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Back-up Interrupted by Drive Failure - Recovery Options?

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Summary: a differential back-up was interrupted when the drive being backed-up failed. Is it possible to recover any data from this incomplete differential back-up?

My system has a 500GB SSD and 3x 4TB HDD in a RAID5 array (8TB combined). I have recently been using Acronis True Image 2021 to back-up my entire system to an external hard-drive and it has been working great so far.

I set up a differential scheme and it successfully complete the initial full back-up and a further 5 differential back-ups to the external drive. During this time, one of the 4TB HDDs in the RAID5 array died and I have been waiting for the new drive to arrive so that I can fix the RAID5 array, but have been able to keep using it during this time.

When I started the 6th differential back-up, it partially completed when another HDD in the RAID5 array died, so now the array is completely broken. There was a fair amount of data that was already backed-up during the 6th differential; is it possible to recover any of this data? The worst case scenario is that I lose about 2 weeks worth of data, which is not too critical, but I'd much rather recover it (or some of it) if at all possible.

I can explore / restore / mount all of the original full / differential back-ups, but the 6th differential is saying that it cannot be viewed / mounted (obviously due to it being incomplete).

Thanks for any advice that can be provided.

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David, welcome to these public User Forums.

Any failed differential backup image is not going to be able to be used because of the failure to complete the image, so assuming that you can open the main ATI 2021 application, you can take actions to clear the failed backup image file by using the 'Clean up versions' tool to remove it.  You could try doing a validation of the backup file but I would expect this to fail.

Given that your RAID array has broken due to having 2 failed drives then you would need to rebuild this after ensuring that the 3rd drive is not showing any signs of failure if of the same age / batch of drives as the others!

Once the array is repaired and available, then you should be able to recover the data from the last good differential backup (5th one).

Unfortunately there are no available tools from Acronis to enable recovery of data from a failed backup archive.

Thanks for your response, Steve. I was expecting that this was the case, though hoping otherwise!

There is the slightest chance that I still might be able to recover the data from the HDD array (depending on the exact method that the drive failed, which I haven't fully explored), so all hope is not lost, yet.

Worst case scenario (which is the most likely outcome at this stage) is that I've only lost a few weeks of data, which is much better than having lost ALL my data, so I'm very grateful for the ATI backups :)

I assume you have done the normal checks; cables all securely attached and no signs of damage. I once had a raid array that experienced problems, and it was because one of the SATA cables had worked loose. Another possibility is a failing power supply - if you have a spare one you see if that makes a difference. I had a power supply partly fail; only one rail was problematic, the one that powered the SATA drives.

Ian

Thanks Ian. I have already checked all the connections are secure, but honestly hadn't thought to check that there might be a problem with the cables themselves. I do have a couple of spares, so I will test that out, too. Cheers!