ATI Not Counting Correctly
ATI 2018 on Windows 7 Pro x64.
I had configured an incremental backup scheme to do a full version after every 10 incrementals and to keep no more than 3 version chains. My full backups currently are about 420 GB and the incrementals are usually 6 to 8 GB.
I had completed the 10th incremental (version 11, because the base full B/U is version 1) on the third chain.
When the next scheduled backup job started, what should have happened is (a) a new full B/U should have been created and (b) the full and all 10 incrementals of the oldest chain should have been deleted.
Because the new full version was started before the deletion of the old chain (and I think I understand the reasoning behind this), there wasn't enough space on the backup drive. Thus, the job stopped with an error. The only option that seemed to work was to cancel the entire job and manually delete the oldest chain to make room.
As far as I know, there's no way to delete backups from the GUI in ATI 2018 (has this ability been added in ATI 2019?) and I seem to recall reading that the proper way to do this was to restart using an Acronis Rescue Disk and delete them there.
That's what I did, although it didn't work the way I expected: that is, I thought that if I deleted the full version, all of the incrementals based on that version would automatically be deleted. They weren't, so I manually deleted them, and then restarted Windows.
I opened ATI, selected "Validate" and "ignored" all of the messages about the deleted files (so how was using the Rescue Disk any better than just using Windows Explorer to delete the files?).
I changed the backup configuration to do a full B/U after every 8 incrementals. This should save about 12 to 16 GBs per chain, so hopefully the next time the third chain completes, there will be enough room to create the new full backup.
When I started the B/U job manually, I thought it would create a new full backup. Instead, it created an incremental backup on the most recent chain. Now that chain has 11 incremental versions.
What will happen the next time the scheduled backup job runs?
- Will ATI see that there are already 11 incrementals -- more than 8 -- and create a new full version?
- Or is the counting confused because of the change from 10 to 8 and yet more incremental versions will be created?
- How do I ensure that the next backup run will be a full backup?
Thanks for all of that info. Although I don't upgrade ATI every year, you might have persuaded me to get ATI 2019 rather than waiting for 2020 or 2021.
With respect to the issue of resetting the count after changing the number of incrementals, what would happen if I manually created a new full backup? Would incrementals be added based on the new full version or would they be added to the old chain?
Pete wrote:With respect to the issue of resetting the count after changing the number of incrementals, what would happen if I manually created a new full backup? Would incrementals be added based on the new full version or would they be added to the old chain?
Pete, not sure how you are going to get the same backup task to create a new full backup file for the above scenario unless it was already due to do so?
The safest option here would be to use the task option to 'Clone settings' then modify the configuration in the duplicate task (same name prefixed by (1) ) then remove the original task (leaving the backup files in place) before renaming the duplicate task to have a slightly different name (so as to not conflict with your existing files). The new task will start afresh from version 1 using your new settings.