Can't find photo folders/files in Recovery
I recently tried to locate and recover a photo (JPEG file) via the Recovery tag on True Image 2018. I could not find my individual picture folders in the tree structure although the higher-level folder was there. I checked on the Backup Source, and all of my photo folders are marked for backup. Indeed, the backup claims that almost half of the backup file is Pictures, so I suspect that they're there somewhere. All the backup runs executed successfully. So I set up a new Backup scheme, selecting my photo folders. Again, they don't appear under Recovery. I executed a search for an individual photo file, without success. Any ideas?
Steve
Thanks for your response. I've done as you suggest, and get the same result, i.e. I can't find the photos in the .tib file. This specific backup was simply to back up my Documents, Music, Pictures and Video folders. As far as I can tell, it's only (most of) the subfolders of Pictures that I can't find.
I've used True Image for several years and can't recall having this problem previously - although I can't recall the last time that I tried to locate my photo files on a backup.
Darryl, what kind of backup - full, incr diff - are you taking? I don't know why it would matter, but it's addition al information.
You said you tried changing the backup scheme. Was this a change to the existing backup task or the creation of a new task? If it was a change to the existing task you might try creating a new task to see if it has the same problem.
Does Windows show different properties for those files backed up vs. those skipped? Is there anything in the TI_Demon log pointing to a problem?
Darryl, do you see the files OK just using Explorer to open the source locations here?
Where are these files being stored?
Are any symbolic links being used here, i.e. your Pictures folder is physically on another drive but appearing as if are on the source drive?
What file system is being used for the file location?
If you are backing up an exFAT drive / location, then you may not be able to see any contents.
Thanks Patrick & Steve for your assistance. I'll try to answer your questions:
The problematic Backup is set-up as Incremental. Excuse my loose terminology - when I said " I set up a new Backup scheme " I meant that I set up a completely new backup job to see if that would solve the issue. But the same problem occurred. I'm toying with the idea of going back to an "Entire PC" backup to see if that will work.
I don't have any problems using Explorer or any other software (e.g. Photoshop, MS Photos) to access the Folders/Files. All the files that I seek to back up using True Image are on my PC's hard drive. I'm backing-up to external hard drives. All that I did for this particular backup job was select the high level Folders on that "C" drive (Documents, Music, Pictures, Videos) for backup. The tree structure for the backup accurately then selected all the sub-folders and individual files.
I'm perfectly willing to accept that I've done something really dumb, and I'll then be extremely embarrassed to have wasted your time - but I've spent hours trying to suss it out so far, and failed. So for the time-being I'm doing straight copies of my data onto hard drives.
Darryl, thanks for the further information / answers.
From what you have told us, I cannot think of any real reason why you cannot see your photos from within the Acronis backup image file, and I doubt that it is anything particularly dumb based just on the information known.
I wouldn't bother with making an 'Entire PC' backup in this situation, as I very much doubt it will give you any different results.
If you are able, can you provide us with screen shots of your backup task pages in the ATI GUI, i.e. the first overview page, the Backup Scheme and Exclusions pages (no need for the Schedule or Advanced pages at this time).
Please download the MVP Log Viewer tool (link in my signature below) and use this to review the log file for your backup operation. This should tell us if there were any issues during the backup task?
Darryl, am I correct in assuming you only have one hard drive on the system? Is the new backup scheme a Files and Folders scheme? Have you tried to create a File and Folders backup for only the Pictures folder. What happens then?
Check your exclusions too.
As Steve said, things like symbolic links can cause folders to not be backed up, but that is generally with a Disk type backup. I've used NTFS LinksView to see what is set up.
Look forward to seeing log results, especially ti_demon.
Yes symbolic links (and libaries) can cause issues - you need to use the full path instead (at least when using non-stop backup - not sure if it is needed for files and folder backups).
Ian
Thanks again everyone. Interesting comment, Ian. I was beginning to wonder if there's something wrong/unusual about the directory structure of my Pictures library, so I might do a bit more playing by choosing lower level folders/files when I get a mo.
Steve. Very happy to supply screenshots. When you say "the first overview page", do you simply mean the first screen that appears upon starting ATI? And can you advise how best to send/attach the screenshots. I assume there's a better method than pasting each of them in this data entry window. Do I use the "Add a new file" Upload function?
Bruno. Yes, only one built-in hard drive. Yes, both my on-going backup and the new one I experimented with are "Files & Folders". No, I haven't (yet) tried one with only the Pictures Folder.
Darryl, you can embed images in your topic reply by clicking on the icon shown on the second row in the Editor panel (third icon from right that looks like mountains and black sun).
For capturing the images, then there are lots of options but my preference is using Greenshot for this purpose.
I've just experienced a weird change of events.
I realised that I may have unintentionally misled you a bit in that not all of the Pictures library fails to appear in the backup - a few lower-level folders and files actually appear- but not the huge majority of my personal photos within their subfolder. So I went back to document the exact situation. I then discovered that my wife had altered/merged and deleted a few photo subfolders on my hard drive. So, initially irritatedly, I thought I'd better do a further backup run to ensure that the results match the current status.
And hey presto, the results are now different. Worse. A high-level folder within Pictures (the one that holds most of my photos, had existed in the previous backups, but with just 4 subfolders and a very small subset of my photos) has now disappeared completely when I select the Recovery tab!
I guess this may point to some strange problem within folder structures/directories? Or have I truly gone mad?
Darryl, before deciding that you have gone mad or just having a bad day!!
Try doing a direct copy of your Photos folder structure to your backup drive or another drive with sufficient free space. You can use the following command from an Administrator command prompt with changes are needed for your environment.
robocopy %USERPROFILE%\Pictures F:\Pictures /mir
%USERPROFILE% will map to your C:\Users\[your user name] folder
F:\Pictures will be the target location to copy to (change for your own drive letter).
/mir creates a mirror copy of the source folders / files to the target location.
The above will verify that the source folder structure is good and can be navigated fully.
Apologies for lack of input recently. Events have meant that I either haven't been here or haven't had the time to progress this in recent days. Will perform suggested actions and respond as soon as I can..
Steve. I've run the Robocopy job as you specified and it was successful - all the Pictures folders and files were copied onto my external hard disk.
I've uploaded some screenshots: From MVP LogViewer (I was intrigued to see that it only included 2 subfolders of my OURPHOTOS folder - there are a large number of subfolders and files) and from my True Image backup job.