Unrestorable Acronis TI2013
I have scheduled Acronis TI2013 to image my C drive daily at 02:30. I have also scheduled a batch file at 04:00 daily to do cleanup chores, including the deletion of any TI2013 daily images more than 10 days old. I had been doing that for a number of weeks, occasionally mounting an image and viewing the files just to make sure they were valid images.
Eventually, when I tried to actually restore one of those images I received nothing but errors saying the image couldn’t be found, despite the fact the image was indeed available, mountable and viewable.
My theory is that it could not find the first in a string of images because older images were removed to conserve space. I then changed to have each nightly image be written to a new folder, hoping the version numbers would no longer be a problem.
After three days of backing up to new folders, I discovered that Acronis TI2013 still insists on using incremented serial numbers as part of the file name. The names of those three images created on three separate days, each in its own empty folder are:
1) 10-22-2012: MyBackup_full_b1_s1_v1.tib;
2) 10-23-2012: MyBackup_full_b2_s1_v1.tib; and
3) 10-24-2012: MyBackup_full_b3_s1_v1.tib.
I am confident I could restore any one of those images today, BUT 10 days from now they will all have been replaced with the following ten days worth of images and I won't be able to restore any of those (first three) because I'd receive the message, file not found.
I did not have this problem with Acronis TI 2011 Home. I had the identical setup and ran with none of these new problems. When I contacted tech support, I was told:
"WE NOW OFFER 30 DAYS FREE SUPPORT AFTER THE DATE OF PURCHASE OF OUR PRODUCTS AND SUBSEQUENTLY, THERE IS CUSTOMIZED PAY PER INCIDENT PLANS."
Although my version was purchased over 30 days ago (just barely), it is a new product that hasn't been proven to work right; and now I'm expected to buy it again in the form of a support fee, with no guarantee that they can help.
I do like the look, feel and operation of the 2013 product but that's really academic if the images can't be restored and I can’t get help from Acronis to fix this apparent defect.
Unless some kind sole has had this same problem and found a work-around, it appears that if I ever want to restore any of my images, I'll have to throw the towel in and go back to Acronis TI2011 Home.
I agree that should work and I will give it a try before throwing 2013 out the window.
BUT, the bigger question is, how DO you schedule a backup on a daily basis with a full backup -- without having to resort to a boot disk?
My desire is to have the last x number of days of image backups that can be restore hassle free. That's not the case so far.
Dcampbell,
Are you using TIH to consolidate and remove images from archives, Chain2Gen or your own batch file?
Anything doen outside of TIH as far as image housekeeping is concerned is likely to upset the database integrity and cause problems. You can set TIH to delete archives after 'x' many images, your problem should go away I think.
How?
That's something that would make a lot of sense. But, in all my prodding around in TIH the only thing I found was the ability to delete what I though were future images. Much to my dismay, ALL of my images went bye-bye.
I am very interested in learning where that feature is and if it works like it sounds, my problem may be resolved. The solution I want is one that will do the daily backup, delete excess backups and leave restore-able images, all without intervention.
Check out the many user guides and tutorials in the left column of this forum, particularly ATIH 2012 - Getting Started and Grover's True Image Guides which are illustrated with step-by-step screenshots.
In particular, this one addresses your wants:
28705: Grover's How to Backup 2012-2013 from within Windows
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/28705
Check out the many user guides and tutorials in the left column of this forum, particularly ATIH 2012 - Getting Started and Grover's True Image Guides which are illustrated with step-by-step screenshots.
In particular, this one addresses your wants:
28705: Grover's How to Backup 2012-2013 from within Windows
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/28705
I breezed through the link and discovered that what I need is much simpler than that. I just want to do a complete, non-differential, non-incremental, and non-versioned back up on a daily basis, and have anything older than ten days be deleted all automatically. Last but not least, the remaining ten backups should all be restore-able. In setting this thing up, I am not concerned with Version, set or any other kind of numbers and don't really want to guess as what the program is asking me for in the way of parameters. I want to keep it simple, not add unreasonable complexity to it. Maybe, for people with such generic requirements like mine should switch back to 2011 Home.
WOW! I just stumbled into the deletion criteria. What a way to run a business!
1. In the "Backup and recovery" screen of the selected daily backup, click the link in the lower right corner, "Settings":
2. In the "Backup scheme:" of the resulting screen (Configure disk backup process), click the link "Custom" (in my case - may be different if not full version);
3. At the bottom of the resulting screen, in the case of full backup version, click on the link, "Turn on automatic cleanup"; and finally
4. In the "Delete versions older than n days" field show the numbers of days to be kept, or in other words the number of versions older than n days old to be deleted
Thanks to everyone for their input, without which I never would have found the answer to this most frustrating problem. I just wish Acronis would accommodate all the people like me and address their SIMPLE needs, making the process more front and center and obvious.
dcampbe1,
If I might offer a suggestion, I would suggest that you use the option keep x number of backups rather than based on "older than n days".
Keeping x number of backups is much quicker as it is a pure delete; whereas the "older than n days" will involve consolidation which could be troublesome and time consuming.
My rules for my own use is never to edit a backup task. If corrections needed, I create a new task pointing to a new empty sub-folder. If a task is edited, this increases the changes of a corrupt data base and the results are often not what is expected so I avoid task edits.
You could adapt the illustration figure 11-full at the link below to your own needs
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/28705
Hi GroverH,
Thanks for the ideas. It funny about your comments. As I was setting the number of older dates to keep, I thought to myself, for everyday I miss doing a backup, I'm going to be a backup less than the desired 10. For that reason when I set it, I went to 15. I completely missed the fact that the next bubble down was number of images to keep and not a reference to days. Now I can go back to a total of ten images, not matter the date.
I like the next idea also. Starting with a new procedure makes a lot of sense especially in eliminating doubts and confusion over the past.
I had looked at that link earlier and decided that it was too rich in complexity for my taste. Normally I like the differential/incremental bit but not of my c drive images.
I really appreciate your comments and am implementing them tonight. Thanks again.