Acronis True Image 2021 (build 39216) Defferential secondary images are duplicated
I have a single backup defined, schedule is daily once a day at 11:00 p.m, type custom/Diffenential, create a full version after every 7 differential versions, delete version chains older than 14 days, Exclusions default, Advance, default settings.
When checking the image folder, the Defferential files -0001, -0002 etc. are duplicated, meaning the same file is created twice, same date and time stamp, but the second dupe file is slightly larger.
Why am I getting two incremental "Differential" backup files?
Bruce, you can't have two files of the same name so what is different between them? Is this a new backup job you are looking at?
In the normal case, you would have a backup file for the full, e.g. MyBackup.tibx, followed by the first differential being MyBackup-0001.tibx and the second being MyBackup-0002.tibx, As a differential, it would make sense that MyBackup-0002.tibx would be larger than MyBackup-0001.tibx. Also, in the way ATI links the backup files together, when MyBackup-0002.tibx is created there will be a small update to MyBackup-0001.tibx, thus producing the same date and time. Perhaps what you are seeing is normal operation.
Also, you might consider rather than having automatic cleanup remove backups older than seven days, have it keep no more than 2 recent backup chains. Each chain, as you've indicated, will be 8 days worth (one full plus seven differentials).
I'm aware you can't have to files with exactly the same name. I have deleted the duplicate files. In the attached picture file "BRUCEK-HP Differential-0002.tibx" had a duplicate file named "BRUCEK-HP Differential-0003.tibx" and file "BRUCEK-HP Differential-0005.tibx" had a duplicate file "BRUCEK-HP Differential-0004.tibx" which I also deleted. The deleted files were close in size to their sister file.
There will be another timed backup tonight, I'll post an image again of the duplicate files so we can see how close in size they are.
The files are being backed up to a Synology NAS with 32 terabytes of RAID storage, the images have their own folder.
Bruce, why do you believe that the -0003 and -0004 files were duplicates?
Next, how did you delete these files? Did you use the 'Clean up versions' tool provided for that purpose?
Point of note: double-clicking on any .tibx file belonging to the same backup task will always show all the files for the backup version chain but these are not duplicated files!
Bruce, I do not understand why you are calling these files "duplicates"? Each differential version with have a new -000x number so -0003 is not a duplicate of -0002, etc. What you seem to have done is delete valid differentials from the middle of the chain. If you consider that when you complete a differential the date modified will change on the prior file as True Image updates the linkage. Please look at the date created for each file.
How did you delete them? Did you do this with Explorer? or did you do this in True Image (actually, I'm not sure about cleanup versions with differentials so I don't even know if True Image will do that). Perhaps you should run a validation on the chain.
When I made the first full back up it created a single file, the first differential backup was also a single file, the next time two files were created on the same date and time, with extensions .002 and .003. The next differential file was .004 and .005, again same data and time stamp and close in size.
I'll see what happens tonight.
Bruce, the logs for your backup task may hold the clue as to why two backups were created when only one was expected?
There is a new MVP Assistant log viewer tool that has now been made available by Acronis via the Community Tools page..
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) 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.
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.
Bruce, it is unclear when and how often you actually looked at the files. How certain are you that two files were actually created about the same time? Have you looked at File Creation date and time? The Date Modified as shown in your picture above will be misleading.
Also, the -0002.tibx file shows a time modified of 11:31 AM, so that does not comport with the 11:00 pm backup time. Did you run a manual backup?