Incremental backup overwriting previous incremental backups
Been using Acronis True Image 2008 for my home PC without difficulties until now. Don't know how long this has been happening, but the incremental backup overwrote almost a month's worth of weekly incremental backups. My previous full backup was in July 2016. Since then, scheduled incremental backups are made approx. every week. A backup started today and overwrote the l last three weekly backups. Any incremental backup from 9/28/16 to today, 10/26/16 has been lost. I am a retired IT professional with extensive mainframe and midrange computer skills, albeit somewhat obsolete. I have enough PC experience to be dangerous.
Under what conditions would the backup program overwrite previous incremented file names? MyBackup36.tip was the last file iteration for the 9/28/16 backup. I saw a two file iterations of 44 and 45 dated 10/11/16 before the 10/26/16 backup completed. They were gone and two file iterations of 44 and 45 dated 10/26/16 were in their place. Why would an incremental backup allow a file to be created when one already exist in the backup folder. Did I overlook a parameter selection "do not overwrite existing file". Thanks in advance for your help.
Thank you Steve for your reply.
My version is Acronis® True Image Home® version 11.0 (build 8,101). I'm running Windows 10 on a Dell Inspiron 530. Sorry on the incorrect version. I had read it somewhere else on the web while troubleshooting the problem that the build date was 2008.
The Acronis Event Log shows a successful backup on 9/28/16, 10/11/16 and 10/26/16. The backup file shows only incremental backup files for 9/28/16 and 10/26/16. While previous incremental backups only created 1 - 3 files per incremental backup, the 10/26/16 backup created 9 backup files. What did happen during the period between 9/28/16 to 10/26/16 was a major update of Windows 10 on 10/11/16 which could account for the larger number of backup files. The 10/11/16 backup was after the Windows 10 update because of the number of incremental file iteration previously discussed of file 44 and 45. Plus the time of the 10/11/16 backup was 9:49 pm and the update was earlier in the day.
My assumption is that the backup app looked at the 9/28/16 backup as well as the previous backups and created a backup of changes made after the 9/28/16 backup. This would then make the 10/26/16 backup a valid backup in the "chain". However, only in a catastrophic event would I use this backup for recovery.
On the mainframe platform I have helped design backup and recovery procedures and well as participating in disaster recovery on both cold and hot sites. Incremental backups in a business environment overwriting previous backups could be disastrous. In my case, it is a small inconvenience. I am at a loss as why this would happen.
I was planning to create a new backup task as soon as I verify my current system status is stable and clean.
Carl, thank you for the further information.
Running ATIH 11.0 on a Windows 10 system is not supported and I have to admit surprise that you even have this working in the first place. Only ATIH 2015 and later are supported for Windows 10 though I have found users with 2014 that still work where this was installed before the upgrade to 10.
I would strongly recommend upgrading to the latest 2017 version to gain the best protection for your system (compared to using ATIH 11.0 which is over 8 years old).
PC systems are a world away from both mainframe and midrange systems in my experience - I also have a midrange background with IBM systems (34, 36, 38 then AS/400 & iSeries) but like yourself am long retired from that particular game (and tape backup systems).