Backup Refuses to Start Never Ending Problems!!!
I have 2 Backup drives. Suddenly and without warning, both drives hung up and refused to do any more incremental backups at the scheduled time. So I reformatted the 1 TB J & L drives (Full format) and tried to do a full backup. I even disconnected 1 of the drives because when I try to do a full backup to either drive, it just sits there for hours in a "Queued" state and does nothing. Now I have no backups on a mission critical system and am about to lose my job because the boss says I gotta get this working out out the door I go. Lenovo TS140. 4 1TB drives on a RAID 10 Windows 10 OS with all the latest updates. Oh yea, The incrementals are set so that after 10 of them it will erase those and do another full backup and start over again. But, not both drives on the same day. That way there is always 1 full backup on the other drive in case of disaster. No system changes were made before the incrementals stopped working.
-John
Steve Smith wrote:The incrementals are set so that after 10 of them it will erase those and do another full backup and start over again.
John, sorry but that is not how Acronis automatic cleanup works! Nothing is ever deleted before a new Full backup has been created successfully unless you employ another method via using a Pre Command batch file to delete backups, but doing so would corrupt metadata used by Acronis.
Your options as I understand things at this point would be to delete the existing backup tasks and create new tasks, or else use a different backup solution.
Well... I had to wait for a day when I could go in at midnight and try something. I completely uninstalled the backup software, downloaded the image again and did a reboot and then did a new install. Now I only hooked up the J drive and was able to do a full backup without issue. Then I did some worthless tripe on the system just to make sure there were system changes and then did a schedule change to do incrementals. When the time came that I set, the incremental completed without issue. I thought I had it fixed. So I plugged in the L drive and tried to do a full backup. It just hung in an endless "Queued" state. I finally had to hit stop because it would have hung forever. This used to work. But after the last update when they changed the name to "Cyber Protect Home Office" that's when things went south. All the problems started after that update. I'm lost as to what to do now. Please help. I'm not getting any sleep having to go in after hours to straighten out this stuff. Oh yea, I did a full re-format on both of the backup drives before I started all the new backup tries. -John
John, if your backup to the J drive was working correctly, were you trying to use the same task to do the backup to the L drive, or was that using a separate task?
If you intended the J backup task to find the L drive and back up to it then that won't work without having to reconfigure the task destination.
Steve Smith wrote:John, if your backup to the J drive was working correctly, were you trying to use the same task to do the backup to the L drive, or was that using a separate task?
If you intended the J backup task to find the L drive and back up to it then that won't work without having to reconfigure the task destination.
No, A separate backup task. I added in the L drive with the Add Backup + sign at the bottom of the screen. When it asked for a destination, I chose the L drive. (After plugging it in.) Then I did a new complete backup with the "Backup Now" green button at the bottom of the pane just like the other drive. It immediately goes into the hung "Queued" state and locks up there.
-John
John, do you only have those two backup tasks for J & L, or are there any other tasks?
Queued status normally means that Acronis believes there is another task active or pending ahead of the task showing queued.
It is possible that the Schedul2 log may have some information about what is waited on here but the log is fairly difficult to read / interpret!
You can use the MVP Assistant tool to help render the log into a formatted page.
Steve Smith wrote:John, do you only have those two backup tasks for J & L, or are there any other tasks?
Queued status normally means that Acronis believes there is another task active or pending ahead of the task showing queued.
It is possible that the Schedul2 log may have some information about what is waited on here but the log is fairly difficult to read / interpret!
You can use the MVP Assistant tool to help render the log into a formatted page.
OK... Thanks. I'll get that done. Be back when I get that done.
-John
I never had to look at the log. One of the software developers came by while I was working on the system. He said I looked frustrated and asked me what the problem was. I explained everything. He then said, "Is the name of the L drive the same as it always was?" I said it was. So he said, "Give it a name it never was before." So I changed the name of the L drive from "AMPDEVELOPMENT-2" to "AMPDEVELOPMENT-6" And I did nothing else. He told me to start the backup and so I did. This time the backup started immediately and did not go into the hung "Queued" state. I asked him to explain. He reminded me about the old Vax mainframe days with massbus devices when they get a corrupted UCB (unit control block). So, back then, if the customer could not do a re-boot, changing the unit number would allow the VAX-VMS software to build an New UCB on the spot and the device was then available again. And then all they had to do was change a line in the com file that pointed to that drive.
So... Windows 10 works this way? Or is it the Acronis software at fault? Or is it a bizarre feature? I really need to know because we need to document the correct answer without speculation. Thanks if you can answer. Otherwise I got to log a ticket with tech support.
-John
John, my understanding from an Acronis perspective is that the partition GUID of the external drive is used for backup tasks, so the drive letter shouldn't be important in itself. I haven't ever come across any issues where the drive label caused any issues, so this is completely new to me. I guess a key question is whether the GUID holds any information about the UCB??
I don't have any experience with VAX but definitely a good find from your software developer and one to store away for future reference! (My background was IBM midrange systems for the main part and again don't recollect seeing this issue while working tech support.)
Steve Smith wrote:John, my understanding from an Acronis perspective is that the partition GUID of the external drive is used for backup tasks, so the drive letter shouldn't be important in itself. I haven't ever come across any issues where the drive label caused any issues, so this is completely new to me. I guess a key question is whether the GUID holds any information about the UCB??
I don't have any experience with VAX but definitely a good find from your software developer and one to store away for future reference! (My background was IBM midrange systems for the main part and again don't recollect seeing this issue while working tech support.)
I'm going to mark this as solved because I'm just happy to be rid of this issue. Thanks for hanging in there and all your great advice.
-John