Need direction on restoring data - 4 GB file split issues
It's a long story - aren't they all. I started using TI '09 when my wife bought a new laptop - backing up a disk image to a 1 TB NAS on the network, and then allowing regular automatic backups to happen.
We adopted a son from China, and prior to travel in Jan of 2010 I made a new image of her laptop to an external USB drive that traveled with us, just in case something bad happened to her laptop hard disk. Once back in country I let the laptop return to it's regular automatic incremental backup process.
In October this year The good news for me is that a couple months ago that NAS failed and I replaced it with a new 1 TB NAS that also can be used as and external USB drive. I ran a new disk image of my wife's laptop at that time, and configured TI 9 to run on a regular basis again. I should have upgraded to TI 10 at that time - my bad - but I was lazy.
A couple weeks ago her laptop hard disk failed. Still covered by warranty it was replaced - and I attempted to restore the image and incremental backups since then.
I've had nothing but file I/O errors and volume not found messages since. I was sucessful in restoring the pre-china trip image with TI 09, but the new image and incremental backups are the ones causing the error messages.
I checked the contents of the NAS, and I have .tib files for each backup that was run - unless the backup was larger than 4 GB in size. On those occasions I have a directory with the correct incremental file name that ends .tib, and within that directory I have a number of files beginning with a file name of "1" and ending with as high a number as necessary to complete the backup. Of course each of those files is 4 GB in size.
Obviously TI 09 split the backup files to deal with the FAT 32 4 GB file size limitation. My bad on that as well - I should have noted this and either re-formatted the NAS to NTFS, or done something else. However - I have backups recently enough to recover 99% of her data and can't access them.
I've researched what I could here and I can't see the answer - what do I need to do to tell TI 09 that the missing volumes are the directories that are present on his disk?
Of course I have no logs - they went with the failed hard disk.
TIA - aus
Be happy to - it'll take me a couple hours to get home and make the update.
OK - in response to your question - the screen shots are attached - and the build is 9796.
The full disk image was titled 9-2010 (month and year of run), and that directory contains about 40 files, but you can see the first incremental backup (9-20102.tib) was small enough to not need the file split. I included the third screen shot as an example of a directory that contains only 2 files as there was a total of about 6 GB of data to backup.
Thoughts about how to direct the restore feature to see the directories as tib files?
TIA - aus
I've never seen TI split files like that. I suspect that the NAS did the splitting. Can you test this by copying a file larger than 4GB to the NAS and see if it splits it? The NAS would need to be connected on the LAN to do this (not USB).
Can you "copy" the "folder-file" from the NAS (Backup 09-2010.tib, for example) to a local drive (formatted NTFS) and have the NAS supply the file as "one" piece? In other words, is there a way to access the NAS that allows you to see the file as a whole? Note that the access method may be different when connected via the LAN instead of USB. I think you would need a LAN connection to try this. The screenshots look like they are from a USB connection.
If that doesn't work, I would try combining the splits into one file (each folder would be one file) and then seeing if TI could access it. Note that each filename of the splits would need to be correct (a merging of the folder names and the single-file backups) and they would all need to exist in the same folder. Help can be provided for this, if necessary.
That was my first thought too - but then I found this in the KB
http://kb.acronis.com/content/2808
that talks about TI splitting the files to cope with FAT 32 format disks. I haven't had the opportunity to copy the files from the NAS to an NTFS disk - that's on my list of things to try- but I backed off of it when I found that article. However - any research I've done in the KB's etc - hasn't told me what to do when TI fails to see the data as a tib file.
It has been a long time since I tried to combine file like that - I'm all ears for suggestions - I did that back in DOS days - but not since.
Thoughts and thanks
That article refers to standard FAT32 local partitions. Some NAS devices do their own splitting to handle large files. This is handled internally and is supposed to be transparent to the connecting device (the computer doesn't know about it). The type of split files TI makes do not resemble what you're showing (at least not for local splits).
I would try connecting as a NAS first and see what happens. If it works, that's going to be the easiest solution.
I've followed your advice - and I'm cautiously optimistic! At least TI now sees all the data as it should.
I would never have thought that a device such as this would massage the data one way as a NAS and massage it differently as a USB drive. Silly me expecting some consistancy (frankly - the NAS is less than a year old - I would have thought it would be in NTFS not FAT).
Regardless - TI is deciding how it's going to do it's restore as I type this, I've been able to mount the data as a virtual volume as well so even if I don't get all the nuance stuff I'll get the important data very readily. It's just a shame that the restore will take a good long while to run over the network. Maybe this can be by moment to move up to Gbit ethernet here at the house....
I'll report back my final results - thank you!
aus
A lot of NAS devices run Linux and don't support NTFS internally in their drives. They may use Ext3, for example.
Gigabit is well worth it. It's quite a bit faster than USB 2. Highly recommended.
Hello,
Sorry to bump this thread, but I have the exact same problem :
I backed all of my data to my NAS, and now that I'm trying to restore it,
I can't because my *.tib files > 4 GB are splitted into 4GB files names 0, 1, 2 etc
into a folder named .tib
My problem is, when I try to access my backups through USB or FTP, I see the folders
and the 0, 1, 2 etc files into them, and when I try to access them through the
network (UNC), I see the *.tib files but I can't copy them nor open them...
Is there some free utility available to "join" the *.tib parts?
Thanks in advance!
If the backup location uses a file system that doesn't support files larger than 4 GB (which is the case with FAT32, etc.) then there's nothing you can do. This is not an Acronis issue.