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Deleted old tib files in Win Explorer - Acronis baclup and recovery asks for them

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Acronis True Image Home 2010 on a Win 7 system. Backup up to 1TB external drive.
I performed a full backup in July, 2010, and daily incremental backups almost every day since then.
About a week ago, the back disk filled up.
To make room for more backups, I decided to remove 3 months of the oldest incremental backups. July through Sept. They were named DailyIncremental(1)2.tib to DailyIncremental(1)42.tib.

I didn't see any way to do this from inside True Image, so I closed True Image, and deleted them using Windows Explorer.

When I restarted True Image, the recovery window shows that they were gone. It listed my full backup, and then all of the incremental backups beginning with DailyIncremental(1)43.tib.

Now,when my Daily Incremental job runs, it seems to create the tib file properly. However, when it enters the Validate stage, it prompts for volume 42. Only thing I can do is cancel. However, the new tib file is still there.

But, can I use any of these tib files? As a test, I went to the True Image recovery window and attempted to restore from DailyIncremental(1)44.tib.

This doesn't work. The program prompts for all volumes from2 to 42, and then 40, 35, 40, 35, and so forth.

The restore of a file from a daily incremental backup should not depend on any other backup file.
Is there anyway for this to work now?
Thanks,
Jim

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James,
Unfortunately, you are in a bind. Having deleted the oldest incrementals, any newer incrementals are not usable. From the program standpoint, the chain has been broken. The only backup that is usable in that chain is the original full backup. This is the fallacy of having a larger number of incrementals. The same thing would have happened if any one of the incrementals would have become corrupt for any reason.

If the backups had been one full plus multiple DIFFERENTIAL type backups, then what you did would NOT have caused you any loss of backup recovery.

Each successive differential stores everything that has happened on your disk following the completion of the original backup from date of backup creation day/

The incremental backup store all changes since the last INCREMENTAL. So the deletion of 2-42 means that is has no data for that time period--thus the chain is broken.

James:

If you are using the incremental backup method, a restoration will depend on the daily incremental that you choose and on the full image and all previous incrementals. To restore an incremental backup you need all of the files in the complete sequence going back to the first full backup. So you may as well delete the remaining incrementals and start over making new ones.

The type of backup that you may have intended to make is a differential backup. To restore any particular differential backup you only need the full image and one differential. If you create this type of backup then you can freely delete any of the other differentials.

As a suggestion, it is prudent to make full images periodically since they can stand alone. I would recommend doing this once a month, and then making incremental or differential images afterwards. If you make a year's worth of incremental images then all of the files must be in perfect condition to restore to a recent backup, and there is no margin for error. So you risk losing a year's worth of backups. With the monthly strategy you only risk a month.

Mark & Grover,

Thanks for your quick response. I believe that you are correct.

The problem with a single full backup and the a sequence of differential backups is that each differential backup contains everything that changed since the full backup. A huge amount of redundancy. A file changes once since the full backup, and it gets backed up again and again, etc.

Why should an incremental backup depend on all of the previous backups including the full backup. It should contain files that can be restored. There should be no dependency on previous backups.

How does Windows backup compare?

Thanks,
Jim

James:

True about the nature of differential backups, but philosophically, redundancy is a good thing when doing backups, provided that you have the storage space.

Incremental images depend on all previous backups as Grover explained. That's the nature of the beast.

Windows backup is a different kind of animal and you may find it more to your liking. With most backup programs the oldest backup is the "safest" and if something goes wrong in a big chain of incremental backups, the most recent backups are at risk but the oldest is safe. In Windows backup the older versions of changed sectors are stored in Shadow Copy Storage and the most recent version of the file is the "safest". If something goes wrong with Windows Backup, the OLDEST versions of a file are at risk but the newest is always available.

If you want the most efficient use of storage space, look into backup software with de-duplication. In this type of backup only unique sectors are stored, so there is no duplication (and no redundancy). For example, I am a big fan of Windows Home Server. In only 125 GB of storage space I have backups for each of the last 12 months, and each of the last three weeks, and each of the last 7 days for all of the PCs in the house (3 total). This is extremely efficient use of storage space compared to other backup methods.