can't resolve error msg "the specified file does not exist"

Sean, welcome to these user forums.

Please download the Log File Viewer app from the link in my signature below and use this to check for other messages that may be being written to the logs for your backup task.

What build version of ATIH 2016 are you using? The latest build is #6581.

What type of backup are you making here?  Is this an 'Entire PC' backup, Disks & Partitions, or Files & Folders?  How many different disks & partitions are included in the backup to give the 8TB of data you are selecting as the source data?

What type of backup drive are you writing to - you mention USB 2.0, but is the drive connected directly to the computer, or via a hub, how is it powered?

You are welcome to post copies of the log files as attachments to the forum if you need help understanding the content.

Sean, if you could download MVP FTRPilot's log viewer (get it below in this direct post), it may shed some more light.  YOu can also upload a coupld of your most recent service.logs here for additional review.  

The file could be locked by an antivirus program which flaggs it as malware, there could be a permission issue, etc.  Also, USB drives have been known to temporarily cut out during backups.  Often times, using a different USB port (back of a PC if you have a desktop) may help.  Othertimes, users have found that changing the UsB cable helps, others have had to use entirely different external cases.  A USB hub can cause problems for some as they may drop out.  Non-powered USB drives may not have enough usb power from backups that write large files.   Others that have switched from USB 2.0 to 3.0 (if available on their system) not only see a dramatic performance increase, but better results with backups if there are no USB power issues.

Logs are the first place to look though to see if you can pinpoint the specific file and/or other issues.  

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your help.

I do not know what build I am using, but I am not using 2016, it is 2015.

I am backing up Disks & Partitions. I am backing up three different physical disks to an external drive. This drive is a mediasonic raid box with 4, 4tb spanned to make a 16tb drive. It is powered separately. There is no hub. 

I'll attach the log file.

Still having the problem. thanks for your attention to it.

Happy Thanksgiving! LOL.

Sean

Hi There,

Thanks for your help. I do not see the MVP FTRPilot's log viewer you mentioned...

there is no usb hub involved. i am having trouble locating the right usb 3.0 port on my mobo (Asus Z97-A). That is a different problem...

I'll attach the log file.

Thanks,
Sean

Sean, thank you for the log file, this shows you are using ATIH 2015 build 6613 which was the final build version.

From the log data, I see several potential issues with your backup task:

message=The specified file does not exist: F:\Acronis Backups\10_20_2016_full_b2_s1_v2.tib

message=Check whether the source and destination partitions exist

Sean wrote:

 I am backing up Disks & Partitions. I am backing up three different physical disks to an external drive. This drive is a mediasonic raid box with 4, 4tb spanned to make a 16tb drive. It is powered separately. There is no hub.

I would strongly recommend splitting your backup task into three separate tasks, one for each of your three different physical disks.  This will improve the performance for your backup and make it a whole lot easier to recover any individual drive should the need arise, plus will also make it easier to determine where any problems originate from by limiting the backup to one drive at a time.

The above two messages suggest that your backup drive letter may have changed since the current task was created, i.e. ATIH is looking from drive F: but your drive may now have a different assigned drive letter?

ATIH stores the UUID (unique drive identifier) and drive letter information in its internal database and looks for the same drive and letter next time the task is run.  If your drive letter does change, then I would recommend doing a clone of the task settings then reselecting both the Source and Target drives again in the cloned task to correct the change of drive letter.

Thanks again Steve,

This is very helpful. The drive letter has remained the same, however I have encountered this problem before, when I had booted up w/ a flash drive in the machine, and different drive letters were assigned. This time, the letter is correct though.

I definitely like the idea of splitting the backup into three tasks--one per drive. If I do this though, won't it be necessary to perfom an entirely new back up from the beginning? That will take me a couple of days w/ usb 2.0...

Thanks again,

Sean

Sean, yes, if you create the three backup tasks then these will be performing from the beginning and making new full backups for each drive.  You would still have your original backup assuming that you have sufficient free space to keep this whilst creating the new backups too.

Sean,

Your best bet here is to follow Steve's suggestion in creating new tasks.  The existing task database has become corrupted with respect to the location of the backup file in question in all likelihood.   The easiest way to correct is to remove the task from the application and leave the backup file in place then, add the file back into the application and reconfigure the task for it.

The alternative that Steve suggests is better because of the other fine points he makes.

I'm currently in the process of a new backup. I have done one, and in the middle of the second (24 hours to go on that one). Will do the third on Sat or Sunday. My next question is regarding the new backup "tasks" I'm creating. Can I bundle those together? Or do I just need to initiate them independently? Also, can I assume that it would be better to run these tasks separately? Or does that even matter?

Thanks,

Sean

Sean, I would recommend keeping the tasks separate, you can't bundle them together as Acronis will only allow one task to be active at a time, so trying to run them together will result in the second and subsequent tasks being 'queued' behind the active task.

You can use the Schedule options to set specific times for when your tasks will run, to maintain the separation, though this will depend on how long each task takes to run to completion and how often you want to run the tasks.

Hi Steve,

It has taken some time, but I am getting closer. As you suggested, I created three backup tasks. One for each physical hard drive that I am backing up. I _think_ they are backed up now, but I am not sure. Only one drive gives me info to indicate that is has backed up, however, by checking the acronis backup folder, i see large tib files that appear to be the right size for the back ups. I'll attach three screen caps to show what I mean. These three screens represent the three tasks. As you will see, only one of the three indicates when the last back up was. Do you know why this is?

Thanks,
Sean

Sean, thanks for the update and screen shots.   The two images that don't show the last backup time would tend to suggest that these haven't run yet and are not scheduled?

If you haven't used it yet, please download the Log File Viewer app from the link in my signature below, you can use this to check what the Service logs show for each of the three backup tasks.  

Are you backing up the three drives to separate target folders or all into the same folder?

Thanks Steve,

I'm not really accustomed to reading these log files, but my read is they the backups, are, indeed created. I'll attach the log file.

I am backing up to the same "Acronis Backups" folder. I'll attach a screencap of the contents of that folder for you.

Cheers,

Sean

Sean, the service log doesn't show any errors for that specific backup task - task_name=WDC WD4003FZEX-00Z4SA0

The screen shot raises some questions depending on whether this was meant to be a full file listing of your backup folder or not?

I see a full and incremental file for the above task for backup sequence b7.
I see a full and incremental file for Samsung SSD 850 EVO 500GB for backup sequence b4
I see just a full backup for ST80000AS0002-1NA17Z for backup sequence b5
I see only an incremental file for RAW_VIDEO backup sequence b5 with no full backup file shown.

So, are there more files in your backup folder, including the missing full backup for RAW_VIDEO _b5_s1_v1 ?

Are there earlier backup sequence files for the other backup tasks?

all of the files in the folder are listed in the screencap of the Acronis Backups folder. I'll attach that one again. 

Perhaps it would be helpful to see the backup scheme. i'll attach that screenshot too.

sn

Sean, again, if the screen shot (04) are all the files in your backup folder then there is a definite problem with at least the RAW_VIDEO backup task because even though you have the scheme setting set to Create only incremental versions after the initial full version, the backup is of no use at all without having a full backup file.  

All ATIH backups must have a full backup file upon which any other incremental or differential backups in the same backup sequence are based.  Any incremental or differential file without the full backup that it was based on can never be used for recovery.

OK, so how do I resolve that? Do I need to create yet another full backup file from the beginning? What is the 3.34tb raw video tib file if not a complete back up?

Sean, the name of the file tells you what type of backup file it is, i.e. RAW_VIDEO_inc_b5_s2_v1.tib shows this is an incremental backup file.  The size simply reflect the degree of change that has occurred since the full backup of this source data was created.  The missing file would be RAW_VIDEO_full_b5_s1_v1.tib.  

See the ATIH 2015 User Guide: Backup file naming which states:

Backup file naming

A backup file name has the following attributes:

• Backup name.
• Backup method (full, inc, diff: full, incremental, differential).
• Number of backup chain (in the form of b#).
• Number of backup version (in the form of s#).
• Number of volume (in the form of v#).

  For example this attribute changes when you split a backup into several files. Refer to Backup splitting for details.

Thus a backup name may look the following way:

1. my_documents_full_b1_s1_v1.tib
2. my_documents_full_b2_s1_v1.tib
3. my_documents_inc_b2_s2_v1.tib
4. my_documents_inc_b2_s3_v1.tib

If you are creating a new backup, and there is already a file with the same name, the program does not delete the old file, but adds to the new file the "-number" suffix, for example, my_documents_inc_b2_s2_v1-2.tib.

right--that makes sense. thanks for clarifying that. so, it looks like TWO of my three drives are backed up, but the "Raw_Video" file just has and incremental backup, and not a full. So, should I proceed by making a new, full backup of the "Raw_Video" hard drive? What should I do with that 3.4 tb incremental file of the Raw_Video drive? Simply delete it?

also, with the new back up, i am not sure how to set up the options. of course, initially, I want a FULL back up, but after that, I only want incremental back ups. Do i need to change something in the options initially? Or do i need to change something after the FULL back up is complete. I apologize, but I find this very confusing.

thanks,

sean

Sean, you will need to make a new full backup for your RAW_VIDEO data and delete the 3.4TB incremental file as this cannot be used without the full it was based on.

What size is your backup drive where all these backup files are being stored?  Your 04 image shows nearly 10TB of files already?

For information, doing a full disk defragmentation can cause an incremental backup to be of a similar size to a full backup of the same source data due to defragmentation touches a very large number of disk sectors.

The backup drive is 16tb.

i'll begin the new full back up. again, do i start out with an incremental, full, or differential?

Sean, all the different backup schemes must always start by creating a full backup image, so pick the one that you want to continue with, i.e. if you want to use incremental backups, then choose that scheme, then ATIH will make a first Full backup, then start making incremental backups.

Please understand that with incremental backups, you must have every incremental file plus the first full backup file for the backup sequence if you ever need to recover data from these files.  Each file depends on the one before it in the chain.  For this reason, it is recommended not to make too large an incremental chain, but to start a new backup chain after getting to an acceptable length.

For example, choose a scheme where you create a new full backup after every 20 incremental backups, so the length of any backup version chain is maximum of 21 files (1 Full + 20 Incr files).

Thanks again Steve, I did do some reading on these differences and am going with differential backups for now. Also, for my data disk, I am just backing up "files and folders".

One question that i still have... After ATIH has created several differential backups, than makes a new full back up, is the original full backup, deleted, or overwritten, or left in place? I ask because I am worried about running out of space on my backup drive.

cheers,

sean

ps--my final backup is about 3 hours from completion!

Sean, you can use the automatic cleanup rules to manage what happens to your older backup version files.

My own preference is to use the "Store no more than X recent version chains" where you set what X will be.

You could set X = 2 which will mean that the oldest set of backups will only be deleted when you have successfully created the new full backup for the 3rd version chain.  This means that you would need to have enough space to hold at least 3 x Full backups plus 2 sets of Differential backup files.

Thanks again for all of your help. I have recently made three backups from my three physical drives to my one large back up drive. Yesterday, one of my physical drives began to fail after only two weeks of operation. I moved it from an internal drive to an external drive, and was able to read the drive that way. Then, I attempted a backup, but ran into trouble with ATIH. It automatically tries to run a backup whenever I start it, and I can’t seem to stop it no matter what I try. I would really like to update this backup now, while the drive is still working, so I can replace it.

Also, I seem to not be able to attach the system report, which is about 8mb…

Thanks,

Sean, sorry to hear about your failing drive.  If you have moved the source drive for your backup task to an external location, then I would suspect that it has been given a different drive letter, so you would need to reselect the source drive again for the task.

As to why ATIH is automatically trying to run a backup whenever you start it, is more difficult to say why as this should only really happen if you have particular settings configured, i.e. Run at startup (which normally means at System startup rather than application), or Run when device is connected?

If you have the Log File Viewer app (link below in my signature) then use this to check to see if you can identify what task is starting automatically, you should be able to check by the date / time for the log files.

Not sure about the System Report attachment issue either, 8MB is well within the 20MB maximum limit set for attachments to the forum - have you tried with a different web browser?