"Last Backup Failed" Removable USB drive HELP
Hello:
We have a new Windows 7 64bit PC running True Image Home 2011. It has two backup jobs with two separate targets to hold the backup. One backup is a hard disk that is permanently attached to the system. The other is a USB hard disk that gets removed for off-site storage. The off-site storage drive is connected and the job is manually initiated to complete a full backup (overwriting other images).
When we connect the external drive and open True Image to complete a backup, it tells me the backup is corrupt. A second status message pops up beneath the main job windows telling me the backup failed.
When I check the backup log, I do not see any errors. When I look at the off-site drive content, it seems to have everything on it.
Keep in mind, I have a second scheduled backup job that opens acronis and runs on a seperate drive (no errors).
Could True Image somehow looking for the off-site drive when the other backup jobs runs and generating an erroneous error?
Is there an option to tell Acronis that the backup target is a removable HD and not to get upset if it's not connected.
Thanks for your help.,
Kevin
Kevin,
If you are using 2011, you can safely ignore the banners hanging off the backup tasks. They are at best out of sync with reality. The truth is in the log. If you have doubts about your backup integrity, validate it.
There is no option to tell Acronis not to backup when the disk is not connected. It is not a problem if a schedule backup fails (it doesn't damage the backup chain)
Pat L ===> A good backup and validation does not guarantee that a restore will even be possible. To validate a restore, you must test the restore as well. I had a ticket opened for 7 months, and they tried, but never found a fix for my specific problem. So do not assume that a validated backup will work. I did, and will never do it again. There is a problem lurking in their code somewhere.
Terry,
The cases where a restore fails after a validation succeeds are very rare. When they fail, knowing that a restore should be done from the recovey CD, it is often some hardware support issue (when the validation has not been done from the recovery CD), some disk configuration issue or some user error.
Regardeless, you are absolutely right that the only way to be 100% sure a restore will work is actually to do the restore.
In order to increase your level of confidence a backup can be restore you should, by increasing order of effectiveness:
1) validate the backups regularly from windows,
2) better, validate them from the CD,
3) restore on a spare disk,
4) restore on a spare disk that is at the same spot and with the same settings as your actual target disk,
5) restore on your target disk.
Getting users to do the right backup, validate, create the recovery CD and testing it properly would be a great way to avoid most of bad surprises.
All:
Thanks to all for the comments. Here are a few clarifications that might make my issue more clear:
The hard disk we use for the "off-site" backup is good, tested and the backup file used for a restore.
The backup job that uses that disk is not scheduled, it is manually initiated after the drive is plugged in and connected.
My suspicions are that Acronis keeps track of all it's backup targets and when the scheduled backup runs to an internal drive, it also checks for the external even though it's not needed for that job.
We need an option in Acronis (or registry hack) to stop acronis reporting erroneous errors on drives that are disconnected and only connected before a backup is manually initiated. Seems simple to me and a basic option.
I would like Acronis to comment on this but I am beginning to loose faith in what was once a good product and good support. I am personally responsible for over 100 sales through referrals but I really have to reconsider based on this and what seems to be lower quality and less responsive support.
Kevin,
Do your drives have the same letter assigned to them when you connect them? It is better to assign different fixed drive letters.
You are correct: ATI tracks where each backup archive is stored. You can have a full backup on a USB disk A, some incrementals on USB disk B and some others on a DVD.
If somehow ATI has lost track of your disks, you should copy the TIB files you want to keep to another directory, delete the backup task and create a new one, making sure that each task backs up to a different drive letter.
Remember that ATI sets up an automatic validation task for each task (under backup settings > advanced). Make sure to unschedule it so that it doesn't produce a disk missing error when the validation tries to run.
Hey Pat:
Both drives have different driver letters and volume names.
I don't think it's lost track of the disks. When the removable drive is plugged in and the backup job MANUALLY started, it complete fine except for the errors. The log does not show any issues and I can browse the backup file and restore files.
The auto validation might be something I need to look at and perhaps turn off, if on.
Thanks,
Kevin
As long as the log says the backup has completed, you are good to go.
I suspect I'm seeing ATIH 2012 behavior with network and locally attached disks that's at the root of what you're seeing. I'm about to create a post with more detail, but basically ATH searches all drives the system has mounted and looks for any TIB files it can find. If you're unfortunate to have multiple copies of a given backup series (as when making archive copies) it then proceeds to scramble the series with files from all the media and start throwing corruption error messages. I discovered this when I was trying to Consolidate unwanted files in the NAS Acronis folder and noticed the command completed successfully but all the files remained in the NAS folder! Instead it had found the USB drive (it isn't referenced anywhere in the series) and purged those files instead. Woa! That was my archive to protect me from app screw-ups like this. The next series wouldn't Consolidate and I saw it had a mix of files from the NAS *and* the USB drive in that series. It complained files were missing and corrupted, likely because the files had same name but were from another series. Sure, ATIH put them there.
My question is how to tell ATIH to ignore archive folders and only work with the live folders I want it to use. I hope Acronis will tell me. This auto-discovery feature is a killer.