Backup Failure
I'm looking for help with a BackUp problem which has just occurred. I have backed up my PC to a couple of hard disks alternatively. This has worked successfully for 2 years. Now the backup to one of the drives keeps failing with the message for example "Failed due to an error at 23.33 Destination is unavailable. " It doesn't fail immediately the backup starts and everything seems to be working for say 30 minutes and then it fails. When this first happened I deleted the backup that was failing and reinstated it. The backup plan is exactly the same as the disk which is working fine just 12 hours offset.Further background, the disk only keeps a limited number of backups so there is plenty of space. I checked the disk with Crucial Storage Executive and it is working fine. I can save a Word file for example to the disk with no problems. Its a Dell Win 10 machine and Acronis True Image 2020. Both are fully up to date in terms of software. Has anyone got suggestions as to the problem and solution.
Ian
Thank you for the suggestions which I have reviewed. KB 62741 is relevant and I should add some additional information. Both disks are connected all the time. I have separate plans for each one, when I say the plan is the same, all I mean is that the backup choices are the same apart from a 12 hour time difference. So I backup to each disk once per day each having a separate plan. I deleted the failing plan using the drop down menu option in Backup and built a new plan fron scratch following the recommendations in 62741. However despite apparently working it still failed with the same Destination not available message. If I look at the disk using Windows I see a 140GB file of type Acronis True Image Backup on the drive. Further I used the Validate function on this file and it reported a valid backup, however the next timed backup failed as usual. I hadn't touched the back plans for 2 years since I set it up and the last Windows update was 2 weeks ago, so the backup has been working post that update. If you have any futher ideas I would be grateful.
Richard, how are your two backup storage drives connected? Are they internal or external drives, i.e. internal SATA drives, or external USB drives either connected directly by cable or connected via a dock or similar?
For USB drives, then check the Power options to see if USB selective suspend is enabled as that can cause drives to be unavailable if suspended due to an inactive period during the backup operation?
Beyond the above then the logs for the backup operation should shed further light on what is happening.
Download a copy of the MVP Assistant log viewer tool and use this to look at the logs to see if they show any issues during the operation process?
The latest version of the new log viewer tool is at the link below.
MVP Assistant Version 2.6.3 is available.
If you have Disks & Partitions backups created on ATI 2020 or later using .tibx files, then look in the Backup Worker logs.
If you have Files & Folders backups using .tib files (or Disk backups from earlier versions using .tib files) or using Cloning then look in the Demon logs.
Other logs are shown by the MVP Assistant under the 'Active Logs' heading of the Log Viewer page of the Assistant, i.e. Media Builder.
The Schedule2 log contains information related to scheduled task but is one of the more difficult logs to read / work through.
The log files should be zipped to preserve their original file names if sharing in the forums and would need to be less than 3MB in size, otherwise you would need to share the zip file via a Cloud share service such as OneDrive, Dropbox etc.
Hello Richard!
Welcome to our community.
I would suggest you the following:
- to run the CHKDSK: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows… ( If there are errors they should be fixed otherwise the backups will fail ).
- As Steve mentioned above please check if the disks are properly connected to the computer, this can cause the backups to fail ( test the connections ),
- You could also try to recreate the plans / re-add the locations and check if they backups work again.
Let us know if you have any questions.
Thanks!
Thank you for your help so far. Let me provide some additional information. Both disks are SATA disks and connected permanently. I ran CHKDSK on the problem disk and it showed no errors. It can be read and written to using windows with no problems. I downloaded MVP Assistant and used it to to view the log files under ti_demon but I couldn't get the Upload function to work - there's a lot to understand in MVP Assistant. Finally the backups on the problem disk have started to work intermittently having failed completely for more than a week. Of the last 4 sessions 3 worked and 1 failed with the same message as usual.
You could also try running the disk manufacture's disk utility on the problematic drive as they can sometimes sort out issues that CHKDSK cannot sort out.
Richard Scott wrote:...
I downloaded MVP Assistant and used it to to view the log files under ti_demon but I couldn't get the Upload function to work - there's a lot to understand in MVP Assistant. ...
Richard, what is the Upload function your refer to? It's not something I have in the MVP Assistant.
When you recreated the failing task, did you give it a different name and locate the backup in a different folder on the drive? Just thinking about trying to avoid any conflict with existing Acronis internal database. Once the database gets out of whack, it can be very hard to fix that.
Looking at prior forum posts on this issue, I did find a couple topics where the problems turned out to be 1) the GUID of the disk was changed after a Windows update; 2) The destination drive suddenly was being blocked by Windows Defender. Not sure either of these would be pertinent since the problem is intermittent.
When the failure happens, can you determine if anything had actually been written to the destination drive by the backup job prior to the failure?
What types of backups are these? Are you writing .tib or .tibx files? Backing up to .tibx files will also cause writes to be done to the prior file in the chain.
Bruno, I believe Richard is referring to the forum File >> Upload option below the text input box and not anything in the MVP Assistant tool.
Steve Smith wrote:Bruno, I believe Richard is referring to the forum File >> Upload option below the text input box and not anything in the MVP Assistant tool.
I suspected that, but just wanted to be sure since the phrasing made me think he might have been thinking something else. I'm a stickler for language; comes with age.