Issues with consolidation
Hello,
Consolidation seems to have errors or problems on my configuration of True Image 2013.
I have a backup configuration, doing a backup every hour of my D: drive to my external USB connected Western Digital K: drive of 3TB. The full backup image is about 480GB. I have configured an incremental image scheme, and it should create a full backup every 4 incremental images. That all seems to work.
What does not work, seems to be the consolidation scheme ... It should keep a maximum of 5 versions on my disk.
I have run this scheme without interference on my PC yesterday, and consolidation gives errors and simply does not work.
There are two things that i see:
1. I have 13 files on my K:, the backup location. In the True Image 2013, it only shows 12 versions????
2. When i select consolidate from the True Image 2013 menu of the backup, it shows only 2 versions to consolidate???
What seems to be the problem here?
Find the Acronis True Image report attached...
Sven
| Fichier attaché | Taille |
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| acronissystemreport.zip | 4.24 Mo |
| backup_has_only_12_versions.jpg | 160.87 Ko |
| consolidation_shows_only_2_versions.jpg | 79.54 Ko |
| backup_shows_13_files_on_my_k_drive.jpg | 160.71 Ko |
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Report is attached with backup schedules etc included.
The root cause of this issue is a bug. Several of them actually.
For the version problem: don't know what caused it, but it shouldn't have happened, should it?
I have indeed been running the schedule also on demand, but that should also work without errors, I guess...
Was testing out the backup retention, because it was unclear for me what it would to with my backup files.
Note that i had set my retention of my backups to 5 versions.
Unfortunately, the pile of files was building up to 13 files already, with the version problem in the last files.
It should have kept to 5 files, shouldn't it?
I have deleted all my backups by now. Could not recover from the version problem. I deleted the file and then the True Image started to give errors. Could not recover from there...
Sven
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I setup a file backup (with a small amount of files), and configure automatic cleanup as follows:
1. Incremental backup
2. Create a full version every 4 backups. (So, every 5th would be a full backup).
3. Turn-on automatic cleanup, where i select the option to have a maximum of 5 versions kept.
As a result, the versions seem to pile-up.
No automatic consolidation seems to happen.
See the screenshots for details:
- Overview of backup configuration
- File on backup location as a result
- Backup settings window (showing the versioning settings)
System report is attached. This backup was done to my USB drive. No NAS involved.
You can try this also out yourself on your own PC, and observe what happens. I am interested to get your views on this ...
best regards, Sven
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Okay, found it out myself now ...
A version chain is not a version. A version chain is a combination of a full version with "x" incremental or differential versions.
So, if you register that you want to keep "y" version chains, it will create "y" full backups with "x"*"y" versions...
And it would clean-up the oldest version chain if there would be more than "y" version chains...
So, i noticed that the software does not really consolidate versions, it rather deletes the version chains. Nothing more.
What happens when i set the version clean up constraint on days? Would it then consolidate? Or, would it also delete the oldest version chain?
(Trying this out now, but this takes some time...)
I am still not clear however how this duplicate version happened (see first post). I was consoidating versions manually, and that may have interfered with the logic version chain logic ...
Sven
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Sven,
When TI consolidates you should see the incremental/differential files all melded together with the full, so you will end up with just one full file. With your setup after you have 5 sets of consolidated fulls they will be deleted after a new full image has been made.
Note, your drive must have enough space to accomodate the size of all 5 archives plus the size of one full archive.
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Sven,
in ATI you have 2 different things:
- one is autocleanup: this feature deletes older versions once the retention criteria are reached. Note that ATI will always do a new full backup before deleting any older full or chain.
- the other one is autoconsolidation. This is the same operation that is available manually. Autoconsolidation "edits and appends" data from different TIB files to create a new one. This editing happens on a temporary file. If the temporary file is successfully created, the implicated files are deleted, the temporary file is renamed and the rest of the files are renamed to get a consistent new chain. So autoconsolidation needs a lot of space of the temporary file.
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Thanks gents for the feedback.
Colin, no comments on your feedback. thanks.
Pat, thank you also.
On your point number one, it deletes a complete version chain when it reaches the retention criteria.
On your point number two, where can i find the option for "auto consolidation", because i found only the manual consolidation till now.
Actually, i like a lot the version chain backup method. But, i can't simulate this using the different options defining a "custom" backup.
Sven
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Please find attached a picture of the autoconsolidation setting. Note that you have to have the radio button on "always do incrementals after the first full"
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Thanks for the feedback. I believe something could be improved in the product in terms of functionality.
When you have a backup scheme with differential backups, the automatic version cleanup logic could be improved. Let me explain ...
A differential version always keeps the difference between the source contents, and the full version of the backup it is comparing with.
In that respect, there is no dependency of differential versions with previous differential versions. The only dependency is with full versions.
The automatic cleanup will clean a complete version chain (thus full + differential versions) in case a quota or retention rule is reached. That has the consequence, that i will loose all my differential versions and my full version when a quota has reached. Fe, if i do a daily differential backup, and one full per week, i will loose a whole week of backups when quota has reached.
There is however a more nice way to clean up versions in case of differential versions, it could only clean the oldest differential version, and keep the others. This can be done, because there is no dependency to previous versions, only to the full version. In that respect, it could keep more recent versions to the end-user. Only when there would be only one differential versions to be deleted, then the full version (base) would also need to be deleted.
In case of incremental versions, this function is rather more difficult to implement... One just cannot delete an incremental version in between.
best regards,
Sven
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