Cleanup old versions - unable to remove incremental backups
I have recently (Sept 2020) upgraded to True Image 2021 and have been running weekly incremental backups, with full backpups every 8 weeks of my Windows 10 laptop.
With exception of the most recent chain, I am unable to delete any of the incremental backups without it forcing me to delete every backup in the chain including the full back up.
I have been in contact with support and they have informed me the the file system of the Windows file share location on which the back up is saved (a Syonlogy DS1618+, hosting an SMB share of a BTRFS) is not supported by True Image and linked me to the following artical which appears to relate the source file systems supported, not the destination file system.
The fact the most recent chain is allowing me to select and clearn up incrementals and given the file share is via SMB (i.e. True Image should not be able to detect the file system), my thinking is there is another issue here.
Can anyone here shed some light on what might be going on or what I might be doing wrong?
Thank you
Adam
I have had the same issue. My suspicion is that it is intentional - not sure if it relates to all backups or only those using *.tibx.
Ian
Thank you Steve,
I suspected that was the case. I am using the method described in the KB article.
Selecting any incrmeental backup in the below chain forces me to select the entire chain for cleanup:
When I select the most recent chain, I am able to select individual incrementals:
Steve Smith wrote:Adam, welcome to these public User Forums.
The file system used on your Synology NAS is totally irrelevant to ATI 2021 when you are using the NAS to store your backup files.
How are you doing the cleanup of unwanted incremental files?
See KB 61844: Acronis True Image 2019, 2020 and 2021: How to delete old backups
Adam, it looks like Acronis have changed the behaviour for the clean up versions tool since the KB document was written - the KB says that you can do what you are wanting by deselecting the files you want to keep - reality says you cannot! It is either all or none for older backup chains!
I checked and see the same behaviour for my own backup chains too. This isn't an issue for me as I only keep 2 chains by using the 'Store no more than 2 recent versions / version chains' cleanup option.
I suspect that when they are closing these chains out they are doing some form of finalisation of the file that now prevents individual 'slices' from being deleted but still allows them to be used as recovery points.
Thank you Steve, do you think this is some kind of bug? It does seem to defeat the purpose of incrementals, normally the full backup is not dependent on its later incremental backups. I cannot think of a reason why such behaviour would be desirable.
Do differentals exhibit the same behaviour? I not I might switch to using them.
I can only suggest raising this directly with Acronis and challenge them on this change in behaviour to how it is documented. In my mind this is a bug in their coding!
Differentials continue to create separate files so should not exhibit the same issue but I don't use these backup types for my own tasks, so that is my assumption here!