Nonstop Backup issues
I purchased TI 2013 for its nonstop backup feature. I want a set it and forget it continuous backup of my system drive (written to an external USB drive).
Unfortunately, the nonstop service fails occasionally. And once it does, it doesn't restart itself. Worse yet, there's no obvious alert that a backup is not being maintained. You have to dig into the logs to notice that there are errors, and no current backup being maintained.
This is unacceptable in a "nonstop" backup product. Nonstop means "it never stops". Since that's not strictly achievable, the product must be able to restart itself when needed, and, if that's not possible, make it very clear to the user that the supposed protection provided by a nonstop backup no longer exists.
- Mark
Hello Mark,
Thank you for posting this question in our forum. I am happy to assist you.
I want to thank Tom Sepka for supporting you. I have forwarded your comment to our Management Team and we will get this problem addressed.
Unfortunately, I could not find any support case related to your contact information. If there is an existing case you might post the related case number.
Please check if you have setup the Nonstop Backup feature correctly by using this article from our knowledge base or this page from our user guide. Also see the FAQ about Nonstop Backup. See also True Image 2013 by Acronis: Nonstop Backup.
In order to identify the root cause of this problem, you should follow the suggestions from Tom Sepka (previous post) and post a screenshot with the error.
If you need additional assistance, please create a system report of the affected machine and contact support. You will find all available support options in our Customer handbook.
If there is anything else we can do for you, please let me know.
Thank you.
You may not know that none stop backup uses incremental backup, this means if any of the dozens of versions become corrupt for any reason then the entire backup is unusable.
It may be better to run a full backup on a regular schedule as they tend to be more stable.
The differential method works by doing a full backup followed by a number of smaller backups which are quicker than a full backup but overall more stable than incremental method. These can be run in a chain in any days of the week.
Peter,
I recommend that you check with Acronis ACC Escalations Manager and the forum supervisor regarding the NSB issues I have reported. Unfortunately, Acronis does not have a system in place that is available to customers for capturing the information and issues that I began reporting 33 weeks ago. The NSB problems appear in both the TIH2012 and TIH2013 versions of the product. I don't know if they go back even further that that.
Shane,
While you're correct in your observation about the incremental backup corruption limitation, to the best of my understanding, NSB functions quite differently than incremental and differential backups. Perhaps you intended to post this comment to a different forum topic?
Apologies for not replying sooner. I didn't receive notification of replies being made, even though I have my account configured to do so. Perhaps the forum software needs to be fixed.
I've attached a screenshot of the error message from the log.
- Mark
Peter, this is just a quick note to confirm that I'd followed those instructions for setting up the nonstop backup.
One thing that concerns me: the backup is being made to an external USB drive. This is supposedly supported...but the error that crashed the backup was an I/O error. Are you sure external USB drives are supported? Are they required to be running constantly? My external USB drive spins down after a certain period of inactivity.
Peter,
I went back through the support options page and confirmed that I am not eligible for support because my support period has expired.
Which, if you'll pardon me for saying so, is complete and total !#$!@#$(&)(&*). The "nonstop" backup feature of this product has NEVER worked as advertised since I purchased it. And that wasn't all that long ago.
When I ran into a problem I came to the support forums first. The solution I was offered did not work (I'm not referring to this current thread, but an earlier one). And now I'm being penalized for not filing a support incident?!?
So far, this has been a terrible out-of-the-box experience for me. I would appreciate hearing from Acronis as to whether they plan on addressing this situation, and, if so, how that will be done. Please have someone contact me offline at mark at arcabama dot com.
Mark,
Yes, USB drives are supported. Can you post info about your system configuration (OS, USB version, etc.)? I have encountered the error you are seeing. Rather than repeat what has already been posted, please see the following forum topic:
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/40955
Can you also post a screen shot showing more detail lines shown, especially the line before the error event. You might check the Windows SYSTEM event log (if you're running Windows) to see if it logged an error at about the same time NSB logged the error.
FYI, I also had problems not receiving notifications when replies are posted. I notified Acronis, and they fixed it. I don't know the details of what they did. I do know the problem was on their end.
Thanks, Tom, for the follow-up.
OS: Win8 64 bit. Clean install, all updates applied
16 GB system RAM
USB: external backup target running on USB 2
There were two I/O errors in the Acronis log, both with the same error code as what I posted (one of them was the one I posted). One took place at 9:26:31 AM on 3/26/13, the second took place at 9:31:08 AM on 3/26/13.
Checking the Windows event logs was interesting. There are no events recorded around the time the Acronis errors were logged. In fact, if I'm reading the system log correctly the machine was in hibernation or sleep mode:
3/26/2013 3:33:43 PM Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Boot The boot type was 0x2.
3/26/2013 3:33:43 PM Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Boot The boot menu policy was 0xC0000001.
3/26/2013 3:33:43 PM Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Boot The bootmgr spent 0 ms waiting for user input.
3/26/2013 3:33:43 PM Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Boot There are 0x1 boot options on this system.
3/26/2013 3:33:42 PM Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-General The system time has changed... System time synchronized with the hardware clock.
3/25/2013 6:05:16 PM Microsoft-Windows-Time-Service NtpClient was unable to set a domain peer to use as a time source because of discovery error. NtpClient will try again in 15 minutes and double the reattempt interval thereafter. The error was: The entry is not found. (0x800706E1)
3/25/2013 6:05:14 PM Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power The system is entering sleep. Sleep Reason: Hibernate from Sleep
How in the world could TrueImage have logged an error message when the system was asleep? Bizarre...
Your problem appear similar to the ones I have encountered and have been report for quite some time. Here are some related posts:
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/36183
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/34621
I believe NSB (and other programs) will wake the machine (without you noticing it) to run scheduled tasks. One NSB task is consolidation (see attached). I have noticed considerable problems when the machine resumes from sleep/hibernation mode. Acronis is aware of these issues, but I have yet to get a firm commitment to correct them.
Wonderful. And in the meantime my support window has closed.
There is a new build available and some of the NSB issues have been addressed.
Collin, how do I go about getting the new build? I just did a check for update and it claims I'm using the latest version.
Never mind, I'm downloading it from the website. I guess the update has not propagated to where the built-in update checker can see it yet.
When I launched TIH, it notified me that an update was available. I installed it, but unfortunately, the NSB driver (afcdpsrv.exe, 3.816,424 bytes dated 1/18/2013), has not been updated.
Do the IO errors I've encountered invalidate the NSB backup that exists on my backup drive? Do I need to create a new backup every time I encounter an NSB IO error?
To the best of my recollection, whenever I have manually started NSB after encountering the error, it has resumed. I haven't detected any problems such as data loss or corruption once it sorts itself out (after it catches itself back to being in its normal running state). It may spend some time in its "preparing to back up" state, but continues after that.
Thanx, Tom. Not to be too anal about this, but have you ever tried to restore an NSB backup that has encountered these IO errors? I don't want to risk my system disk unnecessarily, but I'd hate to find out the backup was invalid right when I needed it :).
I have only selectively restored individual files.
Now the bad news - I installed the update on both my W7 and Vista machines. Everything appeared to succeed, but I have now found that the update apparently DID NOT install! No warning, no errors, but when I launched TIH on both machines, it said an update was available, and the about screen showed that I was indeed still running the previous version on both machines. Right now, the Vista machine gets to the point of removing duplicate files and seems to just sits there. I'm in the process of trying to find out if it actually still doing something, or has just lost its way. Windows indicates that it is still responding (not hung).
I'm going to try the update on my W7 machine again.
This is not a good situation.
Hello Tom Sepka,
Thank you for your reply in this thread.
If after an installation or update of any product the product was not installed or updated, most common reason is the security software running on this machine. In this case, you only can first disable the software during installation or add files and folders to whitelist of this software. You will find more detailed information in this article from our knowledge base.
If you need additional assistance, please create a system report of the affected machine and contact support. You will find all available support options in our Customer handbook.
If there is anything else we can do for you, please let me know.
Thank you.
Peter,
When I reran the update on both machines, it installed properly without me having to do anything differently. I did the successful update prior to seeing your post.
Well, build 6514 hasn't solved all the problems with this eminently-stoppable "nonstop" backup service. I had another I/O error-based service crash a few days ago. I didn't notice it until just now.
When I restarted the service it trundled for a while and claimed to have successfully completed a new full backup. I notice that my "available backups" count has plunged from 65 to 19. Not sure what that means, but I guess if I wanted to restore an older version of a file I'd be SOL.
Should we start a pool on how long it'll take Acronis to update the "nonstop" backup software so it's really "nonstop" on the (supported) Windows 8 platform? Might be kind of fun...
Well, it crashed again this morning.
I guess I'll just need to get in the habit of checking the running state of my "nonstop" backup system every time I log into my system.