Acronis 2016 not running scheduled backups
I'm running Acronis 2016 and a new Dell desktop running Windows 10 and have not been able to run a scheduled backup. The computer not waking out of sleep mode. If the computer is running and Acronis is already open the backup runs as scheduled.
The people at Acronis paid support tell me this is a known issue and to wait for a patch.
Can anyone offer any advice?
Thanks, I will give that a try. My fear is that since the Acronis 2016 application on Windows 10 takes so long to open (about 15 seconds or so) that the computer will return to sleep after detecting backup inactivity.
I will post back with the results ..
Hi Chet,
Have you thought about changing the Windows 10 power options, particualary sleep and hibernate? I don't let my computer do either of those things, and I have no problem with ATI 2016 or my A/V running overnight. I set the power plan to turn off the monitor and power down the disk drives, but never SLEEP or HIBERNATE, you can see how to easily change your power plan here
Hope that helps,
Nils & Steve1209,
Thanks very much for your assistance .. much appreciated. Nils, I gave some thought about what you had mentioned about editing the backup job. I do remember fussing with the settings afterward, changing the backup time and also sometimes the backup method.
This time I started over. I deleted my existing backups, and started from square one.
But this time I configured the backups in a very concise and straight-forward manner, (for example, not going back and forth checking and double checking the various options) and presto, the backups are waking my Windows 10 machine out of "sleep mode" and performing the backup as I had configured it, and at the scheduled time. So there was no need to go any further configuring a separate "Windows task".
Both my USB connected external drive and a network based external drive do the scheduled backups flawlessly now.
I'm thinking that Acronis True Image 2016 is very fussy about editing any of the scheduled backup settings, either while still in the configuration screen or at any point later in time.
Any changes seem to negate the desktop waking out of "sleep mode" to perform the scheduled activity.
Good to know that you have working.
I have been using a Windows task to wake my computer a few minutes after Acronis is scheduled to start because sometimes it is necessary to edit the job. Starting over is a PIA. The backup will still run as you long as you tick the option for it to run at next system startup, which would be in 3 minutes. Also, this enables me to keep track of how often Acronis doesn't start on its own. I would guess it is about 50/50 for edited jobs.
I have had backup jobs that I have refused to edit just to see if the scheduler will work every time. It does not. Once it fails you can bet it will continue to do so a fair amount of the time.
I'm happy to report that for the past several weeks I have been running three different backups daily without a hitch, the newest one I had created is "my entire pc".
All of these backups run whether the computer is in "sleep mode" or already in a running state. It seems the computer wakes out of "sleep" mode about 30 seconds before the backup is about to begin.
I've created two different types of restore media but have had no need to utilize them as of yet. As I see it all is good at this point.
Many thanks to those who have helped me solve the scheduling problem.
I've created two different types of restore media but have had no need to utilize them as of yet. As I see it all is good at this point.
Chet, first off, congrats for getting it all working! Also thanks to those you helped out.
I would strongly encourage you to test your offline media to make sure it boots and sees your hard drives and NIC (just in case). I would also strongly suggest that you test a recovery with that media (please don't overwrite your existing data though - if possible use another external USB hard drive or swap your internal drive for an old one or a spare to test with.)
Once you have it down, backups and recoveries are a snap and you'll be glad you've already done it when the time (not if, but when) comes. If you can't boot into Windows you will absolutely need to be able to use your offline bootable recovery media then and validating a real world recovery job is the only way you can be 100% certain your ready for a real world recovery. A good chunk of the forum support I respond to is related to exactly this scenario and often times, the OP is non-techy and sweating it out. Not saying that's the case for you, but just want to make sure people are actually testing and familiar with this process in advance.
Bobbo_3C0X1, thank you very much for your kind reply. I do appreciate your feedback in performing a disaster type of recovery test.
I have created a DVD and USB flash drive recovery media and they do boot into the Acronis recovery manager. But thus far, that's all I have done. Your suggestion of replacing my internal hard drive with a spare sounds like a great test, and that will be my next step. Does the new hard drive I purchase for this test need to be pre-formatted?
Another question I have is when performing incremental backups, will I still recover to a full backup including the system for any recovery date I choose?
I'm running a full backup, following by 6 incrementals, then the cycle repeats.
Thanks very much !
Does the new hard drive I purchase for this test need to be pre-formatted?
Usually not, but it might not hurt. If you can attach it to an external drive bay, dock or something like that in Windows, it may help if you initialize it and format it first. How you format doesn't matter though as whatever image you push to it will change to that formatting anyway. Otherwise, you can initialize and format the disk from ATIH bootable recovery media
Adding a new hard disk
Another question I have is when performing incremental backups, will I still recover to a full backup including the system for any recovery date I choose?
If you are taking incrementals, you can recover to any backup point in time... the original full in that version chain, or any of the incremental points in time. If you are taking full disk images (all paritions), when you recover, recover all partions as well. Otherwise, if you just need certain files or folders, you can double click the .tib backup files from within Windows and they will open up in a Windows File Explorer view (read only) and you can navigate it and then copy and paste specific files/folders.
I'm running a full backup, following by 6 incrementals, then the cycle repeats.
This is the same scheme I use. I keep 4 version chains so I essentially have about a months worth of backups with a backpoint in time of once per day. I run this from within Windows and let it do everything automatically. However, I usually also take a full image once per week using the offline bootable recovery media as a secondary backup (just in case). You can take fulls or incrementals with the offline bootable recovery media as well.
I would recommend using another drive from time to time to test your recovery and make sure it boots. That way, you push the image to a drive other than your working one so you always have the original data and just swap the original drive for the test one when you push the image back to make sure it works and everything boots OK with your backup image being restored to it.
I've finally gotten the scheduled backups to both external drives to run reliably, and have also created restore media.
I did take your advice and purchased an identical hard drive to the one pre-installed in my Dell desktop as a "recovery test" drive.
In trying to go forward with a test recovery, one of the Acronis options was GPT vs MBR. This seems confusing. I have a new windows 10 desktop, I can boot into and change items in bios, but I do believe UEFI is enabled because bios see's (and says UEFI) as a boot disk. Which do I select? I chose GPT this time and after the recovery the test drive seems to boot ok.
Getting back to the problem:
I have two external drives, one is USB 2.0 and the other is a WD network based drive.
Several attempts yesterday with the USB drive met with "recovery failures" about half way through the cycle. After doing some reading this morning, I had decided to validate the external USB based drive first. I did have one recovery failure, but the next attempt fully succeeded after about 4 hours.
Speaking of validation, does it have to occur immediately after the backup or can I validate the particular backup days later? ... and does Acronis True Image 2016 require a backup to be validated before it will permit a successful recovery?
Last evening several attempts with the WD network based drive all resulted in "recovery failures" about 1/3 of the way through the recovery cycle. As a side note, I'm running the connection through a Trend-Net router, connections via Ethernet. The recovery time was at a much slower rate, predicted at 20 hours compared to the 4 hours actual on the USB 2.0 external drive.
As a test, I bypassed the router, but the predicted recovery time was also around 20 hours and eventually resulted in "recovery failure".
I'm at the point where I'd like to permanently install my second "test" hard drive permanently into the desktop's 2nd bay. In fact I'd like to connect it via its serial cable. I'd like to name it D: Test, but not have it boot through BIOS, so I would have to leave it out of the order altogether. But I've seen situations where any UEFI drive will boot if bios see's no other valid (bootable) option. Any advice?
Lastly, is it necessary to format my "test" drive before I can recover to it? or can I create a recovery over the top of existing data? Seems I can go right over the top of existing data but Acronis will warn of "loss of data" ...
Many thanks to all for your help. I had a lot of tickets into Acronis support and countless phone hours. I haven't given up but the recovery process is daunting. I had much better luck years ago with ATI 2010, it was flawless ...
Chet, You can validate anytime you want. A lot of people don't validate after each backup because it is time consuming. You only need to validate once (if at all). I never validate with the app. I just double click the .bit to make sure I can navigate the backup in Windows Explorer and that's good enought for me.
I suspect you have a network issues with your network connection or network hardware. Sometimes, routers will get bogged down if they have low memory or an older CPU - rebooting your router from time to time may help. It could also be low memory or CPU on a NAS device that gets bogged down with large file transfers. The MyCloud devices are a bit skimpy on both internal memory and CPU power and a large backup job, restore and/or validation may be too much for the "guts" of it to handle - especially
As a test of your existing backup, perhaps copy it to a local USB drive and try to validate it then and/or restore to another spare drive and see how that goes.
I've tried a few more things, and here is where I am at. I can do a recovery easily using the WD My Book USB model. The problem is I cannot recover from the WD My Cloud 4 TB unit.
The WD My Cloud is connected via ethernet.
Out of desperation I did a full factory reset of the WD My Cloud which took about 16 hours to complete to no avail. I could still easily do backups but no recoveries, the progress bar barely moves and a message states the back up would take 28 hours, but then fails anyhow ..
I called Western Digital support and asked for some help in trying to determine why I could not do an Acronis recovery from the My Cloud networked drive but received no help. Instead, they told me to backup via the included WD "SmartWare"
To follow up, I wrote this a few minutes ago to WD support ...
"I'm very unhappy that my WD My Cloud 4 TB model is useless to me. I use Acronis True Image 2016 and back up to my WD My Cloud nightly. It backs up just fine, but I cannot recover from the WD My Cloud. I can recover from my WD My Book usb 2.0 model easily in 4 hours. But it is absolute craziness that your support professional told me that back up and restore with Acronis software is "not supported".
Finally WD told me to call Acronis, so I anti'ed up another $20 to Acronis support, who said, for starters, that Acronis "does not support back-up and recovery through a router". Its difficult to believe that in this day and age that they could not support operation thru a gigabit device less than a year old.
I've set up the WD dashboard as I believe it should be, and I'm out of idea's ...
By the way, I've verified that the desktop and router are running at 1 gb speeds as I've swapped large files between Win 10 desktop - router - and a new Win 10 laptop at blazing speeds ...
Chet
Chet,
I think WD is passing the bag on this one. I see no reason why you could not restore from a network share (NAS, mycloud, SMB share, another Windows share, etc). I do it all the time.
When you boot your Acronis recovery media and go to select a location for the backup image, you can try connecting directly to the UNC share name or IP (IP is probably easiest...
example:\\192.168.1.10 (use the IP of the NAS). In some cases, you may need to use the exact share path too if the entire path is not traversible from root to the backup location.
You should then get prompted for credentials. You will need to supply credentials as \\NASName\username (replace nasname with the actual nas name as it shows up in a Windows pc).
If, for some reason, this does not work, try creating WinPE rescue media instead (download the Win10.1 ADK in my signature of this post and install first - then run the rescue media builder and choose winpe instead of linux).
Once booted into WinPE, minimize the Acronis window and use the command prompt to map the network drive as a drive letter using the instructions at http://www.howtogeek.com/118452/how-to-map-network-drives-from-the-comm…
Once you have the drive mounted as a letter, Acronis should be able to restore from it in WinPE as well.