2012 - Backup file deleted before backup completes, no log.
On Windows 7.
Having been working for ages, scheduled or manually, now, sometimes a backup is successfully created, but many times, it says it has completed successfully, but there is no log entry, and no backup file left.
So for example the main backup and recovery screen is saying that the last backup was "Today at 1:17am", but there is nothing in the log for today.
If I run it manually, the backup file is created, and increases in size, then when Acronis is saying that there is 1 minute left, the file will disappear.
The only changes to the machine will be windows updates.
It is intermittent, and there are no clues in logs or events.
Any ideas what is causing it.
Thanks for the reply.
I am not doing any consolidation.
I am doing "single version" backups, and only deleting old ones when I need to free up space.
I have deleted the task and recreated it in the past. I've got a feeling that the first time I have run a newly created task it has created the backup successfully, I'll try that again, and let you know if it works the first and second times.
Instead of having to manually delete the files for space, consider a different backup scheme.
If using Single Version, then change to
Custom
Full
Automatic cleanup
store no more than 1 recent version chain
This will keep only the 1 full backup as you are currently using but this method seems to work better as it deletes the old rather than overwrites the old. This is illustrated in figure 11-Full as mentioned in my prior post. Either scheme needs to have temporary space for 1 additional full while the replacement is being created and deletion of old occurs, so be sure and include this extra space in your calculations.
If you have space for additional full backups, then you can change the 'store no more than 1" to a higher number but keep in mind the need for the temporary extra space.
Editing or changing an existing task can produce unexpected results so my suggestion is to avoid any edits. Create a new task whenever there is an issue. The 2012 version is "probably" no longer under developement and 2014 is in beta testing.
I tried deleting and recreating the task. Three backups were created manually, and manually renamed, all fine.
But that was running the task manually, so no guarantee that they would work when scheduled.
So now I have seen your follow up, I have deleted the task and created a new one following your suggestion. I have plenty of space, so set it to keep three. Your suggestion makes sense as I had a suspicion that the problem was triggered by deleting old backups, although I have been doing this for over a year. (It remains a mystery why it wasn't logging the failures, or recognising that there were any failures, but as there is no longer any official support for this version I'll probably never know.)
I'll let you know how I get on. Thank you again.
I have solved one mystery, i.e. that some attempts were not showing in the log.
I saw "reset all filters", clicked on that, and all the attempts now show. Strange as I don't remember setting any filters.
The occasions where the backup has been created but the file deleted by Acronis say that the backup was successful, but also there is a warning message around the time it was started saying "The initial full backup version is not available at the moment". Because I am doing full backups, 1) I didn't think that mattered, and 2) it did make me wonder if deleting old backups was something to do with the problem. However that is no excuse for it saying that the backup was sucessful when it wasn't.
Now to the overnight "progress". With the custom, full scheme, the backup was still running this morning and showing 9 hours remaining, but also the screen was locked requiring me to enter my password. I think that was maybe because I hadn't set the "credentials" for the scheduled backup. Time to recreate the task and try again.
Another attempt with the custom, full scheme, and again, two hours later the screen was locked, then after I had put in my password and got the desktop back, the screen was as good as frozen with the cpu at 100%. I cancelled the backup (which took 25 minutes to happen). I had set the priority to high, perhaps that was a mistake.
Backed off the priority to medium, and a backup completed in 65 minutes, but the user login was still locked at the end of it. (I have never set the screen-saver to require a login on resume).
Next to test is the auto deletion.
Running the backup at maximum priority had screwed up the "sleep" setting on the machine, and also the "unified inbox" contents in Thunderbird. Now I need to wait four days to see if the backup scheme is working properly and deleting old backups.
Certainly your advice to delete and create a new scheme seems to have solved the initial problem, thanks again.
If you wish to speed up the frequency and not wait 4 days, you can randomly click the "Backup now" option manually and cause an immediate backup (if none running). This can be repeated "backup now" to increase the frequency.
I let my backups run at normal priority but I do make sure the power settings is such that they do not sleep during backups.
I wanted to see how it worked when left alone, and I run a post backup script to change the name of the backup file to include the date, so doing it more than once a day would overwrite the previous backup and not allow the number of backups to increase.
Well, now I have 6 backups, so the custom scheme is not deleting old ones, but I sort of expected that because of the name changing.
The thing I wanted, i.e. the scheduled backups actually working, has been achieved, so thanks again for your help.
You couuld try an Acronis repair.
Download the normal TI installation file and restart the install.
You will be offered a Repair option.
I presuje you are aware that the date can be part of the file name automatically
-@date@-
If the name change is an important part, why not
when correct number of backups achieved, rename the storage folder
and recreate the same orignal folder so the program sees the original target folder as an empty folder.
A new full will be created next time to the empty.
I have completely removed and re-installed Acronis at least twice trying to get it to work consistently, so I don't think a repair would help. What has worked is creating a new task rather than editing the old one.
With a previous version I had tried and failed to get the file name to include the date, but I hadn't tried with this version.
I tried exactly what you said, but just get a file named -@date@-.tib
I've now found "The name assigned to any backup file is totally controlled from within the destination folder--not from within the task name." It is confusing because what you call the task name is labelled "backup name", and the "destination" area just shows a folder so only clairvoyants know that you need to set the filename in there too. Hopefully this will work now.
I don't understand why I would want to create a new folder when the whole idea of using the custom scheme was to keep the latest three backups without me having to delete the older ones manually.
The below is an example from my backup guide. Link #2 below and green link. figure 8. This discusses custom names, etc.
You are correct. This has been a very confusing feature but has been the same feature since 2010.
Just include the -@date@- as part of the other parts of the name and the date will be just a portion of the file name.
Figure 8: Assign folder name and assign custom backup file name
The names of the backup files can only be changed as in Figure 8; whereas the task name can differ from the backup file name. Task name changed or re-assigned in figure 18,
In 2013, all backup files will have a program added suffix to the *.tib name such as
user assigned name_FULL_B1_S1_V1.tib
user assigned name_INC_B1_S2_V1.tib as per this link example
http://forum.acronis.com/sites/default/files/mvp/user285/guides/test201…
Understand that the backup file name is not task name and the task name is not the backup file name. The task name and the backup file name are two separate entities. They both may or may NOT carry the same name but that is a user controlled option.
You may also find figures 6 and 7 of interest which precede the figure 8 above.
My preference in storage locations is that each task has its own storage folder. This keep me and the progrram from getting mixed up. The program will allow one folder with many backups for lots of tasks but that is one preference I avoid. 1 storage folder=1 task--my preference.
The below is one example of one of my storage folders.
http://forum.acronis.com/system/files/forum/2009/11/5940/example-folder…
The auto naming has worked. Hooray! Thank you.
Now I'll wait and see if it deletes old ones.
Working perfectly.
Thanks for all your help.