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Automatic consolidation is broken

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I have a task set to weekly backup. But Acronis was not removing oldest backups to make room for new, so the drive kept filling up. I went through the settings for the task and turned on the option to remove backups more then 30 days old. Next back it did not. So I set it to keep no more then 5 backups. Tonight, again I had to abort the backup because the disk was full and again manually remove the oldest backup. After i backed up, again the disk is FULL. There are 6 "MyBackup" folders when there should only be 5. Also the oldest backup is 01/10/2010 which is 4 days past the 30 day limit.

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There have been numerous postings of issues similar to yours. Hopefully, the next release of a new build will solve this problem.

In the meantime, consider using oracledba's Chain2Gen free helper program.

A TrueImage task does the scheduling and backup creation. Chain2Gen is a helper program which help the user to preserve the proper number of backups and to assure that you get full backups at the user desired internal. C2G is easy to install and setup. I suggest that you investigate it as a stable solution to your issues of consolidation.

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/5940

In the past, often times, Acronis support has recommended that you control your file retention via batch files. If you check my signature below, the index lists several batch files in item 13. My personal recommendation would be to use Chain2Gen but you will find other batch files in 13B, 13D and 13H.

Timothy,
If you are interested in using Chain2Gen to have a solution, I would be more than willing to help you set up the C2G parameters so you can achieve your backup goals. I would need to know more about the frequency and type of backups your are creating plus storage drive letter and the folder name desired to contain your backups, etc.

TrueImage creates the backups based on the schedule you create. C2G help you to control when a full backup is needed and how many backups to retain.

Currently, there are 3 drives in the system. The main drive has 3 partitions and is a 160gb drive. 1st partition is the w7 100mb what ever. The 109gb for most everything. I had planed to only put windows on C:, but that didn't work out. So I resized and moved most stuff to c:. Acronis is still on E: which is the 3rd partition at 39gb. Currently there 42gb free on C: and 38: on E: If acronis ever gets the update out, I'll be moving it to c: and dumping E:

The second drive is another 160gb drive. It was to have a 10gb swap (D:) and temp area and the rest (F:) for backups, But I never moved the swap over, so I just use it for temp/downloads (not included in backups). The rest of the drive wasn't big enough for windows and acronis to use, so now it's just for windows to do weekly backup on. I think it's set to do both a image and a file backup and is only supposed to keep one set. But the image backup takes up so much space, it sometimes runs out during backup before it can clean up. Windows backs up at 4am Sunday.

The 3rd drive is a ~600gb (G:) drive split into a 303gb and a 292gb (H:) drive. NSB uses G: and acronis does weekly full backups on H: sunday 8pm.

Only the first drive is backed up. Acronis for some reason wants to call the 100mb partition D: in the backups. Hope that's not a problem if it's ever needed.

I can't help you with your moves or restructuring but maybe I can help you with your backup retention.

I am understanding that you have one task doing weekly full disk backups of your system disk which contains 3 partitions. The backups are directed to drive H.
What is the name of your storage folder?
How many full backups do you wish to retain.
Do you perform incremental backups of this disk in addition to the weekly full disk backups.

I am also understanding that you have a second task which backs up some of your data files. This is also directed to a different folder on Drive H. What is the name of the folder?
How frequently does it run? Is it a full backup and does it include incremental backups as well. How many backups sets of data files only do you wish to keep?

Keep in mind that Acronis does the backups and the scheduling. Chain2Gen(C2G) is a helper program which can help you maintain whatever copies you wish and to enforce that a full backup occurs on a particular day of the week, etc.

C2G stores the backup in sets. A set is one full backup plus any incremental's; or one full backup and any differentials. Each backup set is in a different folder. Set0, set1, set2, etc. If you are interesting in me helping you setup C2G, please respond to the above questions and download & study the Chain2Gen zip file from
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/5940

You may also be interested in this posting.
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/8670

You might want to post an attachment picture (Windows Disk Management) of your system disk where Acronis is showing the wrong drive letter. You do need to get this resolved. Do you have any hidden partitions? Is this drive letter issued when booted from the Rescue Cd or when booted from Windows?

Folders are the default names acronis uses "Time Explorer Storage" (on G:) and "My Backups" (on H:). Acronis sticks a My Backups folder on every partion it can even though the other aren't used. Currently the My Backups folder has 6 "MyBackup" and 1 "SystemBackup". Not sure how the SystemBackup came to be, but it was done by acronis. The drive has 11.9Gb free of 292Gb. So one needs to be removed before it can backup again and there's not much room for growth. 4 weekly backups might be a more practical limit for the space I have.

I don't do incremental backups. It does a full each week at 8pm on sunday. nsb is more of an inc backup system. Also windows backup looks like it's doing something of a incremental backup for the files it backs up. Windows is using Drive F:.

Also looks like might be making some changes with nsb to avoid problems: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/4519#

A bit busy next few days. won't be able to do much for a bit

Would you consider a new folder name for your Acronis full backups such as H:\FullBackups\ or you tell me what you will accept but keep it short and without any spaces.

Also, would you want to consider changing the Win7 auto defrag to manual and have it run by Chain2Gen just prior to the TrueImage Full Backup? Will defrag run from the command line or does it require a reboot first?

If the above is satisfactory, I will create some instruction on how to setup Chain2Gen to retain 4 sets of full backups which will run each Sunday night at 8pm into the folder as mentioned above. Approximately how long does a defrag take?

@GroverH:
How do you schedule a defrag in Windows 7 with Chain2Gen just prior to a full backup??
Thanks.

Hope,
This is discussed in post #10 of the Chain2Gen posting
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/5940#comment-13500

Open Notepad and do a File open and browse to the control folder where you have your Chain2Gen files stored which relate to the backup task.
Edit the
!_USER_SPECIFIED_PARAMS_FOR_ACRONIS.bat
which is the same file where you have our backup storage paths listed, etc.

Scroll way down to line 269 which reads like the below
------------------------------------------------
:: Warning- while the intent of these variables was to call an actual .exe one can call a ".bat" script
:: HOWEVER please use a "start" verb as in set PRE_FULL_BACKUP_CMD1=start c:\my_script.bat
:: FURTHERMORE the .bat file call MUST end with an "EXIT" command. Failure to do so may (will)
:: cause the acronis pretask to "hang" (never finish).
Change the line which reads
set PRE_FULL_BACKUP_CMD1=~
to read like this (be sure and remove the ~)
set PRE_FULL_BACKUP_CMD1=%windir%\system32\defrag.exe c:
set PRE_FULL_BACKUP_CMD2=~
set PRE_FULL_BACKUP_CMD3=~
set PRE_FULL_BACKUP_CMD4=~
set PRE_FULL_BACKUP_CMD5=~

Save the changes and close Notepad.

Now, the next time your backup task runs, it will start Defrag and wait until it finishes before starting the actual backup.

Note: be sure and change the defrag options from automatic to manual.
It is possible your defrag location may be different and you may have to modify the defrag path to your actual path.

H:\FullBackups\ is fine.

I turned of the defrag timer because of the possible problems with NSB. The default setting was 1:am on wed. Looking at the status, the times it list, most of the times last run where around 2:30am. Don't know what happened to delay it. I also don't know how long it takes to defrag because most of the time I'm not up then. Though somtimes I am on the computer past 1am which may be why the last time it ran, it didn't run until ~2:30am. The times it shows for last run:
all were 2/17/2010
C: 2:38am (0% fragmented)
D: 2:33am (0% fragmented)
E: 2:38am (0% fragmented)
F: 2:38am (0% fragmented)
G: 2:34am (0% fragmented)
H: 3:15am (0% fragmented)
System Reserved 2:34am (0% fragmented)

I don't know about command line running of defrag. It does work with windows auto tasking timers, so backup could just be set to run some time after that if it can be set to run while logged off. The problem with automating defrag is defrag can't be automated until pausing nsb can be. Ether that or stop using nsb which "seems" to be working now. It corrupted it's data base the first time I set it up and kept stoping. I sent in a bug report. I had it, acronis weekly full and w7 all using the same drive for backups and it wasn't big enough.