Accidentally deleted main file of incremental backup
Using Acronis True Image Home 2010 -
I recently re-installed my OS (Windows XP Media Center), and was in the process of recovering tib archives from an external HD. Inside the Acronis interface, I was in the recover section which allows one to select the backup archive(s). I somehow selected MyMusic2.tib (which is part of a master archive called MyMusic - which only contains the full backup archive (MyMusic) and the one additional incremental archive (MyMusic2). I meant to select MyMusic as the main archive to recover, so when I saw MyMusic2 displayed in the recovery "queue", I right-clicked it and chose to remove it (thinking I was just removing this from the queue list - which I would have then selected the proper archive (MyMusic)). Apparently, Acronis is poorly written because it not only deleted the main archive, I received no warning I was about to delete a MAJOR archive! This archive has got to be 40+ GB of music, and all I'm left with is MyMusic2.tib which is about a few MB's in size. This makes me sick to think I may have lost years of music collecting because of a mis-function or such a simple error and without Acronis offering any fail-safe warnings.
I'm currently looking online for anything that has to do with data recovery, and the list is overwhelming. Since the archive was "deleted" within the Acronis interface, I figured this forum would have a better focus on what I can do to recover the files. I have been careful to NOT write anything on this external HD (as I've read). What in the world can I do ???
The tools I've tried to far are:
http://www.piriform.com/recuva - which found items on another drive (which I don't care about), but nothing on this particular drive
http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/info.htm?language=1 - actually found MyMusic.tib and reports it's in good condition (which at least gives me hope), but when I try to save it to another drive, I get an error "cannot read source file" which makes me think it doesn't recognize .tib. I will take a look at your program.
Well, so far, I've had no luck. In addition to the above, I've used R-Studio (found MyMusic.tib but displays MyMusic.tib with 0 bytes), Restoration, undelete Plus (actually said the archive was overwritten - which I don't know how because as soon as it disappeared, I started trouble-shooting and did not write/save anything to that drive). This makes me sick... How can Acronis wipe away a main archive so easily?
A running Windows system is always writing to drives, though mostly to the main partition. Whenever things like this happen, I try to shutdown as quickly as possible and use a WinPE-based recovery method (or other Live-CD-type method) so Windows doesn't have a chance to write to the drive. All that has to happen is for one file to be written into the space used by the deleted file and it's gone.
In this case, I'm not sure "where" the file was actually deleted from. Since I was navigating within Acronis and not Windows Explorer when the file vanished (mistakenly removed), at what location on my computer should I be digging for the file (the external HD where my backup archives rest or my local drive)?
I meant to remind - my backups are on an external HD, so I have not physically written anything to this drive since this happened. I'm still looking around online for a solution, but may have to accept losing 10 years of music collecting - maybe the lesson here is to always have 2 copies of your data whether it be 1 on local drive/1 external backup or (in my case when I was reformatting C:) 1 on external drive/1 on additional external drive.
In my opinion, Acronis 2010 is a little buggy.
You should be looking for the file on the drive where you had it.
Commiserations Shandy
I am afraid from experience the chances are very low with the tools freely available and a damaged tib file is nigh impossible to extract information from. Have you tried FileRescuePlus
Two copies is a good strategy. I have three for critical data I do not wish to loose. One on the local drive one on anther drive and one remote from the location of the previous two.
Here are some strategies people use. Look at number 12 http://forum.acronis.com/forum/3426
TI is good for making images of complete drives and restoring them but I would not trust it to backup data files- one errror and all the files are lost. The two programmes suggested before are much better and retain them in their native format.
See a Private Message to you
I've given up on trying to recover the music - it's nothing I created, but just a collection of which I can probably get back about 40% (from a DVD backup 5 years ago, and many from my mp3 player, and a DVD I sent a friend of some music).
My new problem is when I chose to recover an archive (MyDocuments.tib - which consists of 2 incremental backups [MyDocuments2.tib, MyDocuments3.tib]), 4 out of the 5 folders in that archive were recovered as empty (chose to recover in original location which would just have been under the folder My Documents). Now, I can not delete, rename, move, anything these folders. I read online something about making sure to un-check the setting for maintaining the security settings, so I tried another recovery in a different location, un-checked that setting, and all files/folders seem to have transferred properly - I can even delete, etc. these files/folders. Again, this must be yet another change in how Acronis TI 2010 changes from 2009 and 2008 TI Echo. I can't stand when a new version makes such a drastic change and doesn't bring enough attention to it - who wants to read 12 pages of a user manual for each version just to try and pick out what's different - most "what's new" documentation doesn't help.
Anyway, I've tried deleting in DOS - 1 out of the 5 folders (the only one which was actually recovered with files) was able to be accessed through DOS - after typing del [folderName], I was asked "are you sure", said "y", but the folder remains. In Windows Explorer I could hover over that folder, and the tool tip shows it's empty now - at least DOS could delete those files. In DOS, I typed in dir/x which shows the short name for the files/folders, and the empty folders do not display a short name which makes me think even though DOS sees these folders, they aren't really there...
Anyway again... I'm currently using UnLocker, and it allows me to rename the folder(s), and if I wait about 5-10 minutes after asking it to delete the folder, the folder actually gets deleted. Since I'm still in the early stages of re-installing everything, I may just go back to my disk image I created right after installing Acronis - the only things I've installed since the disk image are some browsers, flash plug-ins, acrobat reader, and shockwave.
I tell you, Acronis 2010 is either buggy, not as user-friendly as previous versions, or require more attention from the user when running the software.
By the way, I'm noticing TrueImage.exe runs about 40% cpu even when I'm not doing anything - it's not like I leave it running when not in use, but for a few minutes after completing a task, cpu stays around 40%.