello all,

Thank you very much for taking time to share your opinion. The feature to delete backups via GUI is a long-awaited one and I personally really want to see it in the next update. I've registered your feedbacks in our internal system.

Stephen, thank you for your posting! Do you still experience issues with the automatic clean up? Could you please provide screenshots of your backup settings and of your backup chain in the target location. I would recommend you to start a separate thread in Acronis True Image 2016 forum section.

Thank you,

I have used ATI for a few months and now add my own grumbles to this thread.

I agree wholeheartedly with the previous posters; the absence of a simple way to manage old backups is unbelievable. After trawling through what I could find online on this issue, and getting more and more confused (and irritated) I eventually found myself reading this thread and realised I am not alone.

I previously used Norton Ghost on my old XP boxes and it served me well. You could manage backups reasonably easily and if you wanted to archive a backup you could move or copy it with windows and browse for it for restore.  ATI on the other hand has a different concept -  it would appear you have to buy a cloud subscription!

I bought a 5 pc version of ATI as it purported to support all Windows OS from at least XP onward so I thought I would be ok with my hotchpotch of pc's including a more recent Win 8.1 (now win 10). My laptop XP backed up painlessly but after reading the post on XP issues, I am fearful that a system restore may not be wise, so bang goes one of the main reasons for buying ATI 2016!

Apart from the backup management issue I have been reasonably happy with the backup side of things but have thankfully not yet needed to do a complete system restore. I tend to use the mount/unmount facility but it is woefully slow in comparison with my previous experience with ghost which took just a few seconds to mount a backup; with TI it takes an age. Not good if you are trying to locate a version of a file but don't know the specific date when it was backed up.

Anyway, back to deleting an old backup. One of my searches online mentioned 'Acronis Management Console' with the claim it can delete individual backups. Alas I didn't get much further as I couldn't find out how to get it. Is this something you can download and if so where? Or is it built into ATI 2016 in some obscure menu option?

I'll soon be running out of HDD storage so need to do something soon. I may be forced to delete a whole backup scheme and going forward I think I'll create a new backup scheme for each month manually, then later remove any unwanted sets with the standard right click delete function. But what a palaver.

18/4/2016, 23:00

I've just read the release notes of True Image 2016 Update 2 hoping they had fixed this weakness but no such luck. However I note the admission that ATI is the cause of my not being able to use fast startup since Window 10 install. I've spent a heck of a lot of time and effort trying to fix this to no avail. Not happy. 

M Harris, 

The Fast boot item has been addressed in the forums for quite some time. It does look like it has been officially fixed with today's release though (hopefully you'l find that to be the case). Peronally, I disable it with an SSD in use.  I cannot tell the different as my computer still boots up in under 10 seconds withotu it enabled, and I have no issues as a result.  If using a spinning drive, hybrid drive, or possible a very-low-end SSD, it would make a difference with having fast boot disabled though.  I just don't like fastboot because it prevents bootable media (not just Acronis) from being detected after a "shutdown" (reboots work fine) - this is just me personally speaking though and I know there are those who want/need fastboot.  Good news is it should be fixed now.

We're all waiting for a better interface for backup management (natively).  Here are some ways you can do this without too much issue:

1) Move an entire backup chain elsewhere - that backup will always be usable with offline bootable recovery media (as long as it's not corrupted and you have the entire chain.  To reflect this manual change in Acronis, click on "validate" or "restore" and you will be greeted with messages stating that file are missing and you will be asked to locate them or ignore them.  Ignore them until the messages are all gone and that will update the database.

2) Like #1, move the backup files you want.  Delete your backup task (not the backup).  Then "add existing backup" (see screenshot).  You can navigate to an existing .tib and import it back in, modify the task and you're back in business.

3) Like #2, you can dlick the drop down carat next to an exsting backup task and select "clone settings".  This will create a new backup task with all of the same settings as the original.  Give it a unique name and destination and start it as a new job.  You can move your older backups somewhere else or delete some of them to free up space withotu impacting the newly created backup task

I get that this is not elegant, but they all work.  Hopefully the integartion will be back with 2017 as many have requested it.  The main thing I want to point out is that even though the Windows Application has a database that keeps track of changes, as long as you have all of the backup files in a single location (and the backup is good), you can move those files wherever you want and can always recover with offline bootable media, or double click the tib file and restore files/folders from Windows Explorer. 

Bobbo, thanks for responding, I will certainly take on board your comments and suggestions. Perhaps one of the issues for new users is ignorance of what the different elements of the software does. Obviously one could plough through the manual but the UI would benefit from some hover help. Also a viewable log of backup history with much more detail than the simple date version list in the 'select files and folders' in the restore option which is very clunky. Perhaps another option in the caret drop list against each backup scheme?

My other query was about the so called 'Acronis Managment Console' which I came across via a google search and through which apparently one can manage and delete individual backup chains or 'tail ends' of chains. I can't find any other reference to it in the help text. Is it an old option from a previous incarnation of TI? Or is this another name for the recovery menu?

Regrettably Fast Startup is still not working. I tick the box and the first shutdown is fast. when I next boot up the tick is gone. so frustrating.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

20/4/16 Fast Startup is working after all. Not sure why it didn't straight after the update but all's well now.

I'm trying to delete a backup from the Acronis user interface within Windows 7 and it's hanging for far too long with the word "Processing..." or "Deleting backup...". I was hoping the new version update would fix this; too soon?

I clicked End Task in Windows Task Manager and Acronis became unresponsive while shutting down. I'm going to delete that certain backup folder, and empty the recycle bin. Restart Acronis, delete the settings of that deleted backup. And now it wants to start a new backup with the name of my hard drive and send it to the Cloud when I don't have a Cloud account.

I'm going to shut down this machine, attach a larger hard drive for backups, 4.5 TB; boot into Windows 8.1 (because the USB 3.0 is much faster there) then copy all the stuff off my 3 TB backup drive. Then assign drive letters so the new drive will be the same as the old was and clear the old drive on a diferent drive letter.

Then I'll get back to making backups.

I see that behavior all the time.

I have never seen such a piece of sh*t software as this....unbelievable.  I can't find anywhere to view log...don't even know if there are logs...

What I don't get is that all this functionality people are asking for was in prior versions, it's not like this is a new piece of software that is being built for the first time.

I'm so sick of dealing with all these issues....does anyone have any experience with other backup packages?  I'm willing to just take a loss on my 'investment' to not have to deal with such an inferior piece of software.

I also had to search for the logs first: https://kb.acronis.com/content/49484

What I didn't find is a reason why anyone in his/her right mind would remove the ability to view the logs directly in the client interface.

Walter Hinden wrote:

I also had to search for the logs first: https://kb.acronis.com/content/49484 What I didn't find is a reason why anyone in his/her right mind would remove the ability to view the logs directly in the client interface.

In my sardonic opinion, this seems to be another symptom of a general trend in the Software industry to dumb down the user interface of the products to the lowest common denominator of the target users.

Another symptom is where all the newer products are migrating to the horrendeously unproductive Microsoft 'Modern UI' where there is so much white space in the display, and massively big icons, that you have to scroll to h*** and back to see or select anything, and where long lines of information, like a long path string, is truncated with dots.

I've requested and received refunds for updates to two products specifically because I hated the new 'Modern UI' concept they went to. Acronis 2016 was one of them.

I don't understand why you would *ever* remove useful features from software.  I agree, the user interface is terrible, there is no hover text, you can't tell what anything does unless you actually click it.  It also seems to be slow and unresponsive.

Speed is OK for me, I'm "just" whining about functionality :)

I can think of 2 reasons for the "dumbing down" off the top of my head, like loss of familiarity with hard to maintain code or simply cost savings in manpower, but that would only be speculation.

I any case it does not improve trust in the SW - as I said, ATI saved me twice when C: SSDs died, but it's been a few versions back, and I don't want to do restore tests on perfectly healthy systems. So no idea if it is still trustworthy. Maybe I should try to do a restore to a VM once in a while :)

I had ATIH 10, then upgraded to ATIH 13.  I came to this posting to see if I wanted to upgrade to the new 2016.

After reading about all of these rediculous changes in 2016, I am sure at this point I just want to continue using my 2013 version.                      

Tom

Tom

If you upgraded to Windows 10, only 2016 or 2015 works with Win10.

To GoverH and others:

I have ATI13 Home and I am using it and it works fine with
Windows 10.  You just get a message when you load it tht the app might not work with Windows 10.  Just close that out and go on normally

and everything works.

This is for information only.

Tom

Tom,

Do test your restores to make sure Win10 will be restored as planned.

This program is ridiculous. No matter which type of backup I choose (incremental versus differential), automatic cleanup will not work and within 2-3 weeks my backup drive is out of space because the older chains won't be cleaned up by ATI 2016.  And then to be told I need to (hopefully if I'm lucky based on what I'm seeing above) delete the older backups by using *bootable media* is ridiculous and not simply from within ATI 2016 running on my PC.

Why even have "automatic cleanup"?  Is this just some dummy checkbox put in by your programmers to anger me more?

Chris,

It works - I use it all the time.  I can't really say in your case as we have no information to go on as to your settings.  full screenshots of each of your tabs would help.  a full screenshot of what you see in Windows file explorer for this backup would help.  providing some of your service.logs would help too.  You can grab MVP FTRPilot's log viewer to see if it sheds any light and/or upload some of the service logs instead for review. The link to the log viewer is down below in this post. 

Hello Ekaterina,

you wrote 2016-04-04:
Thank you very much for taking time to share your opinion. The feature to delete backups via GUI is a long-awaited one and I personally really want to see it in the next update. I've registered your feedbacks in our internal system.

I am currently testing version 2017 of TrueImage and can not find a function to delete backup versions via GUI. So it has done nothing at all, because the help still says the same as in version 2016 (beginning of this thread).
Where is the problem? The possibility of deleting parts of a backup has already existed in an earlier version of TrueImage (before 2016)! This is simply a massive reason not to buy this software, because it is only very uncomfortable to use.

Sven

Hello Anyone,

I would like to know if there is a way to delete old back-ups made with a PASSWORD....when you have forgotten the PASSWORD

Kurt, you should be able to delete the old backup image file using Windows Explorer and then navigate to C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Scripts and look at each of the .TIS files in turn with Notepad until you find the one for your deleted backup task - then delete that .TIS file which will remove it from the list of tasks in the GUI.

Thank You Steve,    I moved the file to a different folder without any problem other than Acronis saying Windows Explr. was attempting to change it.  I deleted the file however, the size on the back-up disk did not show the files were deleted considering their were 850GB off back-ups deleted.   I then tried to delete with CrapCleaner.. CCleaner and it would not remove the deleted files from the (deleted file folder)  So I then turned off my internet, Then in Acronis NG, I turned off protect my files and or computer from ransomeware,  then I used CCleaner again and it worked and my back-up drive size showed the files gone.

I then tried your other way first where you said to try and restore and then ignore.

I noticed when you IGNORE Acronis puts an ORANGE circle up on the name of the Back-up,  so when you see that , stop and turn off Acronis and restart then the Back-up is gone...    At least this is what happened in my case.   I believe the deleted files were both encrypted and Password protected files.

Kurt, glad to hear that you have been able to solve the issue of deleting these files you wanted to remove.

Side-comment re restore from cloud:

Have same problems as everyone else re old backups.  I'm using a local backup for my smaller system SSD and the backup disk is full, so I'll probably just delete and start over. I'm also backing the SSD in the Acronis Cloud so I won't lose any files, but...

When I had a disk failure on my SSD (which thankfully turned out to be non-fatal) I executed a full restore from the Acronis Cloud to a spare disk and it took more than 8 hours.  We're talking 250Gb, not Tb's.  I have a fast FIOS connection, so I'm pretty sure that this was slow coming out of the Acronis servers.

Cheers!

Ed

Ed, welcome to these user forums.

Glad to hear that you were able to restore your SSD from the Cloud, even though it took over 8 hours to do so.  Guess that is still a lot quicker than the alternative of having to start over with a fresh Windows install but still a whole lot slower than using a local backup.

The key point with the Acronis servers is to ensure that you have chosen the one nearest to where you are in terms of geography.  A full list of the Cloud access points is given in KB 4350: Acronis Backup to Cloud Access Ports and Hostnames

I can't believe that the option to delete backup sets still has't been reintroduced in 2017.

I configure True Image to keep only a limited number of backup chains, which it consistently ignores. Then when my NAS runs out of disk space I have to deal with this nonsense. Last time I manually deleted files and got rewarded with constant error messages about missing files, so I figured I'd follow these instructions for a change.

I'v been at it for almost 4 hours now. Having to use the recovery media is ridiculous, but fine... The application is still searching for backups in God knows what places. No way to see progress, no way to cancel except for the pull-the-plug option. Before I tried "Refresh Backups" button I tried manually browsing to the NAS which was ridiculously slow, repainting a single file name row in the dialog every second when I tried to scroll through it... all because you can't be arsed to put the delete option back in?

Don't even get me started on all the other problems with True Image, but this is really intolerable. Please put back the option to delete backups, and make automatic cleanup actually clean up stuff while you're at it :(

Marcel, this is just a user forum therefore your request for Acronis to put back options to delete backups into the application GUI is unlikely to reach the product developers / designers unless you submit this via the Feedback tool in the GUI.

There are options to delete backup tasks in the GUI which includes deleting all the files for those backups, but that is a little like taking a sledgehammer to crack a small nut.

The automatic cleanup rules have always worked fine for me, including for backups that I store on my own NAS, so I wonder if you are not understanding how these cleanup rules actually work in practise?

My preference with cleanup rules is to use the option to "Store no more than 2 recent version chains" where each version chain will consist of an initial Full backup file and 5 Incremental or Differential backup files.  The automatic cleanup rule will only delete the oldest version chain after the 3rd version chain has been successfully started by creating the next Full backup file.

Deleting the backup task would be hugely impractical indeed, but it may actually be the best option; after cloning the settings that is. Problem is that gets rid of all backups, so I would have to clone the settings, deschedule the old backup, schedule the cloned one, then delete the old one a month or so later.

The cleanup rules haven't worked properly for me since at least version 11.0, but back then I could at least do it manually. I have it set as you decribe, 5 incrementals, keep 2 chains. Yet when I look at the files, it currently had 6 full chains on disk. Another backup is even worse, it's set to keep 60 days worth of backups but somehow manages to have 7 full chains, each with 6 incrementals on a weekly backup scheme. By my math, 49 weeks is significantly more than 60 days.

Sorry, I'm just incredibly frustrated by the whole thing. To make things worse, I moved this whole recovery media thing to a laptop in order to be able to actually do something with my PC, and while trying to boot from the USB drive the SSD boot disk seems to have fried itself. Awesomesauce :P

I have switched from Acronis because of its bloat and no delete option.  However, when I used it I found the following workaround that seemed to work.

1. Use WIndows to delete the files you no long need.

2. Use acronis to "verify" the latest backup. It will ask you to search for missing backups (those deleted) or ignore. I just say ignore and it goes through each one until it starts the verification process. I then cancel the verification process.  

Not very elegant but it worked in 2016 version for me using differential backup scheme.

I wish i had seen some of these comments from users of Acronis rather than the lying "reviewers" i read online.

Yes let's be clear Acronis backup software is not fit for purpose. Taking money for a product that is unfit for purpose is fraudulent. It is unintuitive, incapable of functioning as useful software and has wasted my time.If this software was a car, it would have no steering wheel, it would only go around right turns, it would sometimes brake, sometimes it would go faster. To start the ignition you would have to find a toolbox each time.

DO NOT BUY THIS SOFTWARE

I will never buy another acronis product and I will do my best to advise others to avoid it. What amazes me is how this awful product can be where it is. There is something wrong with how products such as this can be allowed.

Shame on you Acronis.

Acronis backup is bad software

Acronis backup is awful software

Acronis should stop selling this software

Dear Stephen,

thank you for finding the time to let us know about the issue. I'm very sorry to know about your bad experience with our software. Our development team is constantly working on implemention of new enhancements and requested features, as well as on the fixing known issues. If you give us a second chance I promise that we will do our best to address all your questions and make sure the software is properly configured to meet your particular scenario for the data protection. Please send me a private message, if you agree to let us open a support ticket and investigate the issue or just reply to this thread.

Looking forward to your reply!

I bought specically a 4TB external HD to use ATI 2016 and after 2 months it's just full and ATI is just telling me "backup failed" because the backup HD is full! Still no automatic cleaning working! I bought a software to manage my backups and I endup to have to it manually! I'm not a beginner but I refuse to spend my precious time to figure out the way to circomvent ATI intolerable weakenesses. I have a hard time to understand how ATI is still leader in its category, may be there is no real competitor? This is a very poor software, not worth the money asked for.

Dallas75, welcome to these User Forums.

Sorry to read of your problem with getting automatic cleanup working but too little information to be able to suggest why this may be for you.

My own experience is that automatic cleanup does work fine and has done so for me across all of the recent versions that I have been using.

If you wish to try to resolve this issue, then please provide more details of how your Backup Scheme is configured or provide screen shots of the panels involved.

The key point that I have found is that setting the Backup Scheme to be Custom and then selecting the type of scheme from the lower list box works for me.

Thanks Steve,

Here's a screen shot of my settings

Thanks for the screenshot - you have configured to 'Create only differential versions after the initial full backup' and therefore there is no option shown for 'Automatic cleanup' as this is not possible with this type of backup scheme.

Automatic cleanup works on completed backup version chains but your settings mean that your version chain is never completed - you have opted to create only the initial full backup then to keep creating differential backups for ever after, all as part of the same version chain.

If you want to use automatic cleanup, then you need to use a different scheme by selecting the option below the one selected in your image, to create a new full backup after X differential backups.

Following your advice, does it will avoid to saturated my 4 TB HD ?

Thanks for your help