Incremental Backup Created New Full Backup - Why?
Hello To All:
I have Acronis True Image Home 2010 Edition. In my computer are three hard drives - one for OS and programs, one for data, and one for my incremental backups. The drives for data and incremental backups are both 500 GB each.
On September 3, 2010, I configured a daily incremental backup to copy data from one 500GB drive to the other. On that day, my full backup of nearly 175GB was created. Every day after that, there were much smaller backups averaging 100MB each. And so, as time moved forward, my backup drive was slowly filling with data. This is exactly what I expected.
On October the 18th, however, the backup seems to have created a new full backup of 187GB worth of data. I could understand this if I had moved all of my data to a new drive or changed the drive letter of the data drive, but none of that happened. Nothing changed. I'm not sure what caused Acronis to believe that none of my data had been previously backed up. And now, as you can imagine, my backup drive is nearly full. I'd like to go back and delete the backups prior to the 18th to free up some much needed space, but I have no way of confirming that the backup on the 18th was in fact a full backup. If I delete the data prior to that date, it's quite possible my restoration of data would fail.
If Acronis did create a new full backup, why did it not also delete the old data? I can't find an option for this when editing the task. I then thought maybe the software creates a new backup once a month, but the last full backup was on the 3rd and the new one is on the 18th of the following month so I know that isn't the case.
Is Acronis creating new full backups from time to time? If so, how do I know when they'll happen? And even further, how can I tell the software to delete the old backups when it creates a new full backup? Is that an option?
If this was just a glitch, I'm afraid I'll have to wipe my data and reconfigure a new scheduled task and start from scratch. If I don't figure this out soon, my backup drive will be full.
Any and all information will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Magus
After typing my last post, only minutes ago, I hopped back into the software to see what my restore options are looking like now that strange things happened on the 18th. It acutally lists the backup of the 18th as a full backup and the backups after that as incrementals. OK, I can still restore my data which makes me feel safe, but I can't understand why it created a new full backup and I can't figure out why it didn't delete the old data. Any ideas?
Recheck your consolidation options. This example shows you where to look but you need to adjust to your own settings.
I know that all of my consolidation options are turned off. If I need to enable those to prevent this in the future, I'll need to research these options as I'm not quite sure how they work.
Thanks for the reply. I've got it from here.
Thanks,
Magus
what are you wanting TrueImage to do? Once a full is created, on many incremental backups are you wanting to keep before a new full is created.
Are you wanting only to keep only the most current backup set?
I want it to create a full backup and then ONLY incrementals after that. If it HAS TO create a new full backup from time to time, I'd like it to remove the old full backup and old incremental backups AFTER the new full backup is created.
In short, I want to look at my backup drive and see one full backup and an incremental backup for each day after that - not one full backup, several incrementals, and then ANOTHER full backup followed by new incrementals.
Thanks,
Magus
In my opinion, unlimited incremental backups is not a safe practice. If any of the early incremental backup files become corrupt, then all the newer backups are useless. Conversely, the differential type backup does not have this limitation. All that is needed to restore a differential backup is the first full plus any differential from any day.
Having only one copy of your backups is not a safe practice. If your base becomes corrupt, you have no backups.
Another option would be to create to continue daily incremental (or differential) and create a new full after x number of incremental backups. X could equal either 7, 10 or 14 but remember the more incremental backups you have, the less safe your chances of restoring becomes.
I suggest that you stash a full complete backup (all partitions) away for safe keeping on another disk or online, etc.
Here is an attachment showing how to set the options to keep 1 chain of backups. The chain comprises 1 full plus 10 incremental's. When the chain gets full, another is created and deletes the prior chain. Change the 10 incremental's to a number of your choice keeping in mind the safety factor mentioned above.
There is also an option to keep the first full backup which would be an additional backup not considered in the consolidation.
Most likely the original set became orphaned and that's why the database isn't "counting" the old ones and made a new full. Did you edit the task settings before the new full was made?
Scott:
Thanks for the reply.
As a matter of fact, I did recently make a change. I changed the password to my Windows account. The task was set to run as me so I had to change the password in there as well. I'm not sure what day that was, but if making changes to a task orphans the old data sets, then I'm sure that's what happened.
I've already deleted my old backup data freeing up almost half of the space on my backup drive. The new backups are running as planned.
Thanks for the information.
Magus
Other than the task-edit/orphan prob, you should be able to do what you want. Make a full, incs afterwards and at a user set number of incs, consolidate the incs into a full and then start making new incs. Also you can set ati2011 to not remove the original full backup. I think the settings are flexible enough to get you what you want. Take note of Grover's caustion though about having too long a chain of incs. If one bit is bad in any of the backups (full or incs) in a set, the backup set might be unusable, at least, unusable for the file that has the bad bit. Normally, the bits will all be alright, but you press the odds as the backup set gets bigger -- good reason to save more than one backup set, in any event.