Acronis 2014 Will Not Restore Selected Incremental Backup
I'm running Window 8.1 on a Dell 8500 XPS. A few days ago I tried to clone my drive. I have done this in the past without problems to drive D:. Something went drastically wrong the last time I tried to clone. After I thought the cloning was complete I found out that my computer started booting from my clone image on drive D:. By the time I got things sorted out drive C: had somehow been restored back to a clone version I did on 2/16/14.
When I try to get Acronis to restore an incremental backup from 3/17/12, at first no backup prior to 2/16 would be displayed. I deleted the database, and Acronis started showing all backups prior to 3/17. When I select the backup for 16 Mar, I get a message:
"Can not find Verion 65. You may have moved or deleted it. Please click browser and specify it's location, or ignore this message."
When I click on "Browser", and navigate to the file, select it and click on the button "Add to backup list"; select "Recover", "Original location", and "Recover Now"; the program freezes. I really need to recover those that backup version. Is there another way to do this, or is there a tool that can convert Acronis backup files to be read by File Explorer. Will uninstalling and installing Acronis do any good?
Thanks for responding.
The version number of the file that cannot be found is 65; the full file name is the directory name plus "_inc_b1_s97_v1", and it is based on the full backup "_full_b1_s1_v1". The full version is dated 02/16/14, that date my computer reinstalled my files to; after I tried to clone the drive. All prior numbers and the full backup appear to be in the directory; at least these files are visible in windows explore.
I not very familiar with Acronis, so I'm not sure how to proceed with this type of restore. In past restores I've only had to select the file I wanted to restore.
If 65 cannot be found, then 66 to 95 are worthless as the chain has been broken.
Yes, when restoriing, all you need to do is to select the single restore file and all files up to and including that number will be restored.
You can try the validation option starting with 95 but my expectation would be failuer as the chain has been broken.
If you were to choose 64 as the restore item, you "should" have success--if all from full to 64 do exist and in the same folder.
Edit-addition:
A much better choice is to set up a new task with a backup scheme which uses automatic cleanup which will automatically delete the old backups after the number of backup retained reaches the "store X quota" of how many to keep. The "store X number...." has proven more dependable as my preferred option as compared to elapsed days or space consumed"
I have included examples of all 3 types. You can configure how many chains to keep (Store X number) based on your storage availabilty.
Don't try to modify an existing task. Create a completely new task pointing to a new empty sub-folder so there is no mixing of tib backup files from different tasks.
Custom Incremental Backup Scheme. 6 Inc, Keep 4 chains.
If 65 cannot be found, then 66 to 95 are worthless as the chain has been broken.
Please note what Grover wrote. This is too often overlooked by users.
FYI:
A task for Incremental or Differential will always begin with a full backup. That is necessary, as that becomes the baseline.
For an Incremental task, after the first full backup, subsequent backups will be incremental, each one based on changes since the previous Incremental backup, all the way back to the second backup being incremental based on changes since the full backup. As such, you need all links in the chain, all incremental backups right back to and including the first full backup, in order to Restore.
For a Differential task, after the first full backup, subsequent backups will be differential, each one based on changes since the first full backup. To restore, you would need just any Differential and the Full backup on which it is based.
You should not allow an incremental chain to become too long. An incremental restore depends upon every incremental in the chain being valid, including the original full. It's better to limit each chain to just a few incrementals, followed by a fresh full backup to start a new chain.
You should validate backups periodically. That would alert you much if the full backup were missing or unreadable.
Thanks for the replies and information. I will keep trying a lower version number, hopefully one will work.
If none of the lower version numbers work and only the last full backup dated 02/16/14 can be restored is there any other options?
If I do get my files restored, I will definitely setup a custom backup.
Edited:
I have tried to restore earlier versions and was not successfull. Only the last full backup worked. Looking at my backup folder with explorer, something definitely went wrong on 3/18. The version number changed from 97 on 3/17 to 65_v1-3 on 3/18, then up to 98 on 3/20. The chain has definitely been broken. I've tried manually selecting a file prior to 3/16, and that was unsuccessful. The program keeps asking for version 65. What will happen if I delete all incremental backups to 3/16, then delete the database, then run ATI.?
If I can not restore any incremental files, can I delete the folder containing the backups; and just take the loss in data.
if you validated a lower number Inc, then a restore should have been possible using that validated inc.
Don't delete the full if it works. Save it and delete later when you are sure you have not need for t hose files. Change the bad task to "Do not schedule" and cease to use it. You can delete the bad inc's in Windows Explorer once you are sure you have no need.
Look again at some of your settings. Are you using any kind of disk quota settings or consolidation settings. Either of these would explain the reduction in numbers but does not explain why the program did not complete its consolidation.
Look at the log file for 3/17-3/18 and see what info is provided about what occurred--especially on the 18th.
001. How to change a scheduled backup task to "Do Not Schedule".
Thanks to everyone that provided help. I would have responded earlier, but this problem set me back, and I’m just catching up.
I finally was able to recover an earlier version; version 93 dated 3/14. I’m not sure what the fix was. I can only explain what I did.
Looking at the log file, there was no information from 2/17 through 3/18. Log information from 3/19 to 3/21 show no errors. I’m not that familiar with ATI, so I couldn’t find my setting, but they should be the default setting, which I believe is no disk quota.
The program would not allow me to validate a single file, I was forced to use “Validate All Files”. On Saturday, during the first try at validating, the full backups were validated, but for the inc backups ATI reported “The backup is corrupted.” During the validation, the error “Can’t find version 65.”, came up. I then move all versions of 65 and version 66 that were numerically out of order and moved them to another folder. Then I deleted the database, restarted ATI, and ran validation again, and received the same results. I tried running restore a few times, selecting a lower version each time (between 96 to 94; the problem occurred after 96), but each time failed, because it could not find version 65. I didn't want to select a file prior to 65, because that would have brought me to a file earlier then the last full backup, which my machine was currently using.
Sunday, I deleted the database one more time, and this time I rebooted before running ATI again. I did another validations and got the same results as I did on Saturday. This time when I picked a random lower version (version 93; dated 3/14); the restoring began to work. At one point I receive an error that version 5 could not be found, but I was able to manually select it, and the restoring continued until completed. I believe all of my data up to 3/14 have been restored, and are not corrupted. So I only lost three days of data, and fortunately there was not that much new data during those three days.
I’m not sure what worked, or if it was a combination of fixes that solved the problems. I will be setting up a new task, and not use the clone tool until I am more experienced with this program. Once my new task is setup and running correctly, can I just delete the old backup files or use ATI to remove them from the list? I'm also thinking about uninstalling and doing a fresh install of ATI, or is that not necessary?