Backup stalls when I replace the external destination drive.
Hi,
I created a backup job that does a daily full backup of specific folders to an external USB drive. Every week I replace the drive. Whenever I replace the external drive the scheduled back up hangs up. When I open the Acronis program I see a light blue arrow on the back up, as if it's already running. I suspect it's waiting for some user input. Has anyone encountered this problem before? I haven't done extensive testing as the system is already in production. What I noticed is after "looking around" in the program to see what's wrong and not finding anything, something I've done nudges the backup job to continue. Aside from finding out what "fixes" the backup, it would be best not to have to do it every time I replace a drive. Any thoughts?
Whenever a backup runs, does it check if the most recent .tib file exist in the destination? When I replace the drive, then obviously the most recent .tib file will not be there. What is the best way to implement a daily backup to rotating weekly external drives?
Thanks in advance,
Omar
I ran into the same issue. After testing, this is what I concluded, though SMEs may be able to better explain this approach.
1) For an incremental backup, Acronis "needs to know" what was done beforehand. It appears to gain this information through an examination of previous backups on the target drive.
2) For a full backup and/or full folder backup, Acronis requires that the backup plan stored in itself point to the same drive letter each time. It may be possible that when the drives are swapped, a new drive letter is assigned, and manual adjustments are needed. During my tests, the backup plan appears to set a signature (or at least what I call a signature) for the target drive, beyond just the drive letter. When that signature is different than the last, it then appears unable to recover and decide that the user made the right decision (assuming the target drive letter did not change).
This is what I've found... The Acronis Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) may have a better explanation than I, as I'm just posting based on my observations of how I've found the product to work.
Thanks Pat and Grover. I was able to do what I needed. I actually tried creating multiple jobs for each disk before I posted here. What I was doing wrong was I was creating all three jobs (for three external drives) all at the same time with one of the drives connected. The difference in the jobs was I would point to different folders. I would then create the corresponding folder in the corresponding drive. This failed. All three jobs would run on the first drive and the the second and third. I should have created job1 while drive1 is connected. Disconnect drive1 and attach drive2, then create job2. Disconnect drive2, attach drive3 then create job3. Thanks guys!
The task does not care about drive letters but both the source and target disk identification must match the task. The task specific target disk must be attached when the task is created otherwise the backup will fail.
Hi GroverH, just a follow up on this topic. If I make changes to a backup job, for instance change the notification settings, will this change the drive the backup job is assigned to? For instance, I have a backup job #3 that is running this week for the external drive #3 that is currently attached to the PC. If I make changes to backup job#2 which is suppose to run only when I have external drive #2 is attached while drive #3 is attached, will Job #2 now also run when drive #3 is attached?
What is the best way to modify an existing backup job so that I can assign it to a specific drive, whether the drive is connect to the PC or not? Does this make sense? THe reason I asked is that when I plugged in drive#3, both job#2 and job#3. I had to unschedule job#2 until I found a way to assign a job to a drive. TIA.
Omar
omolina,
A scheduled task is set to run on a specific day/time and is tied to that schedule regardless of what drives are attached at that scheduled day/time.
If the corresponding disk is not attached when the scheduled task runs the task will fail as it will be unable to find the target destination drive/folder.
There is no way to schedule a task to only run when a select drive is attached to the machine.
Also, in order for an edit to be effective, you need the specific assigned disk for that task to be attached during the edit.