Failed to open backup atis:///asz(CC2ECF31-A45C-25DD-BB0C-1A598A7C7868)

Stop using the task, and create a new one. The existing task is looking for an non-existant backup file and will never find it.
You may have to move the old backup files out of the Secure Zone to get started with your new task.

This is not a satisfactory solution because it puts the particular computer, with its very critical data at risk for a catastrophe. It may be a small risk, but this particular customer is extraordinarily dependent upon his data and a data loss for even a short period will put him out of business. Money is in a seriously short supply otherwise he could just buy an external drive and back up to it until the ASZ is reconstituted.

My intuition tells me that there is some data file that could be deleted and then regenerated automatically to clear this up.

If you or anyone could assist in this matter, I would appreciate it it on his behalf.

To check if that file exists, temporarily allocate the ASZ a drive letter. You will probably find that there is no tib file with that sequence, if there isn't but ther tib files are there, you can check for restorability by removing the drive letter and seeing if under the recovery tab these images are recognised,.

If they are recognised, then, remake the task, the images won't be removed so long as you only select the delete task option.

Is the SZ running short of space, this could cause consolidation attempts that fail leaving orphaned information in the task file.

Thank you Collin, I will try that. I am not sure it is necessary because under Windows 8 it actually shows up under devices and can migrate to each of the folders, which I did.

As long as the deletion of the task does not delete the files, then I can run a new backup using a new task, and then delete the old filers as soon as it is all backed up. I will let you know how everything works out.

albert

I have the same problem and the responses on this page are not helpful. I know what file it's looking for, and that file no longer exists because ATI, using an "Automatic Cleanup" rule, only keeps the last two versions of the backup in the secure zone (it can probably hold three).

System information: ATI Home 2013, Win 7 Pro 64-bit

I've been struggling with this since December when I set up this new computer. I never had this problem before, with two previous versions of ATI on my old XP system, or an even older version on a Win2000 system.

Here's the thing: the backup is a FULL backup - therefore, the software has NO NEED to access older versions in order to complete the current job. The software should know this.

The above solution means that I would have to create a new task every other day. That's not acceptable!

But it gets worse. If I ever wanted to restore from the ASZ, I would have to click on "ignore this version" for ALL of this missing versions that the program had eliminated, but thinks it needs. 30 days from now, that's 28 versions, thus 28 clicks. Six months from now, it's 178 versions - that's 178 mouse clicks on "Ignore This Version" before I could restore from the latest version! OMG - are you kidding me?

The ASZ backup is only one of three backups that I perform for my business. I back up my data every day onto a thumb drive that gets restored to my laptop every night (the laptop mirrors my desktop at work). I also do a full backup weekly to an external drive that I keep off site. My daily mirror into the Secure Zone is a third line of defense against sudden system corruption, and I once used it when my OS totally crashed, and I was back up and running in 45 minutes. By contrast, I have never had to retrieve my external drive for an emergency restore (knock on wood).

Please advise - this searching for old versions when I'm trying to perform a completely new full backup is not acceptable - it seems like a serious software bug to me. If this is not fixed, this is the last time I will be purchasing ATI, a product I have owned and used for at least 8 years.

As you know, I had the same problem. This was the solution as suggested by Colin B and the cause in my case.

I had manually deleted the first backup. I believe there must be a .dat (or equivalent) file someplace. In that file the software must keep track of every backup it does. When I manually deleted one of those backups, that file was now out of synch with what was in the ASZ. I deleted the backup job that had been giving the error. None of the backups were deleted, only the backup job.

In the Backup and Recovery Tab, I told it to Browse for Backups and pointed the explorer at the ASZ. Now I created a new Backup job. Ran the backup and the error went away. I too keep a limited number of Backup chains (Full and Incremental in my case) and all has worked perfectly since.

I would be curious if you too had or continue to manually delete a backup, after which the backups failed. In reality, I believe that it does need to find all the old backups for which it has a record. In order to give us the flexibility for different backup rules, it has to be able to count correctly. The failure is really a warning that it cannot guarantee the rule is being followed correctly.

Yes, they could have made this more elegant by giving you the correct error message and embedding into Acronis a method for automatically correcting it. Perhaps they will someday. It has been a criticism of this product, which I happen to use exclusively in my company and sell to a rather small audience, that Acronis has been a bit sloppy with the details of this sort. It is such a complex system for backup and assorted other functions but when used regularly and each problem in turn resolved, is really a very excellent one. I have tried and tested and sold all the various home/small office products in the market place, and this is the best of them because the restore function works so well and without hassle.

Please stay in touch with your results because i get all messages related to all my present and former posts.

You are right. The software tries to keep track of past version in the database.xml file located in C:\programdata\Acronis\TrueImage\Database
When the product gets confused, on a regular partition, it is easy to delete that file and get rid of pesky update issues. In the case of the ASZ, there i no way to navigate there except through ATI.

Hi Pat, and thanks for the response. This sounds like a bug to me! If I engage the Automatic Cleanup feature, it should automatically eliminate references to automatically-deleted versions!

I navigated to the program folders as you indicated, but there is no file named database.xml in the \Database folder. There IS a file named archives.xml, dated this morning (which is when I arrived at work, cancelled the hangup from the night before, as usual, thus allowing the backup job to complete). Maybe this is the one I should delete?  I'm going to go ahead and try it tonight, before I run the job. It's just an xml file, it can't hurt anything, and if it does, I'll just start from scratch. Yet again.

If I knew how to write scripts, I bet I could create a pre-operation line command to delete this file each time - maybe I'll have to finally figure that one out.

Jan

Hi Al - Thanks for your comprehensive response. My problem is that I am only running Full backups in the ASZ, and naturally it does not have space for more than two or three, so I engaged the "Automatic Cleanup" feature which keeps only two versions and deletes earlier ones.

I can create a new backup job which works fine for two days. On the third day, the backup hangs up, looking for the first job, which was just automatically deleted to make room for the third job. The backup itself is fine - it's done, but the finalization of the job hangs up, looking for the archive, which means that my computer is on (and fully "awake") all night long. In the morning, I come in and click "Cancel" at which point the program sends me my "successful backup" email, and starts to shut down my PC, which it was supposed to do 14 hours earlier.

The Automatic Cleanup feature should automatically clean up the related archive record, but it doesn't, and that's a pretty big oversight. It was interesting to read your take on this. It does seem to me that the True Image product has become more and more complicated over the years, until now the development team can't keep track of the various features and their interactions.

I use different backup software for the daily incremental data backup to my flash drive (which gets restored to my laptop every day). That's because, due ENTIRELY to this irritating and apparently inexorable search for prior versions, I was unable to make ATI work for a simple daily incremental data backup and restore.

I do like ATI for the Secure Zone feature - I like having that daily mirror image - as I mentioned, I actually did use it once for a fatal OS crash.

Thanks for the information and the empathy :^)

Jan

I am going to try this on my computer and get back to you as Full backups only.
I will do a couple of backups and a third on the same day so that I will be able to get back to you quickly.
You are welcome of course!
Albert

Yes, I get the same error!
It does not seem to happen when there is an incremental backup. But this is a bug!
The logs are attached. I will report this as a bug.

I have just reported this To Customer service. We will see how long it takes to get a reply.
I provided a link to this conversation, confirmed the bug and asked them for a reply. A new case 01844453 has been created.
I will let you know when and if i hear.
Albert

It's nice to know I'm not being unreasonable :^)

Thanks, Albert!

Jan

Pat (and Albert): I did delete the archives.xml file that was in the Database subfolder, and my backup completed and properly shut down my computer without any errors. I was able to navigate to last night's backup and see all the files and folders backed up. Initially the Explorer only showed last night's backup, but I was able to add the previous night's backup to the backup list and then view those files and folders.

There is, of course, a new archives.xml file, which I will need to remember to delete every couple of days. Or learn how to write a script to delete it before every backup. It's on my to-do list.  and I just wrote a .bat file to delete it as a pre-backup command.  Easy!

Jan

Jan, thank you.
Do you know what the purpose of that XML file is?
Can it be deleted via a script in the before backup setting within the TIH program?
Albert

I would caution against deleting the xml file if TI is not showing or complaining about orphan tasks. The xml file is part of the database that TI uses.

Albert, I think the purpose, as Pat alluded to (although the file name he suggested does not exist) is to keep track of the previous versions, which is necessary if you've set up an incremental scheme. I did add my bat file to the pre-job command line in ATI, which allows you to test the script, and it worked fine (I restored the deleted file from the Recycle bin to test it).

Colin, the program IS complaining about missing files - and hangs up the job - that's exactly my problem. Albert agrees that I have encountered a flaw in the software. ATI is trying to monitor versions as if the scheme is incremental, even though my scheme is FULL versions with automatic cleanup. I have a good reason for doing it this way, and many years of doing it successfully until I upgraded to ATI 2013.

I have rebuilt this backup scheme many times in the last two months, trying different settings to get this to work. Pat's suggestion seems to solve the problem with very little effort on my part, esp. once I wrote a simple script for it. I will know in the next couple of days if this solution will continue to work for me until or unless the program flaw is fixed.

Jan

Hi everyone above me in this list. I finally got this problem escalated to the senior technicians who can solve the problem. The person, whose name is Ruth Rathnakar
Support Professional
Acronis Customer Central
Verified the problem on her computer.

I identified the value of this Forum being monitored by Acronis, and suggested that Acronis develop a better procedure for people like me to more quickly get the attention of people who would solve problems more quickly. After all, I was trying to help you all deal with this annoyance and Acronis should value it.

Anyway, here is what she said:
Below is the workaround that can be followed until we find a permanent fix:
--> Create a new backup with the same settings to the Acronis Secure Zone:
Scheme: Full backup
Automatic deletion is set to 'Store no more than 2 recent version change'
--> Run the 1st two backup (which does complete successfully normal).
--> Initiate the 3rd backup, upon backup completion, when the application has to perform the cleanup rule (retention rule), the application will throw the error "Failed to open backup atis:///asz(...............)
--> Click 'Cancel'
--> The backup will complete and the application will report as 3 versions backed up.
(*In the Acronis Secure Zone, you will find only 2 backup archives)
--> Then Click 'Recover'; you will get the warning message “Cannot find version 1, then when you need click 'Ignore this version' ".
--> You can then cancel the recovery screen.
--> Then you can start running the backups, you will not get the same message going forward.

* The above steps were duplicated from our end.

Albert, for us to provide you with the permanent solution, we will require some logs and information from your machine:
a) Acronis System Report
http://kb.acronis.com/content/34324
b) The process monitor log, during the issue
http://kb.acronis.com/content/2295
c) Where is the Acronis Secure Zone created.

Please comment back to me if I can be of additional help to you. A case number has been assigned. It is RE: [01844454] Backups fail if Backup=full and cleanup set [ ref:_00D30Zcb._50050KIiWw:ref ]

Stick with Acronis everyone, they do fix problems when the appropriate person is identified at the company. They have a really great product line.
Albert

Thank you for doing all this, Albert. My temporary fix from above worked for a while, then I started getting the messages again, and the non-shut-down hangups overnight. I'm ready to try this workaround. I did my first clean backup from a new scheme last night (Tuesday night). "Full scheme, Keep 2 Versions" is my preferred scheme anyway. On Friday morning I should arrive at work to discover the third backup waiting for my input, so I will perform the workaround steps as described, and I should find out on Saturday morning whether the fourth backup occurred without hangup. And since it's tax season, I will be coming in on Saturday :^)

Jan

Good news - the workaround proposed by Ruth Rathnakar is working for me. My daily mirror image backups are behaving the way they should: completing without error messages, shutting down my machine after they are completed, and keeping just two full version on hand at any time, which are both easily accessible for restoration procedures without having to click through a bunch of "ignore this version" messages.

Thank you!

Jan

I am really happy for you Jan. Thank you for sticking through the month of effort.

I am also happy that Acronis has learned that this Forum and those of us who follow it are a good source of information.

I have used and sold Acronis products and their prime competitor's products for more than 10 years. Though it sometimes takes a lot of persistence on my part, Acronis tends to solve problems more quickly and without blaming the user.

I suspect that their next Home product will be released soon (because of their many purchase incentives), and that this problem will be internally solved.

Thank you Acronis!
Albert