Backwards Compatibility of TI2017

EricG, there should be no problems with opening any Acronis backup image .TIB files from ATIH 2016 with the 2017 version.

What happens when you double-click to open the .TIB file from Windows Explorer?  It should open via the shell integration for ATIH and show you the contents and allow you to navigate through the structure within the file.

When you say you are trying to import a backup, how are you doing this?  The normal process is to 'Add existing backup' which is found at the bottom of the main GUI panel (to the right of the option to add a new backup task).

The normal reason why I would expect the add existing backup option to fail is if you already have a backup task in the list for this same backup?  Have you checked that this is not the case?

Hi Steve

I am using my copy of TI 2014 on my Windows 7 Laptop and a copy of TI 2017 on my Windows 10 Laptop.

Using the Windows 10 Laptop I able to open any of my .tib files in Windows Explorer and I can also access any of them on startup using my recovery media.  I have connected both my External USB HDDs that contain backups but cannot open all of these backups within TI 2017 in the way I can in TI 2014 (and previous versions) I have used over the years on my Windows 7 Laptop.

When I attempt to import all of these existing backups into TI 2017 using the "add existing backup" I cannot do so.  One, sometimes two, of them will appear;  some won't.  These are backups made using either TI 2016 or TI 2017.

I also notice that there doesn't appear to be a facility to allocate a unique name to a new backup as one could in TI 2014 and earlier versions.

I have checked the help file and also downloaded and checked to Pdf User Manual, neither of which seems to give much information on this aspect of the application.

I have other issues with TI 2016 and TI 2017 that I also find frustrating and all in all I am less than enamoured with these newer versions of TI.

Eric, some screen shots of the files that you are trying to add as existing backups may be helpful for our understanding here?

I have re-checked my backups again and have found that I can open the three that I have in windows explorer but not in TI 2017.

It seems that my copy of TI 2017 only appears to be able to open backups on one of my two External HDDs, not from both of them.  If I try to do this all the backups disappear from TI 2017.

Perhaps this is normal for TI 2017 although this wasn't the case with TI 2014 and earlier.

Cannot see a way to insert my screen shots which are in jpeg format.  Sorry.

Eric, sorry but this behaviour is definitely not normal for ATIH 2017 - I have backups on a number of different backup drives, different makes and sizes, all USB external, plus on my NAS drive, and can open all of these backups just fine.

To insert screen shots in the forum, click on the icon at the top right corner of the editor panel (looks like the moon over mountains), then click on the option to Upload and select the image from where it is found on your computer, finally, click on Select which will embed the image in the text of your update.  Tip, add a couple of extra new lines, one for each image you want to add, then position your cursor on each new line before selecting the image to add.

These are the three backups that I currently have on my two External HDDs.  If I load from one HDD and then try to add from the second HDD the data disappears.  As I said earlier all these three backups are usable from the recovery media and also through Windows Explorer.

Is it worth trying an unistall of TI 2017 and a clean reinstall?

These may look better.  The previous ones were distorted.  Note the two different External Drives and dedicated (date) folders that contain the backups.

Eric, what are the actual file names for the backups on your two drives?  It is difficult to tell from the images but they look to be the same?  If so, that would be a problem in this scenario and you need to have different names to get them to show up correctly.

That doesn't make sense because although the backups may have the same name they are in different folders by date.  Also, you will see from the second image that these two backups are both showing up on Drive Y and have exactly the same name, and both of these are accessible from within TI2017.

My problem, with TI2017 but not TI2014 and before, is that I do not appear to be able to import from two external HDDs.  Although one of these, the first one shown, is a USB 3 device connected to a USB 3 port and the second one a USB 2 device connected to a USB 2 port I wouldn't have thought this should cause a problem like mine.

At the end of the day, this is not a problem that I cannot live with, especially as all my current backups are usable from the recovery media and within Explorer.  It is just that this problem, coupled with the loss of the inbuilt Log, makes TI2017 less useful to me than versions up to and including TI2014.

Regarding the posted images, I cannot find any advice on the Forum as to the best format/size of images for including in a post.  Do you know of ant such instructions?

Eric, there hasn't been any advice or guidance on the best format or size for images posted in the forum.

I would recommend opening a Support Case for this specific issue if you are willing to pursue it, as this does expose an issue for when your backup images are spread across multiple different backup drives and how these are handled within the ATIH 2017 GUI.  Please reference this forum topic when you open your support case to show the discussion that has taken place here.

Because I installed TI 2017 over the top of TI 2016 I have uninstalled TI 2017 and then reinstalled it to ensure there are no corrupted files in the application.

After doing so I tried again to import all my backups from my two external drives and found that the problem seems to be with one of my backups which showed a file size almost double that of the file size it should be but which is shown correctly when accessed in Explorer.  This seems to indicate there is something amiss with this particular backup.  If I import it into TI 2017 on its own, although it shows a much larger file size, it looks OK and I can access the contents but if I try to validate it, It says it cannot find the file.  I have deleted this backup entirely and will see if my problem still exists.

If the file within the TI application that keeps track of legitimate backup data is corrupted is there a way to recreate this file with current viable backups?  If so, how do I do this?

Eric, file history and versions are tracked within the Acronis metadata database files which are found in C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Database folders - you can force a rebuild of these files by deleting or renaming the Database folder, but to do so, you must first stop all Acronis Services and then end all Acronis programs/processes (which lock these files).

Doing this will remove all task history etc, but this gets rebuild when you launch the main ATIH application and start running your tasks.  This does not affect any task scheduling as that is held in a different place, but your tasks will show as if never run until you either run them or do a validation for them.

Thanks for the information.  I have now deleted the suspect backup file through TI and I can now import all the remaining backups from the two External Drives with no problems and can also access each one and recover files.

It would seem that my TI 2017 is now working as it should.  Thanks for all your help.

Eric, glad to hear that things are looking better - thanks for the update / feedback.