Old backup archive deleted before new backup is successful
I am running Vista Enterprise 32bit and True Image Home 2009 Build 9.796. The backup destination is a NAS device.
I am experimenting with ways to manage scheduled backups.
My current backup task does a full backup followed by 4 diffs. I set it to delete old archives. There are no automatic consolidation policies set and there is plenty of headroom on the destination area (400GB of free space. The archive takes ~50GB). This morning the backup task was waiting to be cancelled or retried due to an I/O error (Unknown issue accessing the destination). Before proceeding, I looked at the backup destination area and the previous backup archive had been deleted.
I was expecting that the old backup archive would be deleted AFTER the new archive had been created. The user guide is not explicit about when the old backup archive is deleted. Is deleting the old archive BEFORE creating the new full backup the intended behavior? If so, how is this function intended to be used?
Thanks,
Dave
Amen to that. I just noticed the same thing tonight while watching my backup drive to see what ATI was doing and immediately after the automated full backup started (I do 1 full then 6 incrementals), all my previous backups were deleted.
What happens if this one fails? I would not have any backup and no way to recover. This is a terrible design and needs to be fixed.
Seems to me it would be very easy to move the deletion of the old data to after the current one completes successfully.
Rich
DaveC, Marc & Ztruker,
Have you considered using a simple batch file to maintain your desired number of multiple backups without writeover.
I don't think you understood the issue.
What I would like to do (or something similar) is maintain a current backup archive and 1 back. E.g. After the 3rd full backup succeeds, delete the oldest full with all its diffs. At any point I'd have a complete archive plus the one that is in progress for that week. Also I want to do a shutdown when the nightly backup finishes.
I was experimenting to see what the product provides and what I would have to add. Since it’s a 'home' product, I thought that it would provide some simple common backup scenarios. The delete old back archives could be one, but is not very useful as implemented. Even 'shutdown when done', which is pretty basic, only seems to be an option when you run the task manually.
As I've started to understand what the product does and does not do, I will have to look at having batch files, either ones that do pre/post processing on a ATI scheduled task or do everything from Windows. While I'm reasonably technical, Windows scripting isn't something I've done much, so I'll need to learn at little (not necessarily a bad thing) and I see that there are examples to look at to get started. Thanks, GroverH for the pointer to the guides.
However... to Acronis...I didn't want to spend my time developing backup scripts. I thought that the product would provide most of what was needed for my modest requirements. I would guess that most folks don't have the knowledge (and/or desire) to write batch files.
Dave
ATI was purposely designed in prior vesrsion to not delete backups until a new one was successfully made. Although this meant you had to have room for an extra backup, it meant you couldn't lose all your backups if you had probs creating new ones. It's unthinkable (but somehow not surprising) that a backup program would not follow this process. Are yo sure it's not consolidating before it deletes the old files?
The backup task that I'm running has consolidation criteria set to 'delete backups older than 30 days'. There is a lot of space on the target device so I'm not running into a space limit there and no backups sit around for 30 days so... no, I don't think there is any consolidation going on.
DaveC - such a backup script is written and tested. Docs for it are being written now. The intent publish into this forum on the 31st. PM me if you can run a test or two before then if not thats ok check this forum on the 31st
I am using Acronis True Image Home 2009 build 9,796
I realized this same thing the other night. I couldn't believe the old archives were deleted first. Did Acronis ever post a fix for this or is there one in the works? They need to add an option for the cleanup that lets you pick if the files are deleted prior to the backup or after a successful backup. For a decent home backup utility this is a major flaw. A full backup can cause major stress on a hard drive and has been known to cause failures. I tried the 2010 version and immediately uninstalled it off my machine after finding out it did not have a way to do a full backup of the entire drive. Any help would be appreciated.
I tried the 2010 version and immediately uninstalled it off my machine after finding out it did not have a way to do a full backup of the entire drive.
Creating backups of the full disk is one of standard features of any version of TrueImage Home. Unless, you had a situation where TrueImage could not identify the disks installed on your machine. If this was the situation, then alternate drivers would be available from Acronis.
One solution to maintaining the desired number of backups is to use the Chain2Gen as a helper program to maintain the desired number of backups. Check the link in my signature if interested. My solution is a workaround which works.